Prince Adewole Adebayo, presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the 2023 general election, has said that Nigerians have several alternatives to President Bola Tinubu. In this interview with Newspot, he speaks about the year 2024 that just ended, the prospects for 2025, and the judiciary among other issues.
How would you describe the year 2024, and what are your projections for 2025?
To me, 2024 was a good year, speaking from a personal point of view. It was a good year, because we are alive. It was a good year for me as a professional, but to the country, it was a mixed year. We had a lot of good things, but it was also a challenging year because of the continuation of the economy we inherited from the last administration, and other social issues.
On security, it was the year the Emir of Gobir was killed. It was the year we had major challenges. It was towards the end of 2024 that we had tragedies in Ibadan, Okija, and Abuja, over the distribution of foods and other things.
So, it was a very tough year for Nigerians. That was the year they felt the bigger impact of the policies of 2023. We saw a lot of prices rising as a result of inflation. We saw the exchange rates fluctuating, and on the macroeconomic scale, unemployment and all of that, but it was also a good year for Nigerians in the sense that we had no serious community clashes. I don’t think we had serious religious unrest last year, and what we are just facing is just the normal consequences of governance methodology.
Does that mean you agree with the president’s submission during his media chat that the government is doing very well?
Well, I don’t agree because he is not in government, he is only in power. He is not using the power to govern. He is slightly better than former President Muhammadu Buhari, who was neither in government nor in power. Tinubu is in power not in government. He is using the power for other things, so he is not able to know what it means to say the government is doing well. He missed the opportunity to set up a sound government. He had some talents, but he missed the opportunity to use those talents in the country, even within his party. I’m not saying he should leave his political party and look for talents.
Even within his political party, he did some patronage with his followers, but he has not used the strongest hands, the cleverest hands, and the most agile bodies, and he is not using the best ideas. He is wasting opportunities. So, if he says, the government is doing well, I can understand because he is not in government, he is only in power, and anywhere he goes, everybody gravitates towards him.
But in the FCT for example, that is one area you can say you see a sign that they want to govern. The minister that he put there, and the one in the Ministry of Interior are the two ministers that are making serious attempts to govern. Outside that, I’m sorry, there is no sign that they want to govern. So, I don’t agree with him that his government is doing well.
Some people commended the president’s media chat, what is your take on that?
Such commendation is akin to what you see in a family, where you have a six-year-old who has not been speaking, but the day he calls Baba, everybody will be excited about it because they were already losing hope that the child may never speak. But after a while that the child spoke, the euphoria will wear off because the president is not a ceremonial masquerade that speaks only on Christmas Day and October 1. He is a public servant that gives accounts of his activities. He has to convince his employer, that is the people, that he is on the job, and that he understands what he is doing, and also understands the effects of what he is doing for the people; that he knows that he is leading other people, and that he is not a sole administrator. Under the constitution, he is the sole secretary but he has since looked beyond that to appoint a lesser executive under him, and he is supervising them. If what he said on that day, many of which I disagree with, represents the day he came to power, if that is what he has to say in several months, almost one and a half years, I’m not impressed with that.
The presidential media chat should be routine and should be done regularly. The president should answer questions on a day-to-day basis, to convince the people that he understands what he is doing; understands the philosophy behind his actions, knows the implications and has a kind of vision of what he wants to do. I assume that the media will not go there like Christmas guests, who are being polite to their host. The media should go there and do their job too. Overall, I’m not impressed. But, that the president can speak is great.
Many Nigerians seem to be hopeful about the policies of the Tinubu administration, what do you think?
Nigerians should be hopeful at all times, even if there is no government. During the civil war, people had no food, they had no security, but they were hopeful. People should be hopeful because hope is one thing you can invest in. So, you can be hopeful despite bad governance. You can be hopeful despite unserious leaders. You can be hopeful despite bad policies. So, being hopeful should not be conditional, hope is what you need for you not to give up but if there is not much to hope for in the government, that government will also go.
Whatever President Tinubu is doing, whatever he fails to do, he is not the only alternative that Nigeria has. He has a limited period of four years, so the hope should go beyond that. Even while he is there, the policies that he is implementing are not the only policies that he can implement, so there is a lot of hope. If you are going on a journey, and you have a bad vehicle, you still hope that there are other vehicles you can take. If you have a bad driver, there are other drivers you can take, so, your hope is not in one government, your hope is not in one individual, and it is not in one period because the country is continuous. And on that basis, Nigerians have a very good reason to be hopeful.
Many Nigerians believe that the hardship in the country today was caused by the removal of subsidy on petrol and the floating of the Naira. There is the belief that until the government reverses those two policies, things will not be better in this country, do you agree with the submission?
It is an exaggeration. Even before Tinubu came, there were problems. We had problems with our economy, even under the colonial government because of the satellite structure of our economy where the British wanted us to be producing raw materials for their industries in Liverpool and other places; we had structural economic problems.
In the First Republic, we had impediments, if you studied the national development plan, the first one, 60-65, we had import substitution and industrialization, and we had problems there as well, especially the funding of those policies. During our military time, we had a terrible economic situation because of the grid collapse. We did not even have electricity, it could not be that Nigeria was a paradise, and Tinubu came and it became a hell.
Tinubu’s problem is trying to decapitate somebody who is complaining of migraine. All he needed to do was to give the person a pain reliever and try to give other therapies that would make the migraine go down. But they worsened what they met. They are not responsible for all of it.
