As Nigeria ushers in 2026, the political landscape remains as volatile as the economy. Amidst the backdrop of the 2nd Adebayo National Marathon in Ondo City — an event that saw over 5,000 athletes race through the historic mountain ranges of the West — Adewole Adebayo, the 2023 presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), remains a man on a mission.
In this interview with IFEOMA OKEKE-KORIEOCHA, the legal luminary and politician draws a sharp parallel between the endurance required for a marathon and the resilience needed to survive what he describes as the “international harassment” of 2025. From the “anti-people” 2026 Tax Reform Law to the controversial student loan schemes, Adebayo pulls no punches. He dissects the “one-party elite” consolidation under the Tinubu administration and explains why he is already tightening his laces for the 2027 presidential race.
The Adebayo National Marathon is entering the 2nd year, can you give us a brief intro for establishing the marathon?
It has given people purpose and the opportunity to use their strength and stamina, and we put people together, and this is me, and this is you. If you want to be successful, you have to endure this. You have to plan, you have to focus, you have to work hard, and you have to project. You have to prepare for this. You have to compete for this. You have to endure. Because just as individuals are running their races, companies are also running their races. This is why development is a marathon.
What’s the turnout like this year?
We have the planning committee, Omoleye Sowore is the chairperson, the secretary, Dr. Oduagunoye is a member, there are a few other members, but they are all around, mostly around competitiveness.
Why a particular marathon? And why the choice of Ondo State?
There’s nothing particular about the marathon. I’m involved in sports very majorly. Judo, basketball is my own home sport, which is boxing, wrestling, and swimming.
So it’s just that today is for marathon. Other days are for other sports. And what we want to get out of it is basically to give it a sportsmanship characteristic.
The country of sportspeople would be a very active country. And sports is the beginning of good health. It’s the beginning of having a strong military.
And if you start with young people, it’s the beginning of developing a character. Because to wake up in the morning and train for a marathon that’s taking place a year from now is a way to develop character, to follow purpose, and to also become part of an international community. And if you stay on your own in highlands, if you check the elevation of Ondo City, we are fairly as good as the average East African area, apart from the Mountain Range, Mount Kenya, and a few other spots.
But generally, we are high enough in the topography to be able to do a just a few kilometers from here to this mountain range and the range of runners.
Is there any further assistance/sponsorship that will be granted to the talents that will be discovered?
Well, many of them, those who won last year, they’re going internationally to run.
But I think marathoners are not like other sports. In general, people who live to help their parents, some of them have very resourceful young ones, and they just want to run. So, we have the youth segment where we try to encourage young people to run, and it’s more likely that younger people will need more assistance.
So, it’s not a sport for beginners. You don’t begin your running career with a marathon. Actually, it’s for well-experienced and determined runners.
What’s your assessment of the year 2025?
For the people in government, it’s a year of abuse. And for the media, it’s a year of distraction. We have a list of all the problems of Nigerians. For the political class, it’s a year of removing credibility from politics. It’s 2025 in Nigeria. For the political class, it’s a year of denouncing yourself. We’re just leaving the party. Just to see this, fighting, and for Nigeria, it’s a year of international harassment.
How would a foreign country be able to come to your country? Even to insult Nigeria before or criticize Nigeria, it was a serious matter. Do you remember the postcard where the US government sent the so-called Peace Corps? And one of the Peace Corps members criticized Nigeria in the postcard that they sent home.
The entire postcard was proscribed. Because Nigerian youths came out to condemn how can you come to a country and insult Nigeria? The kind of messages we get from Mr. Trump and the US, and then the motion that we hope we can perform in social justice. When you look at all of that, it’s a year that we’ve got no way of exacting an opportunity to decide on peace or something.
Now we’re going to present 2026 budgets, and they started with constitutional impossibility, of saying that they are repealing the 2025 Appropriation Act. Why do we want an Appropriation Act that has to be repealed?
The money spent, is it to be regarded as stolen money, or lost money, or lost opportunity? In all of the contracts awarded, what’s wrong with those subheads? Are you going to revoke all those numbers? Clearly, we don’t have the government. We don’t have people of power. We don’t have access of money to be able to engage them and tackle them. So 2025 was a year where we beat the government without being able to tackle them. And Tinubu was appointing everyone employed on the team as well. So we want to analyze the year as the year where we introduced, or expanded, the most dangerous youth enslavement program in the country.
In a country where, under our constitution, tuition is supposed to be affordable. No one is expected, under our constitution, to take a loan to go to school. It’s one of the operations that arose in America. But in America, if you take a student loan, the professors will not be able to study. In the case of Nigeria, if you take a student loan, you’re paying interest to the government, or owing government interest.
