₦airaland Forum

Adewole Adebayo, the presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the 2023 general election, is a man of many parts, being also a lawyer, philanthropist, and entrepreneur, among other vocations. In this interview with GBENGA ADERANTI, the politician who also has interests in farming and sports speaks about his private life, why he lost the 2023 presidential election, and the state of the nation, 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 is not easy to see the end of a year. 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 prices rising as a result of inflation. We saw the exchange rate fluctuating. But it was also a good year for Nigerians in the sense that we had no serious communal clashes. I don’t think we had serious religious unrest in the year. What we are facing is just the normal consequences of governance methodology.

Overall, I hope many families in Nigeria can say it was a good year. But if some families or individuals say it was not a good year, then they have a case. We sympathize with them and we hope that they still have hope in 2025, to be a better year.

Many people believe that the hardship in the country today was caused by subsidy removal and the floating of the naira. Some believe that until the government reverses those policies, things will not get better. Do you agree with the position?


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 study the national development plan, the first one (60-65), we had problems there as well, especially the funding of those policies. During the military time, we had a terrible economic situation. Because of the grid collapse, we did not even have electricity. It cannot be that Nigeria was a paradise, and Tinubu came and it became a hell.

Until you joined politics, little was heard about you, what you were doing…

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 counselor, what you did in Primary 1, no media man will ask you because they already know it, not to talk about whether you want to run for president of Nigeria. What your mother was doing when she was 10 years old, the media will know. Here, the media asks the candidates themselves, but they tell a lot of lies. So we have got to a point where the media should invest in background information about candidates, even if there are things candidates want to run away from, like what you did in primary school, they will know.


I have been a lawyer. I have been practising both in Nigeria and overseas. 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, and 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 the Supreme Courts in Australia, you will see my law practice.

I told my colleagues during the Nigerian Bar Association meeting that I did not need to talk there because other presidential candidates talked. ‘You are my colleagues. You should know my character indices. Sometimes we are on the same side, sometimes we are on opposite sides. Judges see me practise 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. 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 that. They will say yes. Apart from the military ones; I was still young. But since 1999, there has been no head of state that I did not do something for, trying to help in this or that area.


I have never taken a government contract before. I have not been paid a government salary before. No government will say he didn’t try to help us. I have always been trying to do that. So 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 offer 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 the 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. 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 who went to school, one decides to be a lecturer, and the other one who 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, and 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, and most people don’t go there, so why should all the resources of Nigeria go there?


Judges should not suffer. They should not fear that they will lose their jobs. They should not have cause to be unable to pay their bills. But overall, if we 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 injustice in Nigeria. The elite just select themselves to tell you let’s pay the Senators well so that they can be honest. 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 election petitions 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 attend to the people who need them. Most people’s encounter with the judiciary is at the magistrate level. Magistrates do 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; they are just up there.

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 is just that he supports SDP, SDP loses an election and SDP also loses the petition, so he is annoyed.

So, if you want to help the judiciary, take them away from election matters, create a constitutional court that does not have regular judges, 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 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.


These are my contributions regarding the judiciary. 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. Let’s say for example, like this your camera now, and we don’t know who the owner is. But anybody who produces a receipt with their name on it, the 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 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 wear 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, 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 the bus to go there. They say a judge must reason like a man on the Clapper bus.

Even when I was at 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 a Lagere bus? Lagere is in Ile-Ife. He said well, that is up to you. What is written there, you must reason like a man on the Clapper bus. An average Nigerian does not reason like a man on a Clapper bus because they don’t know where the Clapper man is.

What do you think the Nigeria Judiciary Council should do concerning the controversy surrounding the 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 the wrong or right decision of a court. The NJC is to address corruption, abuse, if you are over-aged and you lied. If you are not qualified and you lied. If you collected a 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 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; 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, the Justice, a highly intelligent, fantastic judge, one of the best in the world, in his judgment mistakenly said it was my opponent that wrote the petition. He criticised him thoroughly, whereas it was my client who wrote the petition. That was an error. It was an honest error. The other two justices by his side didn’t pay attention. Because that criticism was not part of the judgment, nobody paid attention to it. It shows 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 the judiciary for justice in election matters; 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 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 through that judgment, where did the U.S. Supreme Court say Bush was the winner? In the USA, the 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 interpret that aspect. The law says it must be counted by hand therefore; it must be counted manually. Whatever the consequences of that, you go and sort it out there.

Even in the last election, something as basic as 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

Did you feel bad losing the 2023 election?

