The presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party, SDP, in the 2023 election, Prince Adewole Adebayo, has raised the alarm that the ruling APC was gambling with the lives of Nigerians and should be shown the way out in the 2027 general elections. Excerpts:
Is the opposition losing the plot? Because the chaos apparently from the outside is quite uninspiring according to most Nigerians.
Well, I don’t know where you got your statistics from. I think what is not inspiring is the governance record of the APC. They have left the people with no choice than to find a way to hang on to any hope they can. And I think to the extent that Nigerians have hope, it is personally not hope in the government, but hope in God Almighty. That’s the only thing we haven’t lost. But we are trying to tell Nigerians that you should also have hope in the future and the authority that we are bringing. I don’t think that it’s much about the opposition. It is primarily that the government has a responsibility to make democracy worthy. That the people who are shareholders in this democracy will feel that they are getting some dividends back. Now, even if the opposition were weak, which is not the case, the government cannot profit from the weakness of the oppositions to abandon the people. The government has a responsibility to deliver on its mandate. And this government has failed woefully to do so.
Now, for the opposition, we should not be accused of not matching the government billboard for billboard, poster for poster, campaign for campaign, because we are supposed to give them time to settle and show their true colours.
We are not supposed to be a 24-hour, 12-month, round-the-clock election country. We are supposed to go to the farm, practice our profession, teach students, do something meaningful.
So after the last presidential election, I went back to my profession as a lawyer and spent some of my time consulting. It’s not supposed to be a full-time thing for everybody.
But the government now is laying a foundation which I hope we don’t copy. A foundation where there’s zero governors.
You start the next election while you finish the last one. And that’s what they are trying to recommend.
And the public, the media, should not reward them. What they are doing is what they call false start in athletics.
Before the whistle is blown, you’re very tired of running. So everyone is trying to catch up with them.