At the state government level, Almost every governor is to be found, on the average, in Abuja. Lining up to wait for Tinubu on one of these medical trips or unexplained journeys.
So, it’s the year of governors shutting down the radio stations, and bringing us to the secondary level, the sub-national level of states. About six or seven governments changed their parties to join the APC and many more are begging and spending money to join. There is no attempt to get the politicians to interpret the problems of the people and want to deal with it.
And it’s the year with the most military thing you can remember. A general was killed by so-called terrorists in. You really don’t see a general being killed like that. And the other military event is Tinubu’s minister, and the Navy officer shouted at each other about a piece of land that was in need of them. So, it’s the year we’ve come to the conclusion that it was the year God gave to us to try to make sense of our lives and we decided not to give it to him in that year.
We are ending that year with the threats that by next year we are going to be officially living under the most bracing act of legislative treason, where the fiscal tax law passed by the National Assembly is being suspected by serious members of the National Assembly as having been tampered with either by the president or the part of the National Assembly or both of them.
So, there are so many things. I don’t want to talk about sports. It’s the year when Nigeria couldn’t meet even the most basic record.
In a few months’ time, the process for the 2027 election will commence and I know you are interested, but I would want to ask, are you not worried that Nigeria is gradually moving to a one-party state?
I’m not worried at all because logic suggests to you that if you have one tendency elite, it’s a matter of time before they will stop pretending to be different and move into one political party. If you look at most of the political parties that have been in existence since 1998, when we started this current transition, which is now 26 years of governments, they’re elites are the same. Most of the political parties are the same.
They are mostly neoliberal. The elites are uniformly corrupt. Uniformly pointless.
So you can find someone who has been in government for eight years and you were asked to summarize their political philosophy. You don’t know it. But you can find out their political philosophy when they leave office and you charge them to court. So these elites don’t understand the sense of a republic.
They don’t take the job seriously. They don’t have a sense of leadership. And they’re not contributing to anyone. Their economic philosophy is contrary to what is in the constitution even though they swear by the same constitution when they are about to resume office.
That is not the language of someone who is collecting power from the people. This is for the benefit of the people.
And returning to the people and becoming an average citizen like the rest of us. So all of them now have summarized their aspirations and realized that Tinubu Group is the most successful in all of their career, all of the power structures and all of that. So they decided there’s no point competing with them. They just go and align with them. He is the Capon now and they just follow him.
So that is what people call one party state. But in reality, there cannot be a one party state. Because the natural dialectics is that any union between hungry people and the overfed people cannot last. Any union between unemployed people and people who are considered unemployed cannot be together. A union of poor people and those who stole all their wealth cannot endure. So we are reaching a point where the real opposition will not come from the political class.
The real opposition will come from the Nigerian people. Because what Nigerian people need is a political party in which the Nigerian people, the ordinary person, is invested in. And is part of and is committed to.
And it’s a mass movement. That is the end of the so-called one party state. But the elite as decadent as they are.
They are the leftover of the crops of military rule. If you look at the history of most of them, their career began with working for military governments during the dark days of military dictatorship. Helping them to hide money. And if you look at the Tinubu government government, you can see how many of them are returning to their virtual homes. Especially in court, they are working for the government. And contractors who were virtuous partners are hiding money from them. So the summary of all of this is that the Nigerian people are having an opportunity to confront the elite with a political alternative. And now that they are enjoying the drama of problems in these elite classes, it is more important to pay attention to how responsive the Nigerian people are to these problems.
How the Nigerian people show character in realizing that these problems won’t go away. And you don’t have philosophical things like in the past. There’s no one who’s coming to rescue you. What you need to do is organize, mobilize, and take collective action to save your democracy. This is the only thing you’ve got. Which is the right to vote, the right to have that vote reflect, the right to have people who think similarly to you, and to put them in a position of responsibility.
So that the wrongdoings will come to an end. Then we can begin to restore the republic to the original intent. I find it particularly unintelligent to fight and gain independence from white people and be a slave to black people.
I don’t see any sense in that. And so the Nigerian people now are going back to what Fanon called mass movement against second slavery. Because if you look at the government of the day, they don’t regard you as equal or as a citizen.
They regard you as someone who they can deny you all your rights politically, economically, socially, and give the next generation a great future while they are smiling to the banks.
So I don’t think that if you start from Lugard to the last colonial master, Robertson, none of them has been as anti-people as Tinubu has been.
