The 2023 Presidential Candidate for the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Prince Adewole Adebayo, has urged new members who have defected to the party to fully embrace its ideology and refrain from introducing negative behaviours from their previous affiliations.
Speaking at an interview on Monday, Prince Adebayo stated that the party’s structures across all thirty-six states and Abuja have been adequately prepared to educate the new members, regardless of their backgrounds.
He emphasised that the party is open to all newcomers, but clarified that they have successfully articulated the principles that define the party’s identity.
“That is why you have seen some of the reactions as people are joining our party, we welcome them and we tell them ideological issues and we also tell them all these shenanigans that you do in your party, don’t bring them here.
“We spend a lot of time educating our members. Do not suddenly get used to money you did not ask for or monies you did not work for. Do not start to learn a bad habit, start to set up fake structures,don’t start to do unlawful registration, don’t start to fragment yourselves, don’t start talking about ethnicity. So we keep educating our people.
“And if you go around the state, you will see a lot of tension because when they come and they say, oh, we want to move into a bigger sectariat, we need to buy this and that, people say, no, that’s not what we need in this party, may be you should keep your money to yourself,” Adebayo said on the News Central breakfast show earlier today.
Continuing, he said: “You saw that there was a press conference by all our state chairmen where they said, look, you guys who are coming newly should study our ideology, don’t try to impose anything on us. We don’t need anything from you, just join the party and start behaving well.
“We don’t want them to come and change us, we want to change them and we don’t want to be used for things that are not in the interest of the people.
“You remember in my speech which went viral last week on my wife’s 50th birthday, I said, if you have arrangements in your former political party, if you were a former supporter of President Tinubu and you had your conspiracy against the people and you promised your own reward for that and they didn’t give it to you, that is not the basis to come to the SDP, and if you come to the sdp, don’t tell us, we don’t want to know, we’re not interested in it.”
Asked if the policy of the current administration is yielding any result, he responded that;
“It is known that we are are opposed to President Tinubu vehemently on policy. We do not have a history with him, we have no understanding with him. When they won the election and they were offering us positions, we did not accept, we did not dramatise it, we just told them sorry keep your position to yourself, run your government, we will be here offering alternative policies.
“The same thing with the coalition we are talking with the people. What we are saying is if you plan something out there on how to wrest power, don’t come to us. If you want to wrest power for the benefit of the people, you can start talking to us on what you are going to do differently.
“Start talking to us about how you are going to show to the people that you are repentant and you are accountable for your past actions, past words, past mistakes, past misgovernance.
“Once you do all of that, you can then join our party, grow in the structure and when we see that you have behaved very well, maybe not in this election, maybe in future election, we will start to feature you,” he explained