Prince Adewole Adebayo, Presidential Candidate of Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the last election, has made another assessment on the state of the nation. The politician who has consistently given his take on the happenings in the country sat with journalists to dissect the policies of the Tinubu administration, rot in the judiciary, his experiences as a lawyer, not just in Nigeria but overseas. The interview is explosive and mind boggling.

Excerpts below:

How would you describe the year 2024, and what is your projections for 2025?

To me, 2024 was a good year, speaking from a personal point of view. It was a good year, once you 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 last year, and the 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, we had tragedies in Ibadan, Okija, and Abuja, over the distribution of foods and other things.

So, it was a very tough year for the Nigerian people. That was the year they felt the bigger impact of the policies of 2023 . We saw a lots 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 this 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 President Buhari, who was neither in government nor in power, but 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 own party. I’m not saying he should leave his political party and look for talents, even within his political party, he did some patronage within his followers, but he has not used the strongest hands; the most clever 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 in power, and anywhere he goes, everybody gravitates towards him.

But in 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 Interior, I think the two ministers 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.

Many people have commended the president’s media chat, what is your take on this?

People will commend the president, the same thing 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 this child may never speak, but after a while that this child has already spoken, this 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 account of his activities, who 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, he is not a sole administrator. Under the constitution, he is the sole secretary but but he has since looked beyond that to appoint lesser executive under him, and that he is supervising them. If what he said on that day, many of which I disagree with, but if what he said that day 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, should be done regularly. 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, he knows the implications and he has a kind of vision on what he wants to do, and I assume that the media will not go there like Christmas guests, who are being polite to their host, they should go there and do their own job too. Overall, I’m not impressed. But that the president can speak, it is great.

But it appears many Nigerian are hopeful ultimately about the policies of the Tinubu’s administration?

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, they should be hopeful because hope is one thing you can invest in yourself. 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 to not 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 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 invested in one government, your hope is not invested in one individual, it is not invested in one period because the country is continuous, on that basis, Nigerians have a very good reason to be hopeful.

You appear to be fond of white colour, your houses, your wears, and other things you have, are in colour white. Any special reason for sticking to one colour? Why is it that you do not wear wrist watch?

I’m attracted to white because it is easy for me to detect if it is not clean. It also depicts transparency. I don’t like something to be unclean or dirty, white lets you to know that this is unclean. As a lawyer, I wear white and black, white symbolizes transparency, that is the way I see it. As regards wristwatches, the original purpose of a watch in the time past was to tell you the time, but now, there are many ways to get the time, so I don’t see any reason, carrying an additional burden on my body that does not do function for me. I even inherited some watches from my parents and grandparents, I look at them now as museum pieces. I’m even told that some of them are quite expensive, that if I bring them out some people would want to buy them. Wrist watches have been overtaken by telephones and so many other things, even your camera has time piece. Wrist watches have become an obsolete thing. The same reason I don’t ride horses. You can see horses in my compound, but if I’m going from Ondo to Lagos, I go in my car, the watch is obsolete like a horse.

Many people believe that the hardship in the country today was caused by the subsidy removal and the floating of the naira. People have been saying that until the government reverses those two policies, things will not be better in this country?

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 national development plan, first one, 60-65, we had import substitution , industrialization, we had problems there as well , especially the funding of those policies. During the military time , we had a terrible economic situation because of grid collapse, we did not even have electricity, it cannot 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 pain reliever and try to give other therapy that will make the migraine go down. But they worsen 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 3.7 trillion naira 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- East-West road, Niger Bridge, Kaduna- Kano road, rail lines, electricity, all those things he didn’t do. So, Tinubu met a fairly parlor economy, but he made it worse because he did not understand economics at all, and he is an accountant, who understands finance, those that if I meet 20 billion, I raised it to 30 billion, adding 10 billion. But if you have to damage 100 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 loan, he knows where the lenders are all over the world but he doesn’t understand the multiplier effect in economics.

Until you joined politics, little was heard about you what were you doing before now?