And the only thing that is motivating politicians, commonly, is to use politics and the offices they occupy to address their own personal poverty. So it is no longer a government that is meant to provide food for the public. It is a government that is providing an avenue for a few people to run to the kitchen and seek care for themselves.
So that is the answer to the question of one party state. It can’t happen. The one party elite has already happened.
The one party state can’t happen. We will defeat them and we will send them out. The earlier you get it easy for the common will of Nigerian people to be expressed through election, and he loses the election and goes away, the better for him and the country.
But in whichever way, it is not sustainable for Nigerians to continue with this trajectory. We will defeat him with a broken company. It doesn’t matter how many there are.
Are you recontesting in 2027 or is your party forming a coalition ?
I am running and I have already told my party. My party officially knows that I will contest in 2027. I am in the process of it. There is no major political party in Nigeria. Unless you are substituting it for the ruling party, which I can never join, and my deputy can never join it.
Why?
Because I have met criminals. I have been dealing with criminals. First, you have to occupy an office. If you take a lot of office, you need to keep to it. If you were on your way to join a political party, would you join a political party where they are accusing each other of altering legislation? Would you do that?
It is obvious that you can’t claim to be patriotic and still be a member of the APC. It doesn’t work. You can’t say, I am democratic, but I also support apartheid.
There are certain things I don’t agree with. You could say, well, I like Tinubu, but I don’t care about Nigeria. So, it is not allowed. Because if you interact with politicians, they will say, oh, he is my mentor, he is my friend. You cannot be two things at the same time that are contradictory. You cannot say, I care for the rule of law, and join this government.
It doesn’t follow the rule of law. You cannot say, I care about accountability. And they cannot account for money, they cannot account for budget, they cannot account for time. They can’t even account for the whereabouts of the president, because of the time.
But some have also accused you of not seeing anything good in this government.
Because I don’t see it, it doesn’t exist. This has to exist. When I woke up this morning, I didn’t see you until you arrived. So, if something good happens, I will see it. But if nothing good happens, how do I see it? So, I cannot deceive myself. And Nigerian people are not even willing to see it. For example, they say they are reducing the inflation to 16 per cent, about the time when the price of everything has increased. So, why do you calculate your inflation?
How about the price of foodstuffs?
First, put the foodstuffs in the basket. They don’t know the government, they don’t know how to lie. Number one, if you put the food in the basket, you take all the staples, rice, yam, beans.That’s all. Then, you take the processed foods.
Then, you take all the other condiments. If you take everything, the food is in the basket. Now, you have the price of rice at N120,000. It comes to N80,000. The minimum wage is out of it. You take the cost of transportation. There is no part of Nigeria where the cost of transportation has reduced. There is no part of Nigeria where the cost of housing has reduced. Anybody here who has a landlord, when you get a landlord saying, okay, I’m reducing your rent now, does it help? There is no part of the country where you would say that I set up a business and my new business that I’m setting up now is costing me less than before.
If you are in the construction industry, the cost of cement, cement-based, cement-block concrete and all of that, the cost of reinforcement, iron, rod, sand, water; none of the cost is coming down. If you compare the three year budget of three roads, for the same project, their cost is rising.
So, you have a 90 kilometer road, awarded in 2023 for X amount, because they didn’t fund the project, they have no discipline. Now, they carry the same project over to the following year, or some segment of it.
When they are repricing it, it’s higher than before. So, we call it variation, and you see David Umahi, coming on TV and talking about variation, variation, variation. So, it goes on like that.
If you travel by air, your airfare hasn’t reduced. Even if you adjust for seasonal volatility, it doesn’t reduce at all.
If you came by road, it did not reduce, it’s increased. Even because I shouted, and many people joined me to shout, lpeople would have been surcharging you 15 percent on top of the fuel you are buying now, so that you can actually put a permanent tax on your property, never to go away again. So, when you look at all of these things, I have not heard of any parents, I have seen many of your parents, where at school, that your child attends, says, oh, we are reducing our school fees, against last year.
And if you buy Christmas clothes for your children at once, there is no fabric that is less than before. So, if you are reducing inflation, at least there is a basket of items that should be in your inflation calculation. Which of them has come down? The only one you mentioned is rice.
This is one out of maybe 1,000 staples. And rice was undergoing hyper-inflation. And what they did was, they allowed rice to be imported. Because when Buhari, in his wisdom, banned the importation of rice, and did not support rice farmers with it, how many rice farmers? I never saw them coming to do anything, because they don’t even know the agro-economics of farming. So, I am a farmer. I bought tractors at higher prices. I am maintaining and cultivating my land at higher prices. I go to the mill or somewhere around to buy rice paddy, but the rice paddy nearby, they don’t have any support with that. There is no part of the rice production process that they were part of.
