What has your party, SDP, been doing since the 2023 elections?
Well, what we have been doing after the election is to let people know that the conversation continues, because while we were campaigning, part of our talking points were for the immediate electorate. Most of it was for a longer vision about the country and it wouldn’t matter who won the election or who lost the election. Some issues would not leave us. And the earlier we build consensus around those issues the better so that hopefully they will not be subject of campaign.
We are probably one of the few countries in the world that are still campaigning about corruption. Every decent person knows that corruption is not good. It’s not a political program. It is admitted by most people in the world that a corrupt society will not go anywhere. So, if we all agree about that, no one will choose a president with respect to the attitude towards corruption because all presidents, all presidential candidates, all politicians and all leaders at different levels of our national life will agree that corruption is bad. The fact that we need to be united around certain principles, like fairness, justice, equity and rule of law, should not make them to be political programmes. We had a guy, President Murray, who said the tenets of his administration would be rule of law. And I asked him; do you have an option? I mean, we have a government, but that’s the programme. And there was a debate as to where they were putting the 7-point agenda.
They were trying to put rule of law as part of the 7-point agenda. And I was thinking, rule of law cannot be manifesto. Rule of law has to be basic, what everybody has to follow. So these are the conversations we’ve been having after the election so that people can know that these are not election issues. These are basic and fundamental issues of how to define our society and how to organize ourselves. So that’s what we’ve been doing since that time.
Are you still in the SDP or in another party now? What are your political leanings, thoughts, and plans for 2027?
I joined the SDP in 1991 when I was 19 years old and even when the party was banned, I didn’t join any other party. As close as I was to those who were running the PDP in those days, I didn’t join the party even though some of them were my clients. I have relationships with some of them, and when they started this APC, I didn’t even consider it for a second. So, basically, the only party, the only political party I’ve ever joined in my life is the SDP, which I joined when I was 19 years old, and that’s where I will remain, unless the party ceases to exist, but I can’t join any other party. I will remain the SDP.
There were rumours that the SDP was working for the APC or open to negotiations. What do you have to say about that?
Well, we don’t know the rumours and talk, what I know is what the SDP is doing officially. I only participate in what the SDP is doing officially but what I find out is that people who are in political parties tend to have loyalty outside their political party. I think it’s part of the problems we try to solve by bringing more ethical leaders. But 100 percent of my own politics is done inside the SDP. And this day and time, there is no way you could have relationship with people that there won’t be evidence of it. Either they will see you with them, you will take a photo with them, they will trace their money to you or they will trace the activity to you. So, if you really want to know where somebody belongs to, other than just passing rumour or propaganda, you will know. There may be elements of people in the SDP who have sympathies for other parties but what we tend to do is when we catch them, we relegate them or expel them. But for the SDP, we know it has three different epochs. There was the SDP which I joined in 1991 which was the SDP of the third republic; that’s where you will see people like Rashidi Ladoja for example. He was our senator. You will see people like Lekan Balogun, Tinubu, Atiku Abubakar and so many of them like that, who were in the SDP at that time. So, if you look around those who are in politics today, many of them were in the SDP. There were two political parties that time, the SDP and the National Republican Convention (NRC). It looks like those who went to the NRC are not as successful as those who went to the SDP; you don’t see many of the NRC people any more. But the SDP ones, you’ll find them in every policy. So, sometimes when we go out, when we meet them, this is always our party, we’re all together and things like that. So, if President Tinubu and many of the people around him still have that nostalgia about SDP, that’s one epoch. The second epoch of the SDP was when Chief Alaye came with Pat Utomi and so many of them like that, and they started and they revived the SDP. And so anywhere I go now and I say I am a leader of the SDP, Utomi is quick to say, ‘no, that’s my party. The position you are now, I used to be there.’ So that’s the second epoch of it.
The third epoch is what we are doing now, which is the SDP of young people who don’t have the history of having occupied any office in the SDP. We just want to revive the little to the left principle of it, which incidentally coincides with chapter two for our constitution, fundamental objectives and direct principles of state policy. So, its achieved little to the right, never made it to the constitution. Everything that you find in chapter two is what you will find in the SDP. It has a unique constitution. Imagine if the British were to adopt the constitution and the objective, fundamental objectives and directive principle take the manifesto of the Labour Party and ignore that of the Tory or it is a chapter in the US Constitution that takes the platform of these Democrats and didn’t take that of the Republicans. So, I see that that’s a bit otherwise I think that the SDP tends to contest election against any party that is in power or that is available, and on many occasions, we have defeated them. Also, on many occasions, they defeated us. On some occasions, they cheated and said they defeated us but we actually defeated them. For instance, in Kogi State, we fought them. We know that we won, but they just stole it and it’s up to their conscience. In Ekiti State, we won it and they stole it but in some other states, they beat us handsomely because we don’t have strong people there. In Nasarawa State, we took two out of the three senate seats. We lost the third one because of some local problems around DOMA. The candidate that the PDP chose has a enthusiasm at home because the DOMA people had been looking for a way to produce a Senator. And we didn’t think about that one. Even when I spent like three nights in DOMA, it didn’t occur to me that they were just looking at me, how will you not choose one of us for at least Senate or something? So we lost that. So, but our opponents, which we must have, also tend to demarcate us sometimes if people are talking positively about us, about our ideas, our enthusiasm and our independence. So, they just say, oh, don’t mind them. It’s not something they will say. It’s normal in politics. But the SDP is an independent party. Our ideals are different. And it’s very rare to see a true SDP person that has interest in the APC or the PDP. It’s very hard because the idea of what they are doing is totally opposite to what we would do. So why would you, especially when the APC is open and in government, why would you waste your time coming to a more ideological party that has more work to be done, less money and less spread, when you can join APC in the village the next day and take a photo with the president, you know?
