Indiscipline, Lack Of Party Supremacy Ruined PDP – Prince Adebayo

The Social Democratic Party (SDP) leader, Prince Adewole Adebayo, discusses key national issues bordering on the 2027 general elections, his party’s growing appeal and the importance of discipline over wealth in politics. In this interview with TITILOPE JOSEPH, he explains why SDP remains distinct from other political parties and how it plans to manage new entrants while maintaining its core values.

With the political atmosphere already charged ahead of the 2027 elections, what are your thoughts on the key issues surrounding the upcoming polls?

Like all human activities that require the involvement of a lot of people, two years is a short time. If you are trying to build a house to move in on May 29, 2027 and you have not bought the land by now, you can’t be sure that you will move into the house. That is, just a small house for one person. And if you want to graduate from school to earn any degree and you have not gained admission by now, then you know you cannot graduate by that time. So, two years is not a long time when it comes to national planning and if you want to form a government, you need to persuade people to come and join you in the campaign. You need to tell them about your issues, you need to select those who agree with you and those who don’t agree with you. Then, the INEC time table is what people should follow and the INEC time table says that a candidate must emerge at least a year or about a year before the elections. So, for the voter, he is only involved on the election day; that is why voters tend to think that 2027 is far away because by February 2027, voters will have to go to the polls to vote. But, prior to that, a politician has to emerge as a candidate of his party and that period is less than a year from now. So, you can understand why it looks like there is a lot of frenzy in the system.

How do we separate genuine national discourse from media frenzy and everyday sentiment as 2027 approaches?

Politics is a human activity, and emotions are part of the human psyche and makeup. If you want to govern, build roads, hospitals and create employment, you are doing all these for human beings. So, you must consider their emotions. Nigeria is diverse in terms of age, gender, religion, and ethnicity. Some sentiments have developmental implications and need to be addressed, while others are irrelevant to specific issues. When it comes to the economy, we have been clear and consistent in our disagreements with President Tinubu, just as we were during the campaign. The policies he and his team are now implementing — the ones causing public outcry — are exactly what we predicted. We warned about their implications, and now it has become evident to President Tinubu that he is in serious trouble. He is approaching halftime in his tenure, yet none of his policies has worked. Worse still, he is running out of propaganda to justify the situation because a hungry man knows he is hungry. No amount of promises can deceive a starving child; only actual food can. This is the reality. There is no improvement in any measurable index. They are not generating employment, reducing inflation, lowering the prices of goods and services, or improving job opportunities. Security remains poor and they have failed in every critical area, including food, housing, education and healthcare. These are tangible, measurable issues, and that is what we are addressing. We have left sentimental politics to those who thrive on emotions, while we focus on development, facts, and solutions. Even if you are Tinubu’s biggest supporter or a member of his party, you cannot deny the truth of what we are saying. More importantly, we are not just pointing out problems — we are offering solutions. If they reconsider their approach, they can adopt some of the solutions we propose. I hope President Tinubu will borrow some of my ideas, just as they took my campaign slogan and use them to improve people’s lives. I want his government to succeed because we don’t need a total collapse to defeat them in the next election. If we wait for them to fail even more disastrously, the suffering of the people will become irreversible. That is why we continue engaging with them. Some of our discussions are directed at the government, providing feedback and analysis. When you are in power, surrounded by a bubble in the State House, you might be misled into thinking that releasing billions and trillions means progress. But the reality on the ground is different. We travel across the country, gathering firsthand information and when we speak, we know President Tinubu will hear. We want him to understand that people’s suffering is real, regardless of the rosy reports he might be receiving. At the same time, we are also communicating with the people, reminding them that their suffering is not accidental. We raised these issues during the last election, and if they didn’t listen then, they should now. There is a way out of this crisis: in the next election, remove the APC, let President Tinubu retire, and install a competent government that can solve these problems. By 2025, we should not be dealing with issues like food shortages, insecurity, lack of access to basic education, and inadequate healthcare. These are problems that should have been solved by now; we should be tackling bigger challenges.

Your party, the SDP, seems to be more or less like the beautiful bride now. I noticed that a lot of political bigwigs are meeting with your party leaders. Is there anything in the offing, are we expecting a merger?