Anybody who took over from Buhari was already sure to have ill luck because Buhari alone, just in one transaction, wasted N3.7 trillion by ways and means. Goodluck Jonathan almost finished everything before Buhari came. It was a succession of issues. Obasanjo handed over a fairly robust reserve, but he wasted money in his eight years without infrastructure. He left with undone jobs, such as East-West Road, Niger Bridge, Kaduna- Kano Road, rail lines, electricity and all those things he didn’t do. So, Tinubu met a fairly parlous economy, but he made it worse because he did not understand economics at all. He is an accountant, who understands finance. He understands that if I meet N20 billion, and I raise it to N30 billion, I have added N10 billion. But if you have to damage N100 billion to get an additional 10 billion, he is not aware of that, and he has no economists in his team at all. Wale Edun is a banker, if you are a rich man and you have a lot of money, and you want Wale Edun to place them all over the world for you, as an investment banker, he can do it very well. If you are in business and you want a loan, he knows where the lenders are all over the world but he doesn’t understand the multiplier effect in economics.
Some people have accused the judiciary of being a cesspool of corruption. What do you think the government can do for the judiciary and judicial officers in terms of salaries to curb corruption?
Well, if you were a judge, and the government wanted to pay you more money, more salaries, and a lawyer like me says ‘Don’t pay them,’ when they see me in court, they won’t be happy but I don’t think money is their problem, there is even too much of it already. Nigeria is not an industrialised country. You can’t pay your judges far more than you pay your cleaners. How much do you pay the teachers who train the judges? Judges are not from heaven, why should two brothers go to school, one decides to be a lecturer, and one decides to be a judge. Why should the one who is a judge be paid better than the one who is a lecturer? Most people don’t use judges, but everybody uses doctors, teachers, nurses, and drivers.
Most people don’t use judges, they don’t know what judges do, they see them well dressed like foreigners inside one room, the door is locked, they speak Latin, and most people don’t go there, so why should all the resources of Nigeria go there? Judges should not suffer, they should not be afraid that they will lose their jobs, and they should not have cause not to be unable to pay their bills, but overall, if we improve inflation in the country, improve the economy, and everybody uses less of their income to do basic things, it will affect judges positively. I think we should do the economy well because if you pay a judge very well, but you don’t pay the judge’s driver, how will the judge get to work? It is part of the injustice in Nigeria, the elite just select themselves to tell you to let’s pay the Senators well so that they can be honest, they are all elites. Let’s pay the president more money, let’s pay governors allowances and pensions so that they will not steal while they are there. Everywhere the elite are represented, they quickly say let’s pay them more but where the common people are, they will say let’s be patient, we cannot afford it.
But the problem with the judiciary is that most Nigerians don’t even know them, they only know them through the election petition and other high-profile cases, and one of the ways to help the judiciary is just to take this political question from them so that if you take the political questions from them, they can go into backgrounds and they can be satisfied with people who need them. Most people’s encounter with the judiciary is at the magistrate level. The magistrate does most of the jobs and they are not even well paid, they don’t have good courtrooms and all of that. How many people go to the Supreme Court of Nigeria?
The practice in America is that the Supreme Court can decide which case to hear and not to hear, they are not people’s court, and they are just up there. The same thing the Nigeria Supreme Court, even though by Constitution, any question of law or final judgment, can be forced on them but they haven’t heard them for many years.
So, if you want to help the judiciary, take them away from election matters, and create a constitutional court that does not have regular judges, but judges who have retired because election petitions are so simple. It is so simple to the extent that you don’t have to be too intelligent to decide the winner, it is simple arithmetic. So, you can now take it to the constitutional court, where you have retired justices, very senior lawyers who no longer practise, you put them there, you constitute them into ad hoc, they hear the case after and they stand dissolved till the next election time.
That will allow the regular judiciary who are doing a good job in other areas to continue to do that. But more importantly, the laws have to be just. Most laws in Nigeria are not just; even before the law gets into the judiciary, it is already a bad law, so where laws are bad, the judges are supposed to do justice.
Nigerians are still behaving as if the British are still here. When we go to court, we even put on wigs so that we can look like British people, the way they used to do in the past. Our court system is done that way. So, there are many areas as president when you appoint an Attorney-General, not regular, there are many areas you have to make reforms. The laws will resemble the culture of the people and the judge will be forced to reason like a Nigerian.
There is a saying among those who go to law school, a judge must reason like a man on a Clapper bus. Clapper is an area in London, where common people live, and common people take a bus to go there. They say a judge must reason like a man on Clapper bus. Even when I was at the University of Ife, and they were teaching, when my teacher said that I must reason like a man on the Clapper bus, I said why must I think like a man on the Clapper bus? Why can’t I think like a man on the Lagere bus? Lagere is in Ife, he said, ‘Well that is up to you, what is written there is that you must reason like a man on Clapper bus.’ An average Nigerian does not reason like a man on a Clapper bus because they don’t know where the Clapper is.
What should the Nigeria Judicial Council (NJC) do about the controversies surrounding election petitions?
There are three things I can say. There is nothing the NJC can do because the NJC is not set up to interfere with the wrong or right decision of a court. The NJC is to address corruption and abuse like if you are over-aged, and you lied. If you are not qualified, and you lied. If you collected bribes and were too harsh, you threw somebody out of your court who didn’t do anything wrong.
But the way our law is, judges are entitled to reason according to the law and the facts, but because it is a reasoning process, it can be faulty, and you can make an error; the law may escape the judge. The judge can make an error, or the judge can mishear something. I have been to court before where my client wrote a petition against a judge and that matter went all the way. When we got to the Court of Appeal in Enugu, Justice Okebe, brilliant, fantastic judge, one of the best in the world, in his judgement mistakenly said it was my opponent who wrote the petition. He criticized him thoroughly, whereas it was my client who wrote the petition. That was an error, but it was an honest error. Other two justices by his side didn’t pay attention because that criticism was not part of the judgement. Nobody paid attention to it. It shows you that judges can make mistakes.
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