While many political actors insist that only a united front can unseat the ruling party, Prince Adewole Adebayo of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) offers a sharply different perspective. In this revealing interview, he dismisses elite-driven alliances as fundamentally flawed, questions the credibility and readiness of the electoral system, and outlines the SDP’s strategy of building what he describes as a “people-powered coalition.

” From voter apathy and internal party crises to the role of INEC and the future of democratic competition, Mike Odiakose reports that Adebayo presents a contrarian but thought-provoking roadmap for 2027. Excerpts:

Politics is a game of strategic alliance and numbers.

It is said that anyone that is not in the coalition is inadvertently supporting the ruling party as it will be difficult to singlehandedly defeat the ruling party without a coalition. Why is the SDP running a lone man show?

Alliances and coalition are with the strategic partners in an election. And strategic partners are not necessarily politicians. Strategic partners are the segments of the society. If you have the political class, within us we have certain disagreement, because the ultimate aim of politics is to enter government and govern and if you are talking in terms of accountability, corruption, you will not have credibility if you are aligning yourself with people who don’t believe in that either by words of mouth or by their actions or their questionable character. So you will be inconsistent. Also if you look at the people who make elections happen,the majority of them have not been participating. I ran for president last time and we had 93 million voters and we couldn’t get 80% to show up. If you want to have coalition or alliance, you have to find out where the 80% that didn’t show up are, what ste thr issues that bothered them and why they didn’t show up, those are the areas the SDP is working with thr strategic partners in an election. The other political parties we are having talks with from time to time, sometimes the talks are not that productive because you find out that like somebody who made serious mistake in government for the past 20 years hasn’t learnt anything new. They are looking for an opportunity to make another mistake for another 20 years and we are not going to enable that. Some in the coalition want to play roles which they are not suited for which purely based on ambition. The real alliance is to make sure that the Nigerians who are going to bear the brunt of bad governance and beneficiaries of good governance are participating and what the SDP is doing is bringing more people into the fold.

Your party’s activities appeared not really in the media. Can you fill us in on what your party is doing?

What we do is to try and increase our membership. If you go round the country, you will see physical signs of it. The under reporting of what we are doing is a mixed blessing. In some siting we get frustrated. We were in kano where thousands of people joined the SDP you didn’t report it, on the other hand,we think what does it matter, once the election day you will see tge difference. The person we are trying to remove has security apparatus, he knows what we are doing. If you are a Nigerian out there and you are expecting a coalition to come and save you, you are making a big mistake. What you need to do is talk to your neighbour who says let’s pray over this problem, yes you can pray but don’t stop there, you need to listen to debate, join a political party that you think is speaking the truth to you and make sure you participate on the election, don’t join anyone who says hope is lost. You need to come out. We have religious and civic organisations and professional organisation who think they can profit from rendering services to a bad election system instead of coming to improve on it so that we can over all have a good country. We are also making sure the commitment to supporting us is not just verbal assurance but we have actually taken a step to come and join the party, participate in the membership. In the last few months data shows that in many remote parts of the country, there is no week now that we don’t have close to hundred thousand people joining. It used to be hundred thousand a month and we are following up so that it’s not just number that we are going to post to INEC but quality participation. We are not closing our hears to those in the political class who wants to learn the lesson of the past and coming i to coalition but the real coalition discussion or corporation will start after the primaries because diffetent political parties have different level of sanity in their party, if the people you are going to talk with like the one of the talks we had recently, we found out that like there was about seven antagonistic self possessed aspirants and we had to tell their representatives, don’t bring your virus to this discussion, go back to your party, narrow down your own number of aspirants first before you can come to talk to us, that is the kind of mechanism we need if its not going to be free for all. We are still friends. Our own kind of coalition is when you begin to see civic coalition, other groupings in Nigeria who ordinarily would but show interest in it are showing interest, that is our idea of coalition.

You were in Plateau state during the gun men attack of the people, this shows your leadership and exemplary qualities. However, some major detectors happened in your party recently, is this a sign of people losing confidence and faith in your party capacity to drive the 2027 agenda?

No, not really. What i see is that if there is a system where 5000 left the SDP, chances that we probably won’t notice at all because if you are bringing in 50,000, 100,000 every week and 5000 decides to leave especially if it’s because he has beholding to one particular aspirant who is not favoured by zoning and he knows that in the SDP , he might not get the ticket,he decides to go to another party, he takes 5000 people with him and he has a budget to advertise that, we cannot complain.

You don’t seems concerned that the party is left with one member in the senate.

