Adewole Adebayo: Opposition should focus on the people — not just grabbing power

Adewole Adebayo, presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the 2023 election, says any genuine opposition in Nigeria must embody the struggles and aspirations of ordinary citizens.

Speaking on ‘Prime Time’, a programme on Arise TV, on Monday, Adebayo said many who parade as opposition figures are merely former insiders pushed out of the system.

“Every government, including this one — every government that is there — there’s always this fear of incumbency,” he said.

“People always say, ‘Oh, it cannot be done.’ Of course, until 2015, when the APC came, and it was done.

“I’m surprised that people now have forgotten and they keep saying, ‘Oh, it cannot be done.’ So that’s one part of it.”

He said many politicians find themselves in leadership by accident and often start as part of the establishment.

“But the establishment is getting tinier and tinier because of the greed of the establishment,” he said.

“They are not baking a larger cake for the country. They are only fighting at the table.

“The pieces of cake that they get are getting smaller in size, and their greed is increasing, so some don’t even get anything at all.”

Adebayo said once some elites are excluded from the “stolen buffet”, they rebrand as opposition.

“Then when people see them, they say, ‘Oh, what do you have?’ because the paradigm that they see them using is the paradigm of the establishment,” he said.

“But what is clear — clear as day in Nigeria — is that any opposition that is genuine enough, and people see credibility in that opposition, that opposition will defeat the incumbent any day.”

He referenced the 2015 elections, saying the political class realised it needed someone with grassroots credibility.

“In 2015, the marauders of Nigerian politics realised that nobody would listen to them, so they went and fetched Buhari, who had captured the imagination of the poor masses of the last swathe of northern Nigeria,” he said.

“And they now added yeast to that and baked a very large cake, talking about change and all of that. So people bought into that.”

Adebayo said as 2027 approaches, politicians must first understand what it truly means to be in the opposition.

“The fact that you’ve fallen off the wagon or you have been disfavoured by the establishment doesn’t make you opposition — it makes you unemployed, but it doesn’t make you opposition,” he said.

“Now, if you are coming to opposition, it doesn’t also disqualify you from being an opposition.

“But if you are coming to the opposition, you have to now enter the opposition paradigm, realise that if your aim in politics is exactly similar or identical to the yearning and suffering of the masses, then you are in opposition.”

He said the critical flaw in Nigerian politics is the idea that simply replacing one party with another will bring change.

“The critical contradiction in opposition politics in Nigeria is that we are now having many people whose opposition consists in changing only the incumbent without changing the system,” he said.

“They want to change the party in power without changing politics, whereas the party in power is not the cause of the problem of Nigeria.

“The party in power is a product of the problem because it is only bad politics, prompt and plain.

“Only bad politics can produce a President Bola Tinubu for Nigerians. He is a product of bad politics.”

On March 14, Adebayo announced his intention to run again in the 2027 election.

He said SDP is committed to maintaining its independence and pursuing its own agenda ahead of the presidential race.