The presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the last election, Prince Adewole Adebayo, in this interview with BLESSING ANARO says the tasks President Ahmed Bola Tinubu must face are daunting and that how well he does in fixing Nigeria is up to him.
It is up to President Tinubu on whether he wants Nigeria to move forward or not; he has his ‘Renewed Hope’ manifesto which I still insist is not up to one-third of my ‘Hope Again’ manifesto. More Nigerians voted for Tinubu to be President, and I wouldn’t assume that Tinubu spent all these years preparing to be President without having his priorities. I have studied his manifesto, if he keeps to it, but I doubt whether he will, his government will be better than all the administrations before him put together. But if he decides to do the same thing APC did when they brought Change and Next Level, it will be unfortunate. It is up to Tinubu now because once you grab power you will become a different person.
The Tinubu I know does not have the problem of capacity; his problem may be ambition; so, it is up to him now to decide whether he wants to use power to implement his programme or whether he will say now that election is over, let me stabilize myself and become a permanent feature of Nigeria’s politics, I have achieved my life ambition. I pray that Tinubu’s motivation is that he wants to be great leader that Nigeria and Africa will remember because any Nigerian President that succeeds in fixing Nigeria would have fixed the whole of Africa and the black race.
Tinubu is the first President since 1999 to get elected with less than 10 million votes, in fact he polled 8,794, 726 votes out of the 24.9 million votes cast at the election, what does that signify?
It signifies that democracy is maturing and penetrating in Nigeria, it may even be lower in the next presidential election in 2027. In the past, politicians could cook any numbers they wanted during election but with the Bimodal Voter’s Accreditation System (BVAS), it is impossible to cook numbers. This signifies that the numbers at this election are realistic. Secondly, in the past, whoever was contesting on the platform of the ruling party it’s most certain that he would win the election, it was different in this election. The figure is not an indication that anything is wrong with President Tinubu, it just shows that the excitement of voting is tied to the state of mind of voters at each electioneering time.
Former Predident Buhari has said that though his eight years were tough, his administration succeeded to put Nigeria on the path of economic prosperity, what do you say to that?
When you evaluate an administration, you do that from your angle of impact, attack, and frame of engagement. People inside the administration will look at it from the efforts he put in, but people outside will look at it from the result, so both can be right; but the efforts of the president or anybody in public office should be linked to their capacity. Buhari may be right to say he has put Nigeria on the path to economic prosperity, but that path is full of thorns. If I am to evaluate President Buhari, I will do it based on his innate abilities and capabilities; you cannot expect a man to turn into a lion just because people are hailing him ‘lion’. The second perspective from which we can evaluate Buhari is based on what he promised or what was promised on his behalf, and thirdly on what would have been the alternative if we didn’t have Buhari. I think Buhari tried to work honestly but was inhibited by his capacity, secondly, he did not have input in many of the things that were promised on his behalf. If you look at the three major promises, the economy, security, and anticorruption, the one area in which Buhari did not do anything at all is anticorruption; it showed that Buhari could be anything but the one thing he is not is anticorruption, the notion of Buhari as an anti-corruption person is fiction.
Are you saying that there were significant improvements in the economy and security?
The security situation is not what it used to be; you cannot accuse Buhari of not having the sincerity of purpose to fight insecurity, but he did not have the competence and dexterity to command the armed forces. Anything about insecurity now could be attributed to Buhari not having the competence. Nigeria’s constitution makes the President the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, it is not so in some countries. In Nigeria, the moment you take the oath of office as the president, you have become a soldier even if you are a civilian and major decisions in the armed forces would be taken by you.