I was sad that we lost the election because of the kind of government we would have brought into existence. Not sad for me, but I was sad it was another wasted opportunity. But I knew that the system, the way it was being played, was not sincere. On October 1, 2021, on a live programme in Abuja, I told them that it was a bad idea to rely on electronic transmission because INEC could shut the server, and I said many other things. I knew we were going to be in trouble in 2023 when I saw the amount of money that people were spending in primaries. SDP was one of the few parties that did not pay money to delegates. Many parties paid delegates in dollars. I don’t know any delegates who came to me and said ‘Give me money.’ I remember only one state in our party, when the delegates arrived at the international conference centre where we were having primaries, somebody mentioned to me that this particular state said that they would only vote for a candidate who reimbursed their transport or whatever, and I said I don’t want their vote.

Later when I saw the chairman of the state, I said ‘I was told that your delegates said that they came to Abuja and only the candidate who can reimburse their transport that they would vote for.’ The man replied that it was not their official position. But I saw other political parties, where they were even budgeting dollars. People like that, if they can do that in their primaries what would they do in the general election? Look at the spending on delegates; many of them are far more than what is allowed by law.


So when we lost the election, I wasn’t satisfied. But I knew that with the nature of what went wrong, many things would go wrong. So when we lost the election, I knew they were not the things you could tender in court. So I can’t go to the court and complain. All these things I told you now, are not tenable under the election petition. I should only complain about the returning officer. Most of the crimes were already committed even before that date. That is why I felt it is better to do advocacy.

Lastly, at that point, it is the case I don’t want to revisit. Just let me state it for the last time that in 2023, there was nothing the justices at the Supreme Court could have done because all of them who went to court were liars.

I noticed that you are fond of white colour — your house, your dress and other things are of that colour. What is the thing about the white colour?


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 unclean or dirty. The white colour allows you to know when something is not clean. As a lawyer, I wear white and black. White symbolises transparency. That is the way I see it.

Why is it that you do not wear wristwatches?

With regards to 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 perform any function for me. I even inherited some watches from my parents and grandparents. But I look at them now as museum pieces. I am told that some of them are quite expensive; that if I bring them out, some people would want to buy them.


Wristwatches have been overtaken by the telephone and so many other things. Even your camera has a time piece. Wristwatches have become obsolete. The same reason I don’t ride horses. You can see horses in my compound. The watch is obsolete like the horse.

How do you relax?

I think I’m relaxed talking to you now. I have an interest in sports, but one of my ways of relaxing now is to stay at home because my work takes me around the world, if you check my airline accounts, even before I joined politics, my airlines would call me a million miler, my boarding pass has a million miles on it. An airline will recognize you once you fly over a million miles which is a lot of miles. But when I’m home, that is relaxation. Some people say when they want to relax they travel and go to places, maybe they work in the office all the time, but for me, when I want to relax, I stay at home.

https://thenationonlineng.net/our-economic-problems-date-back-to-colonial-times/

I deserve a bottle of red wine for reading the epistle to the end.
You all must pay me for summary.
Summary:
* Problems of Nigeria dates back to colonial times cos of structure. There was a time Nigeria was shipping materials for Britain.

* Previous problems of Nigeria made recent economic decisions not to be effective

* The decisions were necessary and had hardship implications

* It's understandable if many people complained of hunger in 2024 because those decisions of 2023 was more felt that year.

* There is hope

* The man Adebayo has been around corridors of power for a long time.
That's all.

No. Largely contemporary.

Naxxxo

Nigeria....

Them go soon blame lord lugard for joining us together in 1914 and Mary slessor for stopping killing of twins

I'll sleep while trying to read this long story 🥱

Talking as if it’s just our ‘economic problems’! 90% or more of our problems as component units can be traced to colonialism and the subsequent neo-colonialism that followed after!

Spoken like yet another ‘one Nigerianist’ who doesn’t want to confront the elephant in the room!

Epistle

Lie from the pit of hell
Our problems can be summarized in one word:
C O R R U P T I O N !

If it dated back to colonial era. How many years or generations will it take to get it right?

SA got independence after many years of Nigeria independent and they are moving.

Let stop pushing the blame and make Nigeria 🇳🇬 work

A bastard and more.

The man must think that all nigerians are senile like him, what a fool. No country is devoid of problems, the Nigerian one is compounded by corruption, incompetent leadership, ignorance and foolish citizenry.

