The Social Democratic Party (SDP) presidential candidate for the 2027 general election, Prince Adewole Adebayo, has launched a scathing attack on President Bola Tinubu’s administration, declaring that the President’s Chief of Staff merely reflects Tinubu’s character because he is carrying out assignments given to him by the President.
Speaking during an interview on Naija Unfiltered by Symfoni, Adebayo argued that criticism directed solely at the Chief of Staff misses the point, insisting that the presidential aide acts on the instructions of President Tinubu.
“The Chief of Staff reflects the character of the President. He is not violating the President’s instructions; he is carrying out the assignments given to him,” Adebayo said.
The SDP presidential candidate described the Tinubu administration as one that is detached from the realities confronting Nigerians, alleging that the President appears disconnected from the country’s economic and security challenges and lacks a firm understanding of the workings of his own government.
According to him, the administration operates without a clear sense of purpose, claiming President Tinubu does not even know the number of agencies under his government or what many of them are doing.
Adebayo also criticised the Nigerian media, accusing it of treating government actions and even criminality as content rather than subjecting public officials to rigorous scrutiny and demanding accountability.
He described the Federal Government as a “clearing and forwarding” operation, arguing that governance has been reduced to processing transactions rather than solving national problems.
The SDP flag bearer further criticised the National Assembly, saying both chambers have abandoned their constitutional oversight responsibilities.
According to him, the Senate has lost its leadership role and now functions as a ceremonial institution instead of serving as a check on the executive, while the House of Representatives has fallen below acceptable legislative standards, with many lawmakers merely marking attendance.
Adebayo also took aim at the Attorney General of the Federation, urging the nation’s chief law officer to remember that the office exists to protect the Constitution and the public interest rather than serve as the President’s legal assistant.
“The Attorney General is supposed to be the conscience of the nation, not the conscience of the government,” he said, alleging that the office has increasingly been deployed to defend the political interests of the administration.
On infrastructure, Adebayo criticised the Federal Government’s spending priorities, citing the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway project as an example of misplaced expenditure.
He argued that the enormous resources committed to the project would have produced greater national benefits if invested in rehabilitating dilapidated federal highways across the country.
The SDP presidential candidate also outlined what he described as a practical roadmap for rebuilding Nigeria’s economy and stabilising the naira.
He proposed a three-pronged strategy centred on fiscal discipline, transparent procurement processes and eliminating wasteful government spending.
According to Adebayo, all government revenues should be kept in official government accounts, procurement should be made transparent to eliminate inflated contracts, while unnecessary public expenditure should be drastically reduced.
He alleged that Nigeria loses trillions of naira annually through unrecorded government revenues, crude oil theft and widespread financial leakages.
He also accused the government of operating wasteful budgets padded with unrealistic projects, claiming that funds are often appropriated for programmes that are never implemented or released to the agencies they were intended for.
Adebayo said employment generation would be central to an SDP administration under his leadership.
He pledged to create jobs by recruiting more personnel into the nation’s security agencies, employing additional teachers, nurses and healthcare professionals, strengthening universities with more academic staff and opening up new sectors capable of absorbing millions of unemployed young Nigerians.
He also promised to stimulate private sector growth by improving access to capital, guaranteeing policy consistency and creating a predictable business environment that encourages investment.
The SDP standard-bearer criticised the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, accusing the government’s economic team of focusing almost exclusively on tax collection without paying adequate attention to production, industrial growth and wealth creation.
On insecurity, Adebayo alleged that the Tinubu administration has failed to tackle terrorism, banditry and violent crime with the urgency they require.
He controversially claimed that the continued existence of Boko Haram has become an economic programme for some individuals in government, arguing that insecurity persists because certain interests allegedly benefit from it financially.
According to him, Nigeria has enough manpower and resources to significantly improve security if there is genuine political will to confront the crisis.
The SDP presidential candidate also expressed concern over the state of the judiciary, warning that judicial independence has been steadily eroded by interference from both the federal and state governments.
He argued that judges have increasingly lost control of their dockets because of an unending cycle of election-related litigation, which continues to burden the courts.
Adebayo further described the registration of political parties through court orders as evidence of a broken political system and called for comprehensive legal reforms to establish a transparent and orderly framework for political party registration.
Despite his criticism of President Tinubu, Adebayo maintained that the 2027 general election should not simply be about removing the incumbent President from office.
“Defeating Tinubu is not the issue. The issue is building a platform that can defeat poverty, insecurity and bad governance,” he said.
He warned that replacing one administration with another without addressing Nigeria’s structural governance challenges could leave the country worse off, adding that Nigerians might eventually find themselves apologising to Tinubu if a future government performs even more poorly.
Adebayo concluded by saying Nigeria needs leadership focused on productivity, prudent management of public resources, institutional reforms, employment creation and restoring confidence in governance, insisting that only such an approach can reverse the country’s current trajectory.