How will the SDP build a strong, sincere party with ethos and manifesto, given that most parties are just platforms for seizing power?
It is possible and it has happened. When it comes to Manifesto, you have the school of politicians and governors. You can ask the director to ask your students to analyse, do a comparative analysis of manifesto and look at the SDP and juxtapose it against what the constitution says. So, the manifesto is okay for us, we are fine with the manifesto. And you also remember that our manifesto did not arise from emergency company of words put together for election. It is the product of the Centre for Democratic Studies. So, at that time, there was some ideological grounding that, along with the party, was founded. And I thank Chief Alaye, professor Pat Utomi and others who, when they had the opportunity to create a new political party, decided to say, let’s go back to the SDP. Kofalaye was there, he ran for president on that platform.
So the ideology is okay. What is required is democratic patience, because in my background, we are asked to do revolutionary patience. Not everybody wants to be revolutionary like me, so we say democratic patience, which is that I am running for president on ideas. I will do my best to win based on those ideas and if I win, I will govern based on those ideas but if I don’t win and my time passes, another person is coming to carry that torch. That’s why, Abiola is not here but I’m running on farewell to poverty and insecurity. I’m running on the last programme; we still play the same Abiola mantra, the same jingle we’re running now in Abuja for the area councils and for Dr Obinna who is running for the Abuja Metropolitan Area Council, AMAC. He came to me and he had done all his manifesto, logo and everything. It’s following the same thing which the SDP used when Wole Adesina won this election. The first election to elect the mayor of Abuja was won by the SDP in 1992. Same thing that he used to campaign; same logo was added to the Abiola, so it continues. So, a time will come, maybe it will be in 2089, they will say SDP is 100 years old, so there will be a political party but that’s the idea; so, it’s not about the biofans club gathering together and I give them money and they are running after me. This is a political party that is going to be available and the principles are well known, so that’s the party already and you can see that the party is already showing sign of discipline and discipline is getting things to run well.
And anybody who is from outside and comes to SDP to try to use SDP processes or institutions or SDP persons for qualities other than what the party is set up for, will be suspended or disciplined; the party wants to run itself. I know that Nigerians believe that maybe it’s almost impossible for us to have a party of selfless people. But, I think if you come to the SDP, you will see a party of selfless people. And the struggle continues within us. The dialogue continues within us because there are elements, even when I ran for president, there are elements that worked against us, who were in the party. Party agents who would not show up. Party state chairman would collect our agent card and then go and give it to another political party. I went to Kwara, discovered that from our research sheets, we scored 122,000 votes, but they recorded only 22,000 for us. And the people who were working with us; who were supposed to protest and do everything thought that they could have a relationship with the ruling party and then they messed that up. So we’re changing those leaderships, we’re bringing new people in. So it takes a while to get a political party that majority will be people who are selfless, patriotic and who are doing the politics because they want nothing out of it other than a better country.
From time to time, there’s a great envy of evil, so when someone does something unethical and untoward and they’re getting reward out of it, you will envy them.
So, you want to know just like a person who works hard for the police or the army and is doing the right thing and we find junior officers riding Mercedes, building estate, building hotels, there can be an envy of evil. I come to you sometimes and wonder why don’t I be like them but it doesn’t work because, ultimately, all of us are going to be accountable for the time we spent.
The situation of our country is going to speak to our standing in the world and all of these things if they are the main reason you’re in politics I have no doubt that you would be patriotic and you will stay in your party and you’ll do what is right.
There are people in the party that I don’t even speak to at all. I don’t preach to them; I don’t speak to them because I know how their heart bleeds for the country. So, when they have reason to make a decision in the party, I don’t I want to disturb myself. I know that they are going to do what is right. But there are other people whom we have to be discussing with. There was a candidate in one of our recent government relations. He just joined us and for some reason the party leadership thought he should be the governorship candidate. I was overseas, I came back, I saw him and I said, okay. He said he wanted to meet with me. And he came with a brilliant way by which he could bribe voters. He knows the commissioner of police, he knows the United States, he knows this and that and that, and we can win the election. And I said, I’m sorry, we don’t want to win that way. You know, if this is how you want to win, we cannot do it. So, he said in his former party, he used to help them, but they never made him a candidate. Now he has been made a candidate, he wants to help us. I said, I’m sorry, I can’t do it but talk to other people. And when he talked to other people, more and more people are saying, well, we can’t do it. You know, and of recent, when they were putting together this coalition, they thought that maybe some of us were too rigid and we didn’t want to win. And when we started talking to other leaders in the party, the same question of ideology, purpose and credibility were being asked.
