Leader of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and its presidential candidate in the 2023 election, Prince Adewole Adebayo has said that President Bola Tinubu has not been able to solve the country’s socio-economic and political problems because his interest lies in winning elections and not in governance.
He noted that for Tinubu, once elections are over and he achieves victory, he would start planning for the next election abandoning governance and only focusing on campaigns.
“President Tinubu’s problem is that he doesn’t want to be a winner in governance, he wants to be a winner in the election, and once he wins the election he says it is over; let me plan for the next election. As a result of that, his governance team can’t govern because they are essentially a campaign team,” he said.
He buttressed his position by making reference to President Tinubu’s popular charge to his supporters before the 2023 presidential election that power is not served a la carte and that they should snatch it, grab it and run away with it.
He lamented that having snatched, grabbed and ran away with power as evidenced in his controversial election victory, he has thrown himself into serious trouble. This is because according to him, governance is not about snatching and grabbing but about careful planning and execution.
“President Tinubu was reputed to have told his supporters before the 2023 elections in London that power is not served a la carte. You have to grab, snatch and run away with it. So, now he has grabbed and snatched, he is in serious trouble because governance cannot be snatched away, governance is about planning; it is about recruiting people you are going to use.
“When you are the president of Nigeria, you are the Commander-in-Chief and you are managing the human resources. If you manage the human resources well, the human resources can help you get even the material resources you don’t have. So, they are not managing human resources because the best people are not put in government and the people are not led in the best of ways,” he said.
He noted that as opposition, they are already engaged in a discussion that would change the people’s mindset from what the present government is doing. He noted that people should be concerned about what they get when politicians get to power and not what they get on their way to power, stressing that that is the only way to provide good governance to the people.
He said: “So, the opposition will have different challenges with respect to how our politics is done. And we are having a conversation with Nigerian people that their expectations of the political party must be expectations of what they will do when they get to power, not expectations of what they will give them on their way to power. And if that conversation is understood, the way we even select our candidates will be different.
“We want to say go and check his account, does he have a lot of money? Does it look like he can fund our elections? You start to look at whether he can perform when he is put there. Can he mobilise people? Can they unite the country? And some of the differences we see, which is about ambition, will be pushed down because people will understand that you have a winning team.”