Well, I will leave that to the party management. I am the leader of the party, but I am not the national chairman, the national secretariat or the organising secretary. My role is to provide guidance and to emphasise that a political party is a public institution — it is not my personal property. Anyone who wants to join is free to do so. Even if President Tinubu decides to resign from the APC and join the SDP, we cannot stop him because freedom of association is guaranteed under Section 40 of the Nigerian Constitution. However, while anyone can seek to join us, we must carefully assess politicians coming in. We will engage in discussions with them based on three key criteria. First, our party is built on ideas. If you do not align with our ideology, joining us would be counterproductive. For instance, we oppose many policies implemented by the APC and PDP, such as privatising public institutions, commoditizing social services, and turning education and healthcare into profit-making ventures rather than prioritising outcomes for the people. We also disagree with the removal of subsidies on essential services that directly impact poverty levels. Instead, we advocate for a government that is actively involved in social investment to lift people out of poverty. Our philosophy is simple: when you take a child from the streets, perhaps the child of a beggar, and provide education and opportunities, that child may grow to become a doctor, journalist or engineer. The investment in those children will be repaid over generations, as they will never return to a life of begging, and their future generations will be productive members of society. That is the kind of dialogue we promote within our party. We are not just different from other parties in name; we are different in substance. Anyone interested in joining us must study our manifesto, as well as Chapter 2 of the Nigerian Constitution, which outlines the fundamental objectives and directive principles of state policy — principles that both the APC and PDP have continuously violated, leading to poverty, insecurity and desperation in the country. The second criterion for admitting politicians into the SDP is their approach to party discipline. Many politicians have ruined the parties they came from due to indiscipline and a disregard for party rules. The PDP was once the largest party in Africa, even surpassing South Africa’s ANC, but it has now fallen apart due to a lack of party supremacy and respect for internal regulations. The APC is following the same path. Our party remains intact because of our strict adherence to discipline, and we expect new members to abide by this standard. We urge them to practice politics with integrity, respect the rule of law, and embrace party discipline. The third criterion concerns ambition. If you come to our party with political aspirations, you are welcome. In fact, I encourage people who wish to run for president to join and contest. However, in the SDP, we uphold democratic principles. We do not use desperate tactics, bribe delegates, falsify delegate lists, or conduct factional primaries. If a politician agrees to our ideology, party discipline, and ethical approach to politics, he or she is welcome in the SDP. I encourage everyone to join us so that we can offer Nigerians a solid alternative platform. If you are dissatisfied with the APC, the SDP presents a viable option. Our goal is to provide Nigerians with a government of their choice — one built on integrity, discipline, and development-focused policies. That is the whole idea.

Many of those joining your party are prominent figures in their parties, often acting independently rather than collectively. How do you plan to handle their egos and financial influence?

Well, I think deep pockets should be used for their families and the members of their community. We don’t put our hands in anybody’s pockets so we don’t know if it’s deep or shallow. The only thing you owe the party is your membership fee and if the party is doing any activity and you want to make a contribution, you can make contributions but I can believe that the treasurer is going to report to the INEC immediately that you made the contribution. So, whether you are rich or poor is irrelevant. Remember that ahead of my primaries last year, the first person to buy form was a multi-billionaire who owns two banks, who is well known in the country; but I still, out of 1807, lost 87 votes. So, people didn’t care whether the other people were billionaires or whatever. So, the party is based on ideas. When a party is based on money, the richest person has influence, but when a party is based on ideas, it’s just like a university, if you are trying to teach political science or nuclear engineering, the person who understands the principles will be the teachers’ person; he is not going to be the person who is the richest. So if you come to us and you are a rich person, we will welcome you. Maybe, we can learn one or two things about entrepreneurship from you. If you make your money legitimately, we will want to learn how you make your money so that we can replicate it in millions of Nigerians, but beyond that, we are not interested. The second point is that in our party, people are highly experienced. Our national chairman, even though he is a young person, started politics for a very long time ago with Abubakar Rimi and if you do politics with Rimi, you will know that you are highly experienced. Our national secretary used to be our national chairman and when I came in to reorganise the party, we found out that he is from the same place as I am and we said you have to step down or you resign and he stepped down and became national secretary. He used to be Minister of Defence in Nigeria and was the Minister of Power as well but he is now an obedient secretary. So, we have many people in our party who have the same level of pedigree as those who are making noise in other parties but when they are with us, they are highly disciplined. The director general of my campaign used to be Minister of Youth and Sports in the country but he knows himself as the director general of the campaign, and he limits himself to that. You can see the senators that we have now in the National Assembly from the SDP; you don’t hear of any scandal or anything that has to do with scandal. They don’t make any silly comments. For any policy they want to speak about in the National Assembly, they come to the party, we review them and we tell them what to do. When they wanted to vote for the leadership of the National Assembly, they asked the candidate to come and make a presentation. So, Akpabio came to the SDP and made his claim. Kyari came and when we listened to all of them, then we said go and vote according to your conscience because the two of them look terrible to us. So they don’t do things without the permission of the party, we have that discipline. So, I believe that if you are a former head of state, former vice president, former minister, billionaire or whatever, once you come to the SDP, we will discipline you. We will make sure you follow the rules; that is how we do it and I believe that is why many are thinking and thinking before coming because they know that in the SDP, we will discipline you. I believe you know Governor Donald Duke and you know Jerry Gana, a seven-time minister and all of that, the two of them were expelled from the SDP. They sued each other to court over a primary and we asked them to withdraw the case, they refused, so we expelled both of them. I still respect them personally and they are very good national leaders but we didn’t care that Duke was an eight-year governor of Cross River State and Professor Gana is a well known statesman, when they didn’t listen to us, we expelled them. So that is the attitude of the SDP and you know that our founding chairman, Chief Olu Falae, actually won the 1999 presidential election, you can go and read the report, but they said Obasanjo won. No problems; he had been Secretary to the Government of the Federation and Minister of Finance; but even now in the party, do you hear him say anything? No, we have serious discipline and that’s what matters.