Well, I was doing good citizenship. I tried to visit a lot of countries. In Nigeria, I tried to make a lot of contributions. As far back as 1999, if you go to TV and radio stations, you will know what I was doing, even in terms of contributions. You know typically, if you come out to run for Mayor in a City, even in London, a coucillor, no media man will ask you because they already know it, not to talk of you want to run for president of Nigeria, what your mother was doing when she was 10 years old, the media will know, but here, the media ask the candidates himself, but they tell a lot of lies, so we have gotten to a point where media should invest in background information about candidates, even if there are things candidates wants to run away from, like what you did in primary school, they will know.

Basically, I have been a lawyer, I have been practicing both in Nigeria and oversea. If you go to the Supreme Court of Nigeria, and read law reports, you will find dozens of Supreme Court cases that I argued. In the Nigeria Supreme Court, Court of Appeal, there are 100s, and countless in the High Courts, likewise in the U.S ., Washington DC, Federal Court District Washington and other places, if you go to Supreme Courts in Australia, you will see my law practice. Many of my colleagues, like I said during the Nigeria Bar Association that I don’t need to talk here because other presidential candidates talked, you are my colleagues, you should know my character indices, sometimes where on the same side, sometimes we are in opposite side, judges see me practice before then, so I can’t go to the NBA where I belong and say I’m a good person, just by hearing my voice you should know, they should be the ones telling other people in my profession, I’m one of the excellent ones.

There is no former head of state who was in government when I was already a full adult , who you will accost and say ‘did the Prince tell you something about governance, did he try to help you?’ None of them can deny, they will say, ‘yes.’ Since 1999, there is no head of state that I did not do something for, trying to help in this or that area. I have never gotten a government contract before, I have not been paid government salary before. There is no government that will say he didn’t try to help us. That is what I have been doing, and when I saw that it was the turn of my generation to lead. I looked at the leaders and said okay, whatever your opinion about them, their time is gone, in our generation now what do we do? We need to start to come out and offer leadership instead of offering advice. The role now is reversed, those who we used to try to help in governance, we used to assist, now need to step back and also be offering us advice.

Many have accused the judiciary of committing infractions. 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 government wants to pay you more money, more salaries, and a lawyer like me say ‘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 you 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 who went to school, one decides to be a lecturer, ones 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, everybody uses doctors, teachers, nurses, drivers. Most people don’t use judges, they don’t know what they do, they see them well-dressed like foreigners inside one room, the door is locked, they speak Latin, most people don’t go there, so why should all the resources of Nigeria go there? Judges should not suffer, they should not have fear that they will lose their jobs, they should not have cause not to be unable to pay their bills, but overall, if we improve inflation in the country, improve economy, and everybody uses less of their income to do basic things, it will affect judges positively.I think it is better for us to do the economy well because if you pay a judge very well, but you don’t pay the judges driver, how will the judge get to work? It is part of injustice in Nigeria, the elite just select themselves to tell you 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 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, magistrate do most of the jobs and they are not even well paid, they don’t have good court rooms 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 peoples court, they are just up there. The same thing the Nigeria Supreme Court, even though by Constitution, any question of law or final judgment, they can force it on them but they don’t hear them for many years. If you bring your appeal to me, 10 years you are still in the Supreme Court, so I think, if you ask anybody who says the judiciary is bad, he never had a case before, he has never been a witness before, it just that he supports SDP, SDP loses an election, and SDP also loses the petition , so he is annoyed. Have you read the judgement? No, so if you want to help the judiciary, take them away from election matter, create a constitutional court that does not have regular judges, judges who have retired because election petition is so simple, it is so simple to the extent that you don’t have to be too intelligent to decide the winner, it is a simple arithmetic. So, you can now take it to constitutional court, where you have retired justices, very senior lawyers who no longer practice, you put them there, you constitute them 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. Let say for example, like this your camera now, we don’t know who is the owner, but anybody who produces a receipt with their name on it, law says that is the owner of the camera, whether he forged the receipt or whatever, the judge will say he produced a receipt, ‘see that the camera belongs to him, according to the law, I presume that he is the owner,’ So the judge is not able to know who the real owner is. It is through the evidence you give that will invalidate that he is not the owner of the camera, if the evidence is done by the word of the mouth, he won’t get it even if it is true. Our laws are foreign to us, and so many other things in the jurisprudence. Nigerians are still behaving as if the British are still here. When we go to court, we even put wig so that we can look like British people, the way they used to do in the time pass. 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, 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 bus to go there, they say a judge must reason like a man on Clapper bus. Even when I was at Ife, and they were teaching, when my teacher said that I must reason like a man on Clapper bus, I said why must I think k like a man on Clapper bus? Why can’t think like a man on Lagere bus. Lagere is in Ife, he said , ‘well that is up to you, what is written there, you must reason like a man on Clapper bus.’ An Average Nigerian does not reason like a man on Clapper bus because they don’t know where Clapper man is.