Not really because one person died and we lost one now though he hasn’t officially resigned because we have to be careful according to the law, he hasn’t told us that he has left but we are hearing rumour that he us the favoured candidate of the ring party. We cannot do anything about that. He is trying to be governor of a state. We already have quality people who will be governor. So it’s natural that he knows that we will not take him to be the governorship candidate because of the way the formulas has worked out and he decides to go and seek his governorship else where, I think we have to respect that. But the party is not about individual ambition like that because everyone of such that advertises departure, there are thousands coming in. What matters to us is that we would be congratulating ourselves half way if the Nigerian people understands why the SDP is in the race. That we are about substance of the chapter 2 of the constitution and that we are trying to let you know that governance is not contest of personality, it’s about contest of principles. If they understand that we build that coalition across the country, others will join us even those who are all over the place now, that is the coalition, many will join us once they discover that Nigerian people are getting that message and that message is important, if we don’t get it now, we get the transition wrong. I must say this clearly. The objective of the SDP is deeper than the objectives of some of the people you find in the so called coalition. They are satisfied 100 percent if the president is removed. 100 percent of their objective is achieved. But for us, that is just the beginning. Our objective is a have only when we remove the president and replace him with government that will not look like his own and the bad past experiences which will look like nigeria, on a sustainable part to good governance, quality leadership, that is what we are looking for, nit just let us throw this computer away, if you throw it away, what are you replacing it with, that is where our discussion is deeper for us than them.

Do you think the INEC will be ae to conduct a credible election come 2027?

I don’t think they are aiming towards that because you have to be sure first if that us what they ate aiming towards before toy say whether they can do it. The person who is not willing to work will not be productive. It is a question of what the rest of us have to do. Remember that the INEC chairman did not appoint himself. He was appointed by the president who is am nit sure free fair and credible election is top on his priority. Not only that the president didn’t act alone, there is council of state where all the former leaders and experienced people in the country, they all approved it without any question. And it went to the national assembly, representing all Nigerians, and they approved the appointment without question. It looks to me therefore that there was no so much uproar even some of the people who are now campaigning against the INEC chairman, if you go back months back you would have read the news where they were praising the appointment. Transactionally as they get along they discovered he was not getting one with and they realised they need to criticise. We have blown rhe opportunity to choose a free and fair INEC. If we wanted to do that we would have done the Uwais panel and the chairman if ADC for example, he was the senate president as at the time Justice Uwaise submitted that report during president Yar’Adua, when David mark reviewed the report,he threw it away, and he spent 8 years exacting that law. A lot of opportunity for free fair and credible election had been lost.

It’s like those initial antagonists of sound electoral draft now become the victims?

Yes because at that time, the poor and rigged elections favoured them and they assumed like president tinubu assuming and the APC people that they will always be in the saddle forever. Right now, the people left who ensure free fair and credible elections are the politicians themselves, the media, the voters and the law enforcement. But for INEC I think that opportunity has been out already.

There is the perception from the political space that there is a subtle underground attempt to shrink the democratic space thereby presenting President Tinubu as the sole candidate for 2027 election. Where do you stand in this narrative?

What you need to know is that you don’t need to major it election now, when you look at several several internal hiatus, illegal battles, many of these parties are facing, where do you stand that regarding this narrative? What you need to know is that we don’t need to make it sound that we are making something that is very creative. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is not a democrat. He doesn’t behave like a democrat. He didn’t come into office like the way a democrat will. He has even stopped pretending to be a democrat.

You mean a former member of NADECO, fought against the Abacha dictatorship?

Your operating word is former. A thief is a former honest man. Conflict is a former innocent person. There are a lot of formers. The issue is that what you do now is what matters. You could see that he is not a stakeholder in finding democracy for Nigeria. He is limited to the idea that i am there now, I know how i fought my way there, I wasn’t brought there by democracy. I was brought there by sheer by the effectiveness of my own ruthlessness. Now that I am there you have yo be more ruthless than me to get me out of here. So he is nit pretending. We had interactions with him in the state house where all the political parties when he passed the electoral act, he told them, listen, I suffered, go and suffer your own.
Q. You are interpreting that as to telling them that they should be ruthless.

He spoke English. And you know his English is always simple. It’s clear. He me, it’s my turn. Why should I favour you now?

You are misconstrued him. What he has always said is that you cannot lay the internal weaknesses of your party at his own door step.
I am saying what he spoke with his own mouth. You are talking about what his spokesperson is saying on his behalf. He said when I was in opposition I suffered it, the game is sweet when you are winning. So go and deal with it.

You think theopposition is ready to pay for the sacrifice?

What is opposition? Opposition is what you do, not just merely what you say. Some of the people in opposition are mercenaries and saboteurs. Some of them are also causing problems for themselves. But the key issue is that if we are to oppose president tinubu, there are three things that we need to do. One, our action in the running of our political party is not lawlessness. Second, that we oppose in principle and mobilise Nigerians that these the principles that are implications our opposition to this president to save the country and to ensure good governance because Nigerians are nit going yo be invested in your personal ambition to become something. Thirdly, there must create a contrast. You shouldn’t look like Tinubu, if you want Nigerians to help you in defeating that government. You have to bring a sharp contrast that will be like day and night,black and white. Nigerians must see that there is a clear alternative. I know that today if president tinubu remembers the SDP his own mind is to destroy it or destabilise it. It’s not new to me, the question is, are we going to enable him?

