• ‘My journey to the presidency began in 1998 when Abiola was killed’

• Warns: If we are not careful, we are going to have leaders who will rule from the mortuary

By Lekan Bilesanmi

Prince Adewole Adebayo is a young presidential aspirant for the 2023 general elections. A professional in politics, Adebayo sees himself as the sling in the hands of the Nigerian electorate to ‘kill’ Goliath politicians.

Very passionate about Nigerians and how it can be better if the right leadership is in place, the presidential aspirant of the Social Democratic Party, SDP, believes insecurity will be history the moment he assumes office.

Having been blessed this much, the question agitating minds is, what exactly is this man looking for in this murky waters of politics?

When you are dealing with the public welfare, the more you are given, the more responsibility you have. If I were to look at basic life problems being solved, then I wouldn’t even grow up in the society, because when I was born, those problems were already solved by the ancestors of my family. I realized that it is not everyone who won the lottery that I won. To be born into the right country, at the right time and into the right family. Everything has worked out for me in a way that suggests that God has a special place for me in His heart.

I see these blessings that I don’t deserve as a call to duty, that I should look at the lives of others who may not have won the lottery I won, that’s being born into the right country, the right family, at the right time and having the right opportunities. It’s a burden that I need to discharge. I can press that advantage for the rest of my life and build up from there to get richer and get more opportunities. But that’s not a worthy life. A worthy life is that in which you do more for others than you do for yourself. I don’t think there is any other worthier course one can find than to serve.

While it’s good to serve, especially voluntary service like this, there are other offices in which you can serve rather than the presidency. There is governor’s office or offices in the National Assembly. Why the topmost office in the land?

I have been offered appointments many times in the past. I know there is a place called the Senate but I don’t have any business there because the problem of society is that of leadership. The executive powers of the federation are vested in one man, and that man is the president. I have waited all my adult life, looking for one president that I can serve. Since 1999, I am yet to meet a president who is travelling in the direction I want the country to go.

Which direction is this?

The direction of justice… This country has, unfortunately, been deformed to accommodate injustice. Our leaders in the First Republic knew the importance of justice. It meant that they understood that public office was a trust and that nothing inside it belonged to them. They knew that the only way they could merit and justified being inside government office exercising public power was to use it to serve the people. They started their journey by serving the less privileged in society by establishing school systems that catered to the needs of those who had no opportunity. They fought and were eradicating childhood diseases by immunization for everyone and by living close to the people and in a modest manner as well.

If I had been born at that time, perhaps there was an Awolowo (Chief Obafemi) I would have served under him as a Minister or even a Clerk, or even just to be carrying his bag, I would have done so gladly because I would know that this is a man who had come to do justice. In politics, the leader that inspires me the most and whose work I follow is the late Mallam Aminu Kano.

Also Read:

Killing of Soldiers, Policemen: Buhari’s Minister fingers elements living in Contiguous communities using criminal agents

He lived with the people, he lived for the people and he made sure that social justice was the centre point of his political life. He built infrastructure in the minds of the people that participation in governance is the number one duty and everyone is entitled to it. He criticized the court system even though he was the son of an Alkali, Sharia judge.

He said the court system wasn’t bringing justice to the people and ensured the people formed their own political party, the Northern Elements Progressive Union, NEPU, and pushed common people to take positions of power.

When he was made Minister of Health and later Communication in Gowon’s government, he stood on the side of the people. When you take the leaders of that time and compare them to what we have now if a president is already self-serving, why would I go and serve him? I will just be part of his apparatus of self-service. If a political party is set up to confiscate and siphon the wealth of the society and perpetuate injustice, why would I go and serve there? I don’t believe in the system they are running now because it is a system of theft, unfairness, and injustice.