What do you think the Nigeria Judiciary Council should do concerning the controversy surrounding election petitions?

There are three things I can say. One, there is nothing the NJC can do because the NJC is not set up to interfere with wrong or right decision of a court. The NJC is to address say corruption, abuse, if you are over-aged, and you lied. If you are not qualified , and you lied. If you collected bribe, if you 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 fact, but because it is a reasoning process, it can be faulty, you can make an error, the law may escape the judge.

The judge can make an error, 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, highly intelligent, fantastic judge, one of the best in the world, in his judgement mistakenly said it was my opponent that wrote the petition, he criticized him thoroughly, whereas it was my client who wrote the petition, that was an error, it was an honest error, other two justice by his side didn’t pay attention because that criticism was not part of the judgement nobody paid attention to it. It shows to you that judges can make mistakes.

Secondly, Nigerians from my experience as a lawyer who has done election petitions, as a person who has paid attention to it, as a person who has also contested an election, Nigerians don’t go to judiciary for justice in election matter, they go to the judiciary for the confirmation of the person they support. If the judiciary doesn’t confirm that person, he is already biased, so it is a game. Politics is an emotional game, it is a game of bias. If a referee awards a penalty to the team you support, with a little push, you say it is good, but if your own person tackles somebody to the ground, and the person is limping, they award a penalty, you will say the other person is acting, so politics is an emotion. Politics is not rational. The voters don’t vote for the best person, they vote for the person they like, it is a game of bias. So if you didn’t start with merit, how will you end with merit? That is why in other places they don’t like the court to judge politics because they know that it is emotional, they don’t bring it to the court. Even when you go to court in America or the UK, they don’t determine who is the winner, but they can give a little interpretation of an aspect of the law that an average person cannot interpret.

If you look at the famous US case Gore vs Bush, go and read it. When we were doing Buhari’s case, and I was representing Yar’Adua, they kept shouting Gore vs Bush, I looked at them. I said I’m an American lawyer, you Nigerians are not. You don’t know anything. If you go to that judgement where the did the U.S. Supreme Court say Bush was the winner? In the USA, court cannot answer a political question but you can go to court and say is this ballot counted according to the law of Alabama? Because it was counted with a machine and the law of Alabama said it must be counted by hand, they must interprete that aspect, the law says it must be counted by hand therefore, it must be counted manually by hand. Whatever the consequences of that, you go and sort it out there.

In the case of Gore vs Bush, Bush said it must be recounted that the county vote must be recounted and the county clerk said I cannot recount it by hand, if I recount it by hand the time of the return of the election will not be met, and Gore went to the Supreme Court and the Bush escalated the case, and the US Supreme Court had to decide one issue only, whether a candidate can ask for a recount by law , he said no all votes are equal nationwide, if other votes are , you cannot be insisting, by and large of this is that the judiciary cannot come out on a good note to determine who is the winner in an election. Most people complaining against them are complaining not because the law is good or bad, even in the last election, something as basic that we lawyers know that the law says that FCT is not a state, it is clear there however a certain aspect of it became controversial.

