Tinubu has A1 in politics, F9 in governance Adebayo.

Those defecting are retired politicians

Good governance will reduce defections

PRINCE Adewole Adebayo is the 2023 Presidential Candidate of the Social Democratic Party, SDP.

In this interview, the lawyer, entrepreneur and philanthropist, who is optimistic about rebuilding Nigeria and restoring hope to all Nigerians, speaks on the wave of defections in the country saying that good governance will prevent politicians from jumping ship. Excerpts:

What is your take on the wave of defections into the APC fold and the reasons why they are defecting?

The causes are well known, they are preventable and the solution is good governance.

The so-called defections are sometimes coming out of the closet for people claiming to be opposition because they have been compulsorily retired into opposition, not by choice. When you choose to be in opposition by choice, you have access to the ruling party but you just don’t agree with them, and the reasons for that are well articulated which has to do with the interest of the Nigerian people. There is zero-risk of you defecting unless those fundamental disagreements or problems have now been eliminated.

Everybody in Nigeria will know that poverty is no longer there, that insecurity is no longer there, corruption and poor ethics that have dominated our politics have now changed, anything other than that, you will find out that people who missed the bus of the ruling party tend to wait at the bus stop of opposition until the next bus comes and then they hop along.

There is nothing new. Many of them are being kept in waiting for the dramatisation of resurgence by the ruling party. They just keep them somewhere so that when the time comes, they will use them to demoralise the opposition. That is why we are careful about people who come to us to say they are in opposition.

You sound like you have no intention of moving to another party but we have seen politicians defect even as they claim that the problems they talked about are being addressed and that’s why they defected.

They don’t have any burden because they don’t have to believe in what they are saying. They just say it for the moment. I joined the SDP when I was 19 years old in 1991 in the days leading to the election of the late MKO Abiola. At that time, it was even the late Musa Yar’Adua, the late Adamu Ciroma who was in NRC, Atiku Abubakar, Abiola came and Babagana Kingibe was to run with him after he was chairman of the party.

I joined because of the late Lateef Jakande in Lagos. I haven’t joined any other political party since that time. I don’t see any reason why I will join any other one because the party is well-positioned to solve the problems of Nigeria. When the late Abiola came with his farewell to poverty, that was 1992 leading to 1993.

It is still valid today, farewell to poverty. If you pick Abiola’s programme and you want to implement them, it is just unfortunate that none of the problems have been fixed, rather, more problems have been added. That was why in 2023 when I came, 30 years later, we did farewell to poverty and insecurity. The guidelines are there. No change of government is going to solve the problems without change of ideas, methodologies and culture.

The idea is that someone can receive a call from the State House or anywhere and become enraptured by photography with the president and say there is a new epiphany, it is their politics. If the president drops out tomorrow, they will also change their mind and go somewhere.

Those ones have their role in politics and that’s not the kind of role we want to play.

From the May Day address of the President on June 12, do you see the defection in his speech as a political strength?

You have to give President Tinubu an A1 in politics. The only problem he has with the A1 is that he tends to have F9 in governance. So how is he going to graduate into any substantive legacy? That is a problem because the A1 politics is that he knows the political class very well, he knows what moves and motivates them, and he knows how to recruit them, sometimes retrench them, retire them and reengage them because he knows what they want.

But I wish he knew what Nigerian people want which is basic services, stability, and security.

He doesn’t need to have many people defecting to his party. If he cannot save lives in Benue, Plateau and many parts of the country, then he has failed. The problem with that speech is forgetting the fact he was at the National Assembly in front of politicians, supposed to give accountability to Nigerians. Therefore, I am not sure that Nigerians are as informed of the defections as the president appears to be in that speech. The politicians who are now waxing albums for the president featuring the Senate President as the solo singer, and they are singing the choruses, that music is only for their ears because the rumbling in the stomach of Nigerians will not let them hear the