The former system was a system of ordinary people who were given free education, who were the children of nobody, and who were picked up from the lowliest waters of Nigeria. Some were sent to the armed forces, some to the civil service. The expectation of the founding fathers was that these children of nobody that were sent to school, like President Buhari, were orphans, ordinarily, Buhari should have been following cattle, but the system set up by Sir Ahmadu Bello ensured that he was picked and put in boarding house, from primary education even up to when he joined the army. He lived in a boarding house all his life till he retired as head of state.

As we speak, he still lives in a boarding house in the Villa. All his life, Nigeria has catered for him. Will Ahmadu Bello be proud of him now? How many has he lifted out of poverty? All those people who were picked up from cocoa farms by Awolowo and put in schools who became emeritus professors of medicine, professors of all disciplines, vice-chancellors, are they not now living in plenty and the universities are on strike? So where would I join in this?

But you can also have the same executive powers as governor…

But the jurisdiction is too narrow. Would I be the governor of a state and be able to take care of my brothers and sisters in other states? If I am crying because of the injustice in Zamfara, how would I help my people in Lagos? The penury you find in Borno, Cross-River, Lagos and urban poverty you find in Ibadan, Oyo State, how would being governor of one state help me, would I overlook that when the root cause is the collapsed federal government that we have? My mandate is to make Nigeria a great country. Anybody suffering from poverty in Malumfashi is as painful to me as someone who is suffering in my family. I have to solve the problem from the top and across the country.

You are contesting on the platform of the Social Democratic Party, SDP. Compare to the most dominant parties, why this party, and not APC or PDP?

You cannot say before you join the fire service, you must first of all be an arsonist. You cannot say I have to be a reckless driver before I can join Road Safety Corps. You cannot say I should be an armed robber before joining the police. You cannot say before I join EFCC to fight economic crimes, I should first be a Yahoo person. This country is where it is today because of PDP and APC. Why would I join? They are not making mistakes? They are deliberately impoverishing the people.

These two parties are well-grounded in terms of structure and grassroots penetration which, of course, accelerate their victory.

Their victory is not from the people but from rigging and that’s why you see them struggling with the Electoral Act and all the manipulations. In any case, what is the essence of power if you are not going to help the people? Do you think President Jonathan is a happy man today? He is not. He tasted power but he made no difference in the life of anybody. Do you think President Buhari is a happy man today if he can reflect? He has gone from hero to zero because of what? ‘Let me join those who can make me win quickly’.

I am following in the footstep of the late Chief MKO Abiola which is a farewell to poverty. And now I say farewell to poverty and insecurity. If I am saying farewell to poverty, who is the author of poverty other than PDP? If I am saying farewell to insecurity, who are the architects, custodians, and profiteers of insecurity other than APC? How can I go and join them to stop their business? You cannot join the wrong coalition in order to win at all costs. But if you join the looters, the compromised, the riggers, the manipulators, you can travel fast, but you will not go far.

You speak so confidently as if you are sure of victory.

My confidence is coming from the place of justice. I believe that God didn’t create a country of 200 million people to be enslaved. That is not the belief I have. I believe God is showing us an experiment and in the fullness of time, these people will overreach themselves and an ordinary person will come and knock them down. This is the David/Goliath situation. I believe David is the Nigerian collective people. I am not the David, the Nigerians are. I am just the sling. That sling cannot direct itself but David was divinely inspired to throw that sling.

I am that sling that would hit the head of looters in this country. All of these things are testimony to the conclusion of a wicked system. I am not competing with them in the area of bullion vans and I am not competing with them in the area of bogus consensus they are doing, manipulations and the breach of trust they are doing, I am just taking my message to the people, that journey that began in 1998 when Abiola was killed and everything came to a halt has begun again.

These people have asked for power, they have been given it, and they did nothing with it. They asked for billions, we gave them, and they cornered it, they have done nothing with it. They have taken the centre stage of our political life; they have done nothing with it. They have left the people impoverished and pauperized and they are deliberately withholding the benefits of the people of Nigeria. Electoral defeat is enough for this set of people. This generation took all the benefits for themselves and their children. Now, they are doing daylight robbery.