The point is that elections are so badly conducted that with the nature of your complaints that you cannot get justice from the court . On Many occasions, if you look at what people consider to be concept of justice, a good judge, you will consider Solomon, a good judge where Solomon had to determine who was the mother of a child. One said cut the child into two, give me one part and give the other person the other part, the other person said don’t cut the baby into two, if you don’t believe me give the baby to the other person and the baby will be alive.

Solomon came to the conclusion that this other person who had the compassion, was the mother of the child.
Now in our case, neither of them will be the mother of the child, because if Solomon gave to any of them, he had already lost the case because the real mother could have been locked up somewhere, and that there might not even be a baby at all, so it is just a doll dressed like a baby.

The long and short of it is that elections start to get rigged before they begin, they won’t follow the due process from the primaries. It is from the primaries that the parties will start having delegates and they will be bribing them. Media who supposed to cover campaign will follow the person who gave them the most money, they won’t follow the other person who has ideas, give candidates the access to present their case, media will not do that . So, essentially, elections already have problems far before the elections are held.

Campaign financing, people don’t pay attention to that where the candidate can raise money from any criminal source and spend any amount far above the legal limits. When you put all of these together, by the time you go to the tribunal, you hardly complain about what happened on the election day, and tribunal only listen to what happens on election day, but most problems with the election, far before the election, that is why it is difficult to use the judicial to resolve electoral dispute. I recommend that overall, we should improve our elections, and the way to do them is to follow the law from the beginning. The umpire has no interest beyond the rules and people who are privileged to play a role in elections should jettison personal gains including selling your votes, take bribe and stuff like that.
Lastly, in election, everybody who participate should understand that you have the right to participate, you don’t have the right to win, except when you actually win. It is not every election that you lose that somebody has cheated you or anything or the cheating why you lost, it is mix of things, none of it judiciary can resolve.

You just held the maiden edition of the annual Prince Adewole Adebayo Christmas Marathon, what is this initiative about?
The initiative is not going to be just a marathon, the marathon is just what we did, but I’m interested in sports talents and all of that and I thought that it would be a good thing for Nigerians to engage in sporting activities because sports, music, entertainment, all the way by which you can transform poor people within one generation to stardom. We are in talents period of human history now. Education, we do that a lot, sports, we are trying to do that a lot now. These are all the areas to reduce poverty. Secondly, sport teaches discipline, because discipline is a problem in Nigeria and anybody who can run marathon is a disciplined person. We also want Nigeria to feature in the sporting calendar globally, by next year, we want to get to where the Olympic international body will recognize our marathon event. This event will take place same period every year, same 30th December. The thing will take place for the next 1000 years, it will be regular.

When found out after the race that the person who came second is Benin Republic. Some runners from Kenya were also available even though they arrived late due flight issue. We hope that they will come next year. We had a 14-year-old who had never ran marathon before, who registered. We said he was too young, and started crying and we said okay, two of them competed ahead of adults.

When we took them to the palace where they were all recognized. The a 14-year- old who never thought he could be recognized, was recognized in the palace, to the point of being honoured with garlands. Those are the things we are trying to do with the marathon. People came all over the world , all over Nigeria within the community and different age groups and all of that. These are things we can do without waiting for the government for anything.

