SDP’s Agunloye Clarifies Party’s Approach To New Members Amid Leadership Concerns

The National Secretary of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Olu Agunloye, has addressed the growing influx of new