The Labour Party has fixed its national convention for April 28 in Umuahia, Abia.

The party also officially released the list of chairmen and members of its electoral sub-committees for the forthcoming congresses in all the states of the federation.

Senior Special Adviser (Media) to the Interim National Chairman, Ken Asogwa, made these known in a statement issued on Tuesday in Abuja.

The party had earlier announced the timetable for its congresses, with ward congresses scheduled for April 23, local government congresses, April 24 and state congresses April 26.

According to Asogwa, the sub-committees, made up of experienced and respected party members, have been constituted to oversee the conduct of the congresses in their respective states.

He listed the chairmen to include: Iheanacho Obioma (Abia); Francis Kim (Adamawa); Ekong Solomon (Akwa Ibom); Chief Tony Asuoha (Anambra); Malam Mustapha Adamu (Bauchi); Beredugo Ebimonyo (Bayelsa) and Chief John Ochoga (Benue).

Others are: Urom Iyang (Cross River); Chuks Onitsha (Delta); Chief Mitchell Nwabueze (Ebonyi); Dr Saliu Edogiawerie (Edo); Usman Mohammed (Niger); Owolabi Ezekiel (Ogun); Charles Afolabi (Ondo); Balogun Ibrahim (Osun); Babatunde Yusuf (Oyo); Fakorede Matthew (Ekiti) and Dr David Ogba (Enugu).

Also included are: Adoga Knaabayi (Gombe); Chinagorom Nwankpa (Imo); Mustapha Garba (Jigawa); Dr Emmanuel Barau (Kaduna); Kabiru Said (Kano); Pastor Ishaku Izang (Plateau); Amaobi Ogah (Rivers); Prof. Muhamuda Muhammad (Sokoto); Jesse Williams (Taraba); Mukhtar Hassan (Yobe) and Haila Baja (Zamfara).

Also, Ismail Bello (Katsina); Muh’d (Birnin Kebbi); Samuel Ajare (Kogi); Bodunde Adebayo (Kwara); Chukwuemeka Ogbanna (Lagos); Dr Muttaqa Yushau (Nasarawa) and Rose Uba-Anarah (FCT).

Asogwa quoted the National Chairman of the party, Sen. Nenadi Usman, as urging the chairmen and members to carry out their responsibilities with utmost fairness, transparency and integrity.

Usman reminded them of the party’s core values of equal opportunity and social justice, urging them to reflect these principles in the discharge of their duties.

She stressed the need for diligence and commitment, noting that the credibility of the party must be upheld throughout the congress process.

The statement assured that all necessary arrangements had been put in place to ensure a smooth, successful, and hitch-free convention.

By Mike Odiakose, Abuja

The Amir and National Head of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at of Nigeria, Alatoye Abdulazeez, has urged Nigerian youths to unite politically and strategically, identifying Adewole Adebayo as a potential leader capable of driving national transformation if given collective support.

Speaking during an interview, Abdulazeez emphasized that Nigeria’s progress hinges largely on the ability of young people to organize themselves beyond tribal, religious, and financial inducements, and to rally behind credible leadership.

According to him, while several young candidates have emerged in past elections, their failure to build strong alliances allowed older political forces to maintain dominance.

He noted that the case of Adebayo, a lawyer and businessman who contested under the Social Democratic Party (SDP), presents an opportunity for a different political direction if youths can act in unity.

“If the younger generation is sure that Adewole Adebayo can deliver, they should team up with him, get things right, and encourage other youths across tribes to see themselves as one,” Abdulazeez said.

He stressed that Nigeria is currently in what he described as a “storming stage” of nationhood, where divisions along ethnic and regional lines continue to hinder development.

He warned that unless a “national norm” is established—where citizens prioritize unity over sectional interests—the country may struggle to reach its full potential.

The cleric further advised youths to avoid electoral inducement and reject divisive politics, urging them instead to focus on long-term nation-building.

“We must move from where we are to the next stage. Otherwise, we will keep moving in the same direction,” he added.

Beyond politics, Abdulazeez reiterated the Ahmadiyya motto, “Love for All, Hatred for None,” as a guiding principle for national cohesion, stressing that religion should be a force for peace rather than division.

He condemned terrorism and violence carried out in the name of religion, insisting that such acts contradict Islamic teachings.

On governance, he acknowledged efforts by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, noting that while progress has been made in some areas, more attention is needed in critical sectors such as power and economic management.

Abdulazeez concluded with a call for collective responsibility among citizens, particularly the youth, to reshape Nigeria’s future through unity, moral discipline, and active participation in governance.

“Leadership is not just about those in office,” he said. “It is also about those who choose them.”
End