Lol

Which colonial period

It dates back to 2015 when Buhari took over. Never in history will lecturers, professional, professors, engineers, top bankers and even CEO will leave their businesses and jobs and japa abroad to become cleaners and butt washers

Dindondin:
I deserve a bottle of red wine for reading the epistle to the end.
You all must pay me for summary.
Summary:
* Problems of Nigeria dates back to colonial times cos of structure. There was a time Nigeria was shipping materials for Britain.

* Previous problems of Nigeria made recent economic decisions not to be effective

* The decisions were necessary and had hardship implications

* It's understandable if many people complained of hunger in 2024 because those decisions of 2023 was more felt that year.

* There is hope

* The man Adebayo has been around corridors of power for a long time.
That's all.

You missed the concluding and quite interesting parts:
* He doesn't wear watches because they've been made obsolete by cell phones
* He relaxes by staying home. That's his hobby

Enough of all this long epistle of lie without solution.

These people are born liars.

They'll do anything to deflect the blames of the current economic woes off Tilumbu. Next is to blame Sango and Amadioha. Useless people

ogugwa1992:
Adewole Adebayo, the presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the 2023 general election, is a man of many parts, being also a lawyer, philanthropist, and entrepreneur, among other vocations. In this interview with GBENGA ADERANTI, the politician who also has interests in farming and sports speaks about his private life, why he lost the 2023 presidential election, and the state of the nation, among other issues.

you come out to run for Mayor in a city, even in London, a counselor, what you did in Primary 1, no media man will ask you because they already know it, not to talk about whether you want to run for president of Nigeria.[/b] What your mother was doing when she was 10 years old, the media will know. Here, the media asks the candidates themselves, but they tell a lot of lies. So we have got to a point where the media should invest in background information about candidates, even if there are things candidates want to run away from, like what you did in primary school, they will know.


I have been a lawyer. I have been practising both in Nigeria and overseas. 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, and 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 the Supreme Courts in Australia, you will see my law practice.

I told my colleagues during the Nigerian Bar Association meeting that I did not need to talk there because other presidential candidates talked. ‘You are my colleagues. You should know my character indices. Sometimes we are on the same side, sometimes we are on opposite sides. Judges see me practise 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. 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 that. They will say yes. Apart from the military ones; I was still young. But since 1999, there has been no head of state that I did not do something for, trying to help in this or that area.


I have never taken a government contract before. I have not been paid a government salary before. No government will say he didn’t try to help us. I have always been trying to do that. So 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 offer 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 the 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. 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 who went to school, one decides to be a lecturer, and the other one who 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, and 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, and most people don’t go there, so why should all the resources of Nigeria go there?


Judges should not suffer. They should not fear that they will lose their jobs. They should not have cause to be unable to pay their bills. But overall, if we 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 injustice in Nigeria. The elite just select themselves to tell you let’s pay the Senators well so that they can be honest. 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 election petitions 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 attend to the people who need them. Most people’s encounter with the judiciary is at the magistrate level. Magistrates do 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; they are just up there.

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 is just that he supports SDP, SDP loses an election and SDP also loses the petition, so he is annoyed.

So, if you want to help the judiciary, take them away from election matters, create a constitutional court that does not have regular judges, 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 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.


These are my contributions regarding the judiciary. 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. Let’s say for example, like this your camera now, and we don’t know who the owner is. But anybody who produces a receipt with their name on it, the 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 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 wear 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, 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 the bus to go there. They say a judge must reason like a man on the Clapper bus.

Even when I was at 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 a Lagere bus? Lagere is in Ile-Ife. He said well, that is up to you. What is written there, you must reason like a man on the Clapper bus. An average Nigerian does not reason like a man on a Clapper bus because they don’t know where the Clapper man is.

What do you think the Nigeria Judiciary Council should do concerning the controversy surrounding the 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 the wrong or right decision of a court. The NJC is to address corruption, abuse, if you are over-aged and you lied. If you are not qualified and you lied. If you collected a 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 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; 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, the Justice, a highly intelligent, fantastic judge, one of the best in the world, in his judgment mistakenly said it was my opponent that wrote the petition. He criticised him thoroughly, whereas it was my client who wrote the petition. That was an error. It was an honest error. The other two justices by his side didn’t pay attention. Because that criticism was not part of the judgment, nobody paid attention to it. It shows 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 the judiciary for justice in election matters; 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 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 through that judgment, where did the U.S. Supreme Court say Bush was the winner? In the USA, the 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 interpret that aspect. The law says it must be counted by hand therefore; it must be counted manually. Whatever the consequences of that, you go and sort it out there.

Even in the last election, something as basic as 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

Did you feel bad losing the 2023 election?

I was sad that we lost the election because of the kind of government we would have brought into existence. Not sad for me, but I was sad it was another wasted opportunity. But I knew that the system, the way it was being played, was not sincere. On October 1, 2021, on a live programme in Abuja, I told them that it was a bad idea to rely on electronic transmission because INEC could shut the server, and I said many other things. I knew we were going to be in trouble in 2023 when I saw the amount of money that people were spending in primaries. SDP was one of the few parties that did not pay money to delegates. Many parties paid delegates in dollars. I don’t know any delegates who came to me and said ‘Give me money.’ I remember only one state in our party, when the delegates arrived at the international conference centre where we were having primaries, somebody mentioned to me that this particular state said that they would only vote for a candidate who reimbursed their transport or whatever, and I said I don’t want their vote.

Later when I saw the chairman of the state, I said ‘I was told that your delegates said that they came to Abuja and only the candidate who can reimburse their transport that they would vote for.’ The man replied that it was not their official position. But I saw other political parties, where they were even budgeting dollars. People like that, if they can do that in their primaries what would they do in the general election? Look at the spending on delegates; many of them are far more than what is allowed by law.


So when we lost the election, I wasn’t satisfied. But I knew that with the nature of what went wrong, many things would go wrong. So when we lost the election, I knew they were not the things you could tender in court. So I can’t go to the court and complain. All these things I told you now, are not tenable under the election petition. I should only complain about the returning officer. Most of the crimes were already committed even before that date. That is why I felt it is better to do advocacy.

Lastly, at that point, it is the case I don’t want to revisit. Just let me state it for the last time that in 2023, there was nothing the justices at the Supreme Court could have done because all of them who went to court were liars.

I noticed that you are fond of white colour — your house, your dress and other things are of that colour. What is the thing about the white colour?


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 unclean or dirty. The white colour allows you to know when something is not clean. As a lawyer, I wear white and black. White symbolises transparency. That is the way I see it.

Why is it that you do not wear wristwatches?

With regards to 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 perform any function for me. I even inherited some watches from my parents and grandparents. But I look at them now as museum pieces. I am told that some of them are quite expensive; that if I bring them out, some people would want to buy them.


Wristwatches have been overtaken by the telephone and so many other things. Even your camera has a time piece. Wristwatches have become obsolete. The same reason I don’t ride horses. You can see horses in my compound. The watch is obsolete like the horse.

How do you relax?

I think I’m relaxed talking to you now. I have an interest in sports, but one of my ways of relaxing now is to stay at home because my work takes me around the world, if you check my airline accounts, even before I joined politics, my airlines would call me a million miler, my boarding pass has a million miles on it. An airline will recognize you once you fly over a million miles which is a lot of miles. But when I’m home, that is relaxation. Some people say when they want to relax they travel and go to places, maybe they work in the office all the time, but for me, when I want to relax, I stay at home.

https://thenationonlineng.net/our-economic-problems-date-back-to-colonial-times/

I love this money, he will do well as a president

The man is very intelligent.. like we told them , you vote the candidate because you like him .
We have people who are going to vote 1million times for Obi if he keep coming , Atiku and So also PBAT.. and our court had been corrupted to the extent that they're even waiting for after elections to make money off politicians ..

Sir, Adebayo ...

Noted.

DaddyCoool:
You missed the concluding and quite interesting parts:
* He doesn't wear watches because they've been made obsolete by cell phones
* He relaxes by staying home. That's his hobby

Correct

Our economy was not improve due to corruption and extravagant life style of our so called leaders. There is no way you will have these set of prodigal sons and daughters as leaders and expected our economy to improve. No country will have these as managers of her affairs and progress both economically and socially. All our economic prosperity is being manifested in fat foreign account of our leaders and purchase of estates in foreign countries. Even during colonialism, our colonial leaders were not live a superfluous life like our politicians are living today.

Creamypie:
Them go soon blame lord lugard for joining us together in 1914 and Mary slessor for stopping killing of twins

... and Mungo Park

Always shifting the goal post.

Irresponsible leaders

But .........the .......... Made it the worst

Within just a month !

Good man

Oyinbo is our number 1 enemy

Nigeria will be a better place the moment we start having patriotic leaders and citizens. The political and socio-economic systems harbours deceit and fraud. The cost of governance and doing business is high with a corrupt bureaucratic, electoral, judiciary and political system.
We need a political system and leadership at the National and Subnational levels that can tackle all these issues before we can make progress.