They rob creches, primary schools, hospitals and mortuaries. Everything that has money in it is stolen in this country. Enough is enough. No people can be condemned to perpetual hopelessness. Nigerians are neglected and in perpetual penury, and yet their country is rich.

In the course of consultations around the country, what was the reception like especially the powers-that-be you visited?

I have gone around the country. I am still touring. I have seen former heads of state, traditional rulers, former governors, politicians, religious leaders, market men and women.

The response has been warm and the message is clear. The former rulers have given their perspectives and where things went wrong and what they want to see. None of them, I can tell you, is happy. Whether you contributed one way or another to where the country is today, none of them thought things would go this bad. They have become victims themselves. They have equally lost hope in the generation that is ruling now but that is compensated for that they have great hope in our generation.

What would you do differently, if given the opportunity to superintend Nigeria regarding the insecurity in the country?

Insecurity is the easiest problem to solve. The insecurity in the country is government-induced insecurity. The Nigerian government is the source of the insecurity because it has become a business. Just like fuel scarcity, they have turned it into business. Lack of electricity is a problem they have turned into a business. None of Nigeria’s problems is difficult to solve. The solutions to our problems are already there.

The Nigerian Army of today is better than the Nigerian Army of the ECOMOG time. But what is happening now is that they have turned insecurity into multi-billionaires out of the generals, permanent secretaries, contractors and politicians. When you talk to some members of the armed forces, they would tell you that they are not lazy and that they can finish these rogue fighters within a short time.

Even during the civil war, there were a few who saw the war as a business, the majority of members of the armed forces took the war seriously and that is why we were able to fight the war without borrowing a Kobo to execute the war. The late Chief Awolowo was Finance Minister in the Gowon government. It was a policy of that government that they would not borrow money to execute the war. Awolowo was auditing almost every bullet used. Clement Usong was Governor of the Central Bank. He protected the bank against the government. That is why even during the war, our currency was strong.

Isong said he would not use the Central Bank to fight the war. When the argument was too big, Gowon ran out of the rational argument and told Awolowo that if the Central Bank did not release the money to buy ammunition, he would take everyone in the Central Bank to the Bar Beach and get the shot.

When this message got to the Central Bank, Isong said, “no, let them take us now to the Bar Beach. Let us die in the defense of the Central Bank of Nigeria”. At the end of the day, Gowon had to relent and found money elsewhere. Compare that to now when the Central Bank Governor is taken to the convention of a political party where his presence was announced.

That is a professional institution, an independent and professional position that people have fought over the years to maintain. A government can continue to perpetuate insecurity as long they want to make money out of it. I will put an end to that.

How does this lopsidedness of Nigeria make you feel? Virtually nothing works.

Nigeria has more solutions than problems, honestly. We have more money today than we had yesterday. Government is awash with money. If anybody tells you there is no money, you should know that that person is your number one enemy.

But we are borrowing to implement our budget…

We are borrowing because their greed is so big that they did not want to only steal the money of today, but they also want to rob the children unborn. The Nigerian leadership’s quest for money is a special aetiology of mental disease. You steal what you don’t need, you steal what you don’t know and cannot keep that when you come out of office, and you don’t know where the money is. I say this with all sense of responsibility: if we are not careful, we are going to have leaders who will rule from the mortuary. We must remove the original curse of Nigeria which is bad governance.

There is no middle way for those who are blinded by an insatiable greed for money. There is this unhealthy competition. If one governor is using state money to control a political party, spending millions of dollars to remove the Chairman and do whatever, the other governor wants to copy it too.

So, you now have a well known criminal organisation called Governors Forum that everyone there is supposed to, as a matter of patriotism, report themselves to the nearest police station. They corner substantial revenue of the federation and steal the money of local governments. So, some of the poverty ascribed to Buhari is not totally his. Buhari has become an angel of a disappointment though.

Vanguard News Nigeria