Excerpt
The presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Prince Adewole Adebayo, has accused President Bola Tinubu of being more interested in remaining in the Presidential Villa and amassing wealth than providing purposeful leadership and addressing the challenges confronting Nigerians.
Adebayo, the SDP’s candidate for the 2027 presidential election, alleged that Tinubu was not interested in the responsibilities of the presidency, including supervising ministers, engaging with citizens and providing essential services such as education and healthcare.
Speaking in Ibadan on Thursday during the public presentation of his presidential blueprint, titled Farewell to Poverty and Insecurity, Adebayo called on Nigerians to organise themselves and collectively reject what he described as exploitation and bad governance. The blueprint is the SDP candidate’s governance programme for 2027–2031.
“Tinubu doesn’t want to be your president. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t like the job of president. Tinubu doesn’t want to stay in the Aso Rock and serve the people. He doesn’t want to talk to you. He doesn’t want to supervise ministers,” Adebayo said.
“Tinubu is only around because he wants to pack money. That is why he is not struggling for anything. He doesn’t even like the job of president. And he doesn’t want to talk like a president or behave like a president. He is only there because he wants to pack money,” he alleged.
Adebayo further alleged that Tinubu’s earlier political strategy involved sponsoring individuals into political offices and benefiting financially from their positions, claiming the President eventually sought the office himself when the returns from backing others became insufficient.
“Tinubu’s business plan before was, ‘I will be sponsoring people to office and I will make profit out of it.’ Am I worried? Look, these people I am sponsoring, not enough money is coming back. Let me go and do this by myself,” he alleged.
“But to listen to you, to give you education, to give you healthcare, if you die, Tinubu doesn’t care. He will make money from your funeral,” Adebayo added.
The SDP candidate urged Nigerians to look beyond individual personalities and critically examine their leadership choices, arguing that citizens also had a responsibility to break what he described as a recurring pattern of electing leaders who fail to meet their expectations.
“If you have one president who is a thief, you have a second president who is a thief, you have a third president who is a thief, something is wrong with you. Why are you always choosing thieves? What kind of bad luck is that?” he asked.
Adebayo also warned that another period under Tinubu could worsen Nigeria’s economic difficulties, predicting that petrol could eventually rise to N5,000 per litre and that purchasing power could deteriorate further.
“Tinubu, if you allow him just four more years, if you allow him just one more year, four things are going to happen. You will buy fuel, petrol at N5,000 per litre. Because I predicted four years ago that you will buy it at N2,000 per litre. It is getting there,” he said.
He further predicted that the economy could grind to a halt and that inflation could erode the real value of Nigerians’ incomes.
“The second thing that will happen, your economy will grind to a halt. You will see millionaires who cannot buy bread. All of you will become Manchester millionaires when Tinubu goes back because you will need one million naira to buy one loaf of bread. So you will be a millionaire in poverty,” Adebayo said.
He warned that worsening economic conditions could also undermine the dignity and value of honest labour, particularly for artisans, traders, mechanics and other workers.
Reflecting on Nigeria’s 66 years of independence, Adebayo described the country’s experience as an unfulfilled promise for millions of citizens, arguing that political independence meant little if people remained hungry, unemployed, sick and without adequate housing.
“When you have independence on a piece of paper for 66 years and you are hungry, you are sick, you are unemployed, you are without housing and there is no prospect for your child that you are carrying in your hand, your independence is a lie,” he said.
He questioned Nigeria’s development trajectory and argued that the country ought to have achieved considerably more in the decades since independence.
Adebayo, however, said his presentation was not intended merely to lament the country’s problems but to mobilise Nigerians towards rebuilding it.
“I don’t want to come here and do lamentations. I want to congratulate you that you have decided to take back your country. You have decided to build a country for your children and children’s children,” he said.
“I congratulate you that you have seen lies and you decided to follow the truth. And I will challenge all of us. Nobody can use mere wishes, sweet words, to crack a palm kernel. To crack a palm kernel, you have to take action. Very tough actions.”
Adebayo identified what he described as Nigerians’ willingness to compromise their values for political and financial benefits as one factor sustaining poor governance.
He urged citizens to stop cooperating with injustice, arguing that politics should not be regarded as an avenue for receiving money from politicians, participating in the misappropriation of public funds or spreading falsehoods on behalf of office-holders.
“If we stop cooperating with evil and injustice, we stop pretending to be confused, because we think that the thing to gain from politics is money from the politician, that the thing to gain from politics is an opportunity to join them to loot, that the thing to gain from politics is to help them to spread their lies. If we believe in truth, God will answer our prayers,” he said.
Adebayo maintained that government should provide free, compulsory and qualitative education, affordable healthcare, housing, food and employment opportunities.
Using his experience as a farmer to illustrate his argument on public healthcare, he said livestock owners provided medical treatment for their animals without expecting them to pay for it.
“When my cow is sick, I use my money to treat the cow. The cow doesn’t pay for it. How can I value my cow more than the government values you?” he asked.
On electricity, Adebayo advocated a nationwide solar power initiative, proposing the installation of solar panels on rooftops, particularly to improve access to electricity for low-income households.
He also argued that rising prices were partly sustained by the insulation of political office-holders from many of the costs borne directly by ordinary Nigerians.
“How can somebody who doesn’t pay for what you pay help you lower the price?” he asked.
Describing Farewell to Poverty and Insecurity as more than a political document, Adebayo said the blueprint represented an undertaking to deploy Nigeria’s resources for the benefit of its citizens.
“This manifesto, Farewell to Poverty and Insecurity, is not a book for entertainment and it is not a book of decoration. It is an agreement between you and your creator that the resources that God has given to Nigeria, we will use it for the people of Nigeria,” he said.
He called for collective action against insecurity, poverty and unemployment, warning that prolonged patience with government failures could have severe consequences for vulnerable Nigerians.
Adebayo identified Nigerians’ inability to organise across religious, ethnic and other divisions as a major obstacle to national development, calling for what he described as an “organised democracy”.
“The greatest problem of Nigeria is that we don’t know how to organise. Individually, it would make sense, but we need to learn to organise,” he said.
“Because what we are facing in government is armed robbery, organised crime. And if you want to defeat organised crime, you have to have an organised democracy.”
As part of his appeal to Nigerians on the country’s 66th Independence anniversary, Adebayo urged citizens to concentrate on organising within their communities rather than focusing excessively on Tinubu.
“Rule Tinubu completely out of your life. Do not listen to Tinubu and his ‘bala blue’. Do not talk about him. Do not even laugh at him. Just remove him from your brain,” he said.
“Focus on how to build your country from your street.”
He called on Nigerians to engage their neighbours about the country’s political and economic challenges and translate their concerns into organised community-level participation.
Kemi Olaitan in Ibadan
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