As political events gather momentum two years away from the 2027 general elections, the Social Democratic Party, SDP, presidential candidate in the 2023 elections, Prince Adewole Adebayo, in this interview speaks on a range of issues and argues that why the SDP should be party of choice in the next general elections. Excerpts:
Is the SDP in crisis or not given the conflicting signals from within?
Well, I don’t see any crisis in particular. The party is running normally. I think that now that many people are starting early to talk about 2027, there’s now a kind of unusual attention paid to something that’s a simple matter. We have not started using the word ‘crisis.’
I think there was a meeting at the end of NWC. There were 12 of them. They are supposed to be 15. And from what we gathered from both sides of the discussion, 11 people attended, including the chairman, secretary and the rest of them. Now, a majority of them say that they took a decision to fill three positions in the NWC and I think there is a minority that says that they were not happy with that decision. But we are not getting involved in that because I’m not a member of the NWC and no member of the NWC has come out to speak. So, I think they’re trying to work it out amongst themselves.
The national public secretary is a member of the NWC. He issued an official statement and there’s no other statements issued by the NWC since that time. So, we don’t want to get involved in it. They are very close. They are closely knit. And their chairman, Shehu Gabam, has been leading them quite well. They’re very united.
Most of the comments you get are comments that are coming from people who are not in the leadership. Some who have just joined and they like to hug the media, but I can tell you, even in this latest discussion, the national chairman has been quite mature. He’s not issued any statement. National secretary has been quite mature. He has not issued any statement. And I think from what I gather at their meeting, they are working things out.