What was your growing up like, how close were you to your parents? How much of influence did they have on you?
Well, growing up was very good. I thank God for the family I come from, that is already an advantage. When you are born into a family that wants to take care of you, they have a long history of being together. The government was better at that time because I was born during the time of Gowon, I was born 1972, and that time, many people were great. When I was born, people like Femi Okunnu, Shehu Shagari and many others who took government seriously, were in government. Clement Isong was the governor of the Central Bank when I was born, you can’t be luckier than that. Imagine you had a child now under Emefiele. These were the people who knew the public service in the country. I come from a royal family that has been around for close to 2000 years, however, I lost my dad when I was two years three months but you wouldn’t know in the royal family because you will not feel it. All the children of the palace, we were growing up, we had aunties, uncles and I knew my great-grandmother. When I was born, I had a great-grandmother, grandmother and my mother. For example, I did not change address from the day I was born till I finished my postgraduate and I became a lawyer in America, I had one address. It gives you stability as a child when you don’t have to change of address. Your address remains the same. So, before they collapsed the entire postal system, as an adult, I would still get letters posted to my address. That gives stability. The schools were very good. To show you how committed Ondo State was, when I was in secondary school, about quarter of my teachers were foreign teachers. In fact, more than half because it was a Catholics set up the school. When the Ondo State government took over, before long, they discovered that some of the Catholic priests left, and there was a shortage. The Ondo State government went to India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and , other places where they had better teachers, and brought them. Nowadays, when I look at what people pay in private schools, we paid nothing, but the state government went to find these teachers because they thought we were weak in sciences. Many of our science teachers were foreigners, to see how committed a public school. They were training the teachers but if they saw any gap, they would bring foreign teachers.
And then, when I was 18, I was admitted to Ife, to study Law. Though my aunties, my grandparents who went to Ife would say Ife was better in their day, but it was very good in my day because I remember that when I wanted to become a lawyer in America, and I was studying, almost everything that I was reading, the statement of the law, all of them were available already at Ife. If you go to Ife now, Oluwasanmi Library, I don’t know if they have not removed them , but then, you would see Nebraska School Law Report, you would see Harvard Law Report, if you graduate in Ife , you would have all those exposure. Even public libraries, my Uncle had a public library in town, we would go there and study, so library was everywhere. I think when I was studying for JAMB, I scored the highest nationwide in Economics, so it was because my uncle had a library, and when I was studying for my JAMB, I would go there to study Economics. There was a section in the economics book that I was reading, and it was giving serious headache each time I read those books, I would come back and read them again, so it just occurred to me after I had finished about 10 of them, why do these books have so many graphs? I would calculate the graphs, I just looked at the back, I discovered that they were specially prepared for PhD students, but I was in secondary school, they were in a section there but I used to read them but I was having serious headache so, I would go back, look at the graph, calculate, do everything and all that. So any economics test it was just like straight forward.

I served in Kogi State, I had a good experience practicing law. Then, children don’t need much, children only need environment of safety, and environment where you can have friendship with adults, where you can go confidently and talk to an adult. When my great-grandmother died, my grandmother was the one taking care of me, I saw my mum like a young girl because I was raised by aged people. My grandmother taught me how to read and write, even before I started primary school. The idea was that you had confidence, you were trained as if you were playing. If you ran into something and broke it, the only requirement was to report yourself, if you report yourself, no punishment, we understood that with my grandmother, anything you did, go and report yourself before she discovered, as she was coming back, just say, “as I was playing here, I broke this window, she would say what kind of play is that, don’t do that again.” But if she discovered, there was punishment, why don’t you report yourself. The worst was, if she discovered and you denied. We understood the rules the same thing when I was at college, as a bunch of kids, you could gather yourself together and go to a teacher or principal and say this mango is ripe, we wat to harvest it, they would tell you ‘come on Wednesday,’ if you came and they look at it and it was ripe, they would tell you to go and harvest it, and share it. But if you were found , without asking, and you threw a stone, that would be the end of your career, they would expel you from the school.

With that kind of orientation, you realize that you can succeed by just being simple, honest. That is how I saw it. If my child comes to me and says ‘I’m not the one,’ ‘I would say go,’ he didn’t do it, I don’t investigate because when I was growing up, if they asked you, ‘have you done this?’ and you say ‘yes,’ they would leave you, you know the consequences of you being discovered later, having done it is huge , is like having killed someone. So that confidence is there.
I come from the family of service who don’t serve themselves. If you put your children in school, it is not an achievement, it is when you put children of other people in school. That for many generations of people who are just to serve, there is no personal achievement people recognize, you can’t come to my family and buy a big car, people won’t look at it, they have more respect for your cousin who graduated and went to a village to be teaching, they will appreciate him more, this person is making sacrifice somewhere. Growing up was good.