So it’s not like you go to other parties and say, well, the other party says, if you give us 500 million, you give us 1 million euros, you can take our party. But in SDP, nobody’s gonna tell you that. They’re gonna ask you questions about this and that. So, those are the things that give me hope that I’m not wasting my time in the SDP and that I’m not wasting my resources and I feel happy about it. We have issues from time to time but I don’t look right or left; I just look straight forward and if I’m fooling myself and I’m the only one who is sincere, I go to my grave but I know that definitely I’m not the only one. There are many people, old, young, male and female, who are committed to Nigeria and they’re working through the SDP.
What is your opinion of Nigeria at 65, the journey so far?
I think that there are two journeys taking place, like a parallel universe. There’s a journey of the country as a whole, and there are individual journeys inside the country. So, Nigeria, the 65 years is like someone who is on a train, maybe a train conductor, or someone who’s a cleaner on a train or someone who doesn’t work on the train. And the journey of the train is one journey. So, you look at the journey, the train started from Ido in Lagos and it’s going to Talata Marafa up North in Zamfara State. And so, you see how the train is trucking along.
And you can see for 65 hours, this train has not arrived in the journey that should have taken just about 12 hours. At the same time, the attendant inside the train is going from coach to coach, doing his duty. And it’s also counting whether he’s doing his own duty, how many journeys are you making around the train.
And for Nigeria, we started accidentally. There are no great philosopher or great thinker within our population who says, oh, let us all come together.
Let me unite people. If you study the history of some kingdoms, some countries, some societies, it will be indigenous, maybe warring tribes, warring groups, disunited by many factors, by politics, but united by culture. And a great leader rises among them and says, let me unite my people. That’s not the history of Nigeria. The history of Nigeria is an external necessity for trade. So Nigeria started merely as a trade zone, just like these days you have free trade zone and export processing zone; it’s a zone. It’s like the arbitrariness with which they created areas for discos. So we created Lagos disco, Ibadan disco, Benin disco, Yola disco, different discos, you know. So, that’s how Nigeria was to the Royal Niger Company. It was just a trade zone. Let’s have this trade zone. And those trade zones were different kingdoms and communities and all of that. And somehow for the efficiency of the business, they decided to hand it over back to the British government and run it as a protectorate and part of it as a colony. And then after a while, they ran it as protectorates, you know, next to each other. In 1914, they said let’s amalgamate together.
So, but 46 years later, the people who put it together just said, we’ve had enough of it, let’s see, let’s hand it over to the locals now. And young people who had never run anything before, but who were united by the philosophy that this is indigenous people, right from Herbert Macaulay in Lagos took charge. And those who gave a lot of trouble to Lugard and Clifford were called Trossard Negroes by Lugard, because he was highly irritated about them. And if you look at the way Lugard analyzed the elite who were asking for home rule, and asking that the British should leave, he considered them to be Trossard Negroes who had no knowledge of the country, who were in Lagos, sending their clothes through a dev star company to Liverpool to be laundered and well ironed and sent back to them in Lagos. And they didn’t know anywhere 100 kilometers north of Lagos. They didn’t know anything and he dismissed them. But over time, they organized a center of the Nigerian youth movement, they split into political parties, the NCNC, Action Group, Northern People’s Congress, and within a short order, they were getting independence. So, if you look at what happened in 1999, if look at the period between when Obasanjo came in 1999 and now, it’s about the same period that the independence movement started, and we got independence within that short time. Without independence, we had people who were going to parliament who did not know anywhere 25, 30 or 100 kilometres away from their hometown. There was no sense in going to parliament in Lagos, coming from, maybe, somewhere around Ikom, which is now the Cross River State. Even when they went to Lancaster House to negotiate independence, they went there as strangers because I remember that my uncle represented Ondo at that conference and went with the Action Group delegation. And they were going there almost like the way Ukraine is going to meet Russia in Washington or somewhere or Switzerland.
So, but somehow, they managed, elections were held and all the promises that we had at that time, majority of the promises arose from the self-governance of the regions. But they managed to create a region in 1963, not only that, to declare a republic. So somehow, whether they knew what they were doing or not, the politics of that time made them to declare a republic. We are now on our own.
We have nothing to do with the British judicial system, British Privy Council and all of that. The Queen is no longer our head of state. Nnamdi Azikiwe, our Governor General, is now our President and head of state. But you know, we didn’t manage hard to join so far. Secondly, the First Republic was a disaster because dishonesty happened in the election. Corruption crept in; collection of 10 percent was introduced; streets were named. Half the people had not achieved anything. So the guys were wanting to remove British colonial imprints but people like McGregor and all of that made Lagos livable.