Prince Adewole Adebayo, leader of the Social Democratic Party, SDP, and its presidential candidate in the 2023 elections in this interview talks about the new tax policy which has since become operational, assessment of President Bola Tinubu’s administration in the outgone year, the fear of Nigeria becoming a one-party state amongst other issues. Excerpts:
What’s your assessment of the year 2025?
For the people in government, it’s a year of abuse. And for the media, it’s a year of distraction. We have a list of all the problems of Nigerians. For the political class, it’s a year of removing credibility from politics. It’s 2025 in Nigeria. For the political class, it’s a year of denouncing yourself. We’re just leaving the party. Just to see this, fighting, and for Nigeria, it’s a year of international harassment.
How would a foreign country be able to come to your country? Even to insult Nigeria before or criticize Nigeria, it was a serious matter. Do you remember the postcard where the US government sent the so-called Peace Corps? And one of the Peace Corps members criticized Nigeria in the postcard that they sent home.
The entire postcard was proscribed. Because Nigerian youths came out to condemn how can you come to a country and insult Nigeria? The kind of messages we get from Mr. Trump and the US, and then the motion that we hope we can perform in social justice. When you look at all of that, it’s a year that we’ve got no way of exacting an opportunity to decide on peace or something.
Now we’re going to present 2026 budgets, and they started with constitutional impossibility, of saying that they are repealing the 2025 Appropriation Act. Why do we want an Appropriation Act that has to be repealed?
The moneys spent, is it to be regarded as stolen money, or lost money, or lost opportunity? In all of the contracts awarded, what’s wrong with those subheads? Are you going to revoke all those numbers? Clearly, we don’t have the government. We don’t have people of power. We don’t have access of money to be able to engage them and tackle them. So 2025 was a year where we beat the government without being able to tackle them. And Tinubu was appointing everyone employed on the team as well. So we want to analyze the year as the year where we introduced, or expanded, the most dangerous youth enslavement program in the country.
In a country where, under our constitution, tuition is supposed to be affordable. No one is expected, under our constitution, to take a loan to go to school. It’s one of the operations that arose in America. But in America, if you take a student loan, the professors will not be able to study. In the case of Nigeria, if you take a student loan, you’re paying interest to the government, or owing government interest.
At the state government level, almost every governor is to be found, on the average, in Abuja. Lining up to wait for Tinubu on one of these medical trips or unexplained journeys.
So, it’s the year of governors shutting down the radio stations, and bringing us to the secondary level, the sub-national level of states. About six or seven governments changed their parties to join the APC and many more are begging and spending money to join. There is no attempt to get the politicians to interpret the problems of the people and want to deal with it.
And it’s the year with the most military thing you can remember. A general was killed by so-called terrorists. You really don’t see a general being killed like that. And the other military event is Tinubu’s minister, and the Navy officer shouted at each other about a piece of land that neither belonged to them. So, it’s the year we’ve come to the conclusion that it was the year God gave to us to try to make sense of our lives and we decided not to give it to him in that year.
We are ended that year with the threats that by next year we are going to be officially living under the most bracing act of legislative treason, where the fiscal tax law passed by the National Assembly is being suspected by serious members of the National Assembly as having been tampered with either by the president or the part of the National Assembly or both of them.
So, there are so many things. It’s the year when Nigeria couldn’t meet even the most basic record.