Prince Adewole Adebayo, a Social Democratic Party (SDP) candidate in the just completed 2023 presidential election, has expressed his respect for Bola Tinubu’s campaign tactics.
According to news sources, Tinubu won the 2023 presidential election on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and, barring any last-minute changes, will be inaugurated in on May 29.
Speaking on Tuesday night at the Rudolf Okonkwo-hosted online discussion program “90 Minutes Africa,” Adewole said that Tinubu was the candidate he encountered everywhere throughout the 2023 election campaign.
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“There is always one governor, one senator, one Reps member, and one traditional ruler working for him everywhere you go. I think we need to do that too with better and more positive people. It’s very difficult, though, because we don’t agree on the same thing,” he said.
Adebayo, however, voiced concern that unless a coalition or an alliance of young and new political structures would seize control from them, elderly politicians and their parties would continue to rule the Nigerian political landscape for a very long time.
The politician claimed that an alliance with popular backing would guarantee that the incumbent parties and their candidates would be permanently sidelined.
It was noted by Adebayo that many new political parties and their candidates ran their campaigns on an individual basis, which, in his opinion, diminished the overall power of the young and new entrants.
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He said: “When you are in the race, you are the most intelligent candidate. That is what you keep hearing. And everyone hears that in their own silos. But over time, the person who wins most likely has the majority of the people working for them. Whether for good or for bad, that’s another thing entirely.”
Adebayo added that attempts to collaborate with other parties during the 2023 election were unsuccessful because he learned that some of the individuals claiming to represent the parties were merely stand-ins with no real authority to influence the outcome of the poll.
“Many of the people in politics are merely agents, not principals. The reason why Buhari and Tinubu could form a coalition is because Buhari isn’t anybody’s boy. He was the leader of his own team. Tinubu isn’t a follower of anybody. He is not anybody’s boy. But some of these people may be forming alliances with them while in actual fact they are working for other people. And once they call them into the room and tell them what to do, that’s exactly what they will do. The people you want to follow are also following and shadowing some people, too,” he opined.
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