But they just assumed that if they ban the importation of rice, and we can charge more money from the customer, it will cover the already too high cost of producing rice. But in reality, what they should have done was to reduce our cost of producing the rice. So that if you are bringing rice from abroad, with the shipment and all of that cost, it’s naturally going to be more difficult for you to beat our price.
Since labor is very cheap, and land is almost free in Nigeria. But they don’t understand economics. So, to put it all together, what we need to understand is that criticism of Tinubu, not see anything good in them because they are not good.
It’s for the good of the country. Because half of their lack of good policies is deliberate. Because there is a conflict between what they want to gain and what is good.
Speaking of policy, the tax reform law is kicking off in 2026. So as a lawyer, what is your take on that?
Do you think that will help reduce the economy of the state, or do you think it will further add to the sufferings of Nigerians?
First, it’s a bad law. It’s an unjust law. It’s an impractical law. It is a distraction. What is the essence of taxation? Taxation has four critical ingredients in its philosophy. One, it must be a stimulant. It must stimulate the economy. It must be taxed.
When you have a tax law, it must make people want to produce so that it helps you to stimulate the economy.
Two, it must be distributive, fairly distributive. That is to say, you produce tax, it must help you to fund, to take resources from the area where it’s wasted to the area where it is useful. For example, if we had a case of homelessness, or maybe you can tax expensive homes, exorbitant homes like mine, and use the money to do affordable housing. If you have, like Ethiopia, problem of public transportation, you can tax those who bring in luxury vehicles and use the money to buy buses, and I take bus lanes. So, you could tax fabric, imported fabric. So those who are wearing expensive cloths; you can tax them and use the money to buy khaki and hat for the poor. So there must be an adjustment, that tax is a modulator.
Three, you must generate more revenue in the long run. Lastly, it must be transparent and easy to follow. You cannot create a tax law that makes someone who is selling in the market thinking of the need to hire a lawyer. If you have been following the last three months, everybody’s thinking, “oh, are they going seize my money in the bank?”
Have you not been not following. Its either the president is not in the country mentally or he is not the country physically because he used to be an accountant. At least in the area of finance, you ought to have a bit of a clue. He used to be an auditor, I have a feeling that somehow he’s not interested.
And when I went through that law, I read through it, I could easily see the trick. He’s not interested in collecting more revenue. He’s not interested in stimulating the economy. He’s interested in the fiscal singularity. Because he has achieved political singularity in his mind, where almost all the governments are in his party. So what he wants to do is achieve economic singularity, where all the businessmen are his business partners. And then achieve administrative singularity. He’s not the one who does all the business, the government collects all the taxes.
So this law is poorly written. And while you are distracted by this clause, the blue clause, the clause you forgot about? Why you say that the customs can’t collect some customs duties anymore? It’s something that we’ve been doing from pre-colonial times.
If you look at our old arrangement, the Joint Tax Board even banned states from using consultancy. Nobody should use consultancy to collect revenue because most of government revenue collection of revenue is a sovereign duty. It’s like using private people to do the job of the Navy, like they are doing some of the contract design, or using mercenaries essentially to do the work of the armed forces. And very soon they will start using vigilante and private guards to do the work of the police. It’s unconstitutional in our own country.
So this is why they are distracting everybody. It’s a bad law. It’s not going to achieve anything.
Secondly, it is a violation of criminal law to have this law because members of the National Assembly are saying that the copy which they have and deliberated upon and they have in their votes and proceedings and they gazetted; it’s not one that has been circulated now. That they have gone to import into the law provisions that National Assembly did not approve but did not deliberate upon at all. They’re determined to implement it. Why? Three reasons.
One, they have no respect for the country, the people in it. They believe that, oh, Nigerians, they will make noise, once we start, they will forget about it.
Second, they need money for election, because they want to buy everybody out. So they need that money. They’ve already internally, mentally spent that money. Three, they want you perpetually be able to be part of those who are collecting your money, even after you have voted them out of government, like they have done at the lower level before. So it doesn’t matter if they eventually vote them out of their 10-year espionage. They will still continue to cross their legs at their homes, and each time you go and pay tax or you are forced to pay tax, they are surcharging you. And they will use that money to finance more politics and eventually subjugate you. At the end of your lifetime, you, your children, everything around you has been appropriated to serve one empire.
Sir, have you joined other opposition leaders to demand for interim government, particularly the likes of Atiku Abubakar, who have fought for the coalition, who have not joined the coalition?
I can’t ask for interim government because the government is elected for a fixed term. It’s only when the election comes, if you want to change your life, vote for me and get it if you go home. But until then, the government, I don’t know, I can’t force them out. I don’t want military coup. See, your people whom you brought, they’ve had to kill you. So you will save your life by turning away and forcing these particular people away. That’s all I can do.
And as for the coalition that you mentioned, we are talking about the meaning of the life of the people. The fact that I happen to not like the APC, which is a fact, and you don’t like the APC as well, does not solve the problem for people. Chances are very clear that the APC doesn’t like me either. But that’s not the level at which you do politics.
You must make sure that those things that you don’t like the APC for, like all this litany of bad governance criteria that they are giving to you, that the person who wants to collaborate with you does not have similar tendencies as the APC. Because what’s the point for a chicken to vote for any of these three people? The best way to handle chicken during Christmas is to roast them. They don’t agree with you to fry them. They say no, you have to parboil them. How would you eat chicken for any of them? Even though they look at their disagreement among themselves, none of them will spare the chicken. If the chicken is distracted, you say, yeah, that guy wants to parboil a lot. I think he should go for that one. We are going to be a dead chicken at the end of the day.
So what we’re trying to do is to make sure that people don’t capitalise on the bad performance of Tinubu, to come and insinuate it to us, people who just ride on the wave of that anger, and bring Tinubu 2.0 when they come in.
Because we saw it, and I was shouting since 2014 when they said Jonathan was not performing. He could go and repeat those interviews. I said, yes, I know Jonathan very well, we attend the same church, he respects me a lot, and I respect him as an elder brother. But he took the disaster as he did. But as for these people who are coming, they are going to be worse. I knew Buhari very well. I knew him intimately. I knew Buhari does not have a calendar to know which century he belongs to, what date, nothing. So they went and brought him and people were deciding, oh Buhari action, which action?
And these people know what they are doing by bringing Buhari. And Tinubu, all of them, you could see now that when he was doing their 2015 transition, Tinubu gave him the legacy as to why he brought all of them, because he wants to achieve his own aim.
So if you haven’t learned from that, when are you ever going to learn that now that Tinubu is also not good, you want to make sure that someone worse than Tinubu is not being smuggled in. And then people will say, oh, people in Tinubu’s time are slightly better than this. I don’t want to experience that.
And that’s why each of them that came, I interviewed them. Some are doing better than the other. Who are these people? You know them. These people came to the party and they’re gone. The people wanted to come, I would let them come in. We have now gone to do their own thing, which is not my business to be focusing on them. But many of them, when they came to us, we said, don’t even open your mouth, let’s go away because you can’t say that you wanted to do anything and you are a fraud.
So it is true that you singularly disallow the coalition to involve the SDP?
I did not singularly disallow it, but I convinced my party people that if we cannot help the Nigerian people, let’s not kill them. It’s better to not enter government than to enter government and become a union of the people. You can’t do it. It’s just not right. Nigeria has a lot of people who have never tasted government before. All of the people who have been in government since independence, they are not up to one percent. Nigeria is not short of talents.
So if you want to stop what is going on, you need to bring fresh people or select among those who have served before, who have relatively good records. And you have to see that the motivation is not about. Some people are incapable of being outside government for six hours. They will be disoriented because they are used to free car, free housing, passing toll without paying, free medical care and all of these are the things that defend in the name of fighting for you. They just can’t survive without government perquisites.
They are ministers, tomorrow we will put them as the chairman of a nursery or primary school, but they will go there. They just must drive an SUV car with policeman in front of it. And that is what is motivating their politics. So it’s their style. I’m not saying they should not be in politics. I once had a meeting with one of the former governors and he said, “Well, there are many motives for being in politics.” I said, “Prince, why are you criticising me? You have your own motive. We have our own motive.” I said, “No problem, sir. All motives are welcome in politics. But there can’t be various motives into my own party.”
So the Nigerians must say, OK, this is a party of people who want to help the country, and this is a party of people who must be in government, even if they are to shed their own blood to be there.
I’m not saying to Nigerian people that don’t choose bad government. Just don’t cry to me when the consequences of bad government comes. And don’t say, ah, I have no alternative. The main reason why I entered politics and devoted my life to politics was because of that lie that Nigerians were telling themselves, that they had no alternative. So I will go on a TV show, explain the problem of the country and people will see me. It’s people like you who want to come in. Me, I’m facing my law practice. I’m doing my thing. Leave me alone. So you just have a way of not doing the right thing and claiming that you have no alternative.
