The presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the 2023 presidential election, Prince Adewole Adebayo, has accused President Bola Tinubu of focusing on politics instead of governance.
He made the comment in an interview with Daily Sun published today, Saturday, February 3.
According to him, President Tinubu is in the office, but he has not settled down to the job.
His words: “Tinubu’s presidency has not begun. Everything you see happening to them and around them are things happening to them by virtue of their occupying the office but I won’t say that they are going anywhere. I’m very concerned because the success of Tinubu is my number one prayer.
“I don’t want to be right about Tinubu not succeeding; I want to be wrong. I want, after four years, for Nigerians to see me and say, you told us this man will not succeed, but he has succeeded. I will apologise. It is better than for them to lament that I warned them.
Asked what he thinks is the problem with the government taking off, Adebayo said:
”I don’t know whether they just don’t want to settle down to the job or whether they don’t have enough people to do the job, or whether they are not focusing on doing the job, or if they think the job doesn’t matter.
”I have had occasion to review students’ attitudes in some schools, and I discovered that where students find the notion that studying will not reflect on how they are scored to be valid, they will not put in any effort in studying.
”I hope there are not people in the administration who believe that they can continue doing what they are doing and dictate the marking scheme in four years and impose on Nigerians a result that is not reflective of what’s on the ground because they have the propaganda and inducement to distort the reality and say that they have done very well. I hope that is not the case.
”Tinubu has capacity and talent, but his attitude to government is a problem. That’s why I disagree with them, that’s why I don’t support them, and that’s why I ran against them. The attitude that they show is not what we need to deal with governance in Nigeria.
”That is where I think the challenge of the Tinubu administration lies; if they can change their attitude, take governance seriously and pay attention to things, maybe Nigeria will start making some progress.
”It looks to me that this attitude problem is an All Progressives Congress (APC) problem. The APC has a wrong attitude to governance. They don’t want to display even the basic capacity. Politics is dictating all their action.
He added: “Politics has a lot predatory hunting skills like ability to dominate the opponent and force your will. Governance, on the other hand, is about situational awareness, co-ordination, recruitment, operations and keeping time, paying meticulous attention to critical success factors, not lying to yourself and following up on basic things.
”Most great things in governance require attention to ordinary things, to know generally about the security situation, to know that the brain of the President has to be coordinated with the muscle of the policeman in the street.
”Politics is jealous; it is there all the time because it is saga after saga and so-called triumph after triumph, but you could have political triumph and governance failure.
”The president will always be a politician, so he has to bifurcate and have two teams: those purely devoted to governance and those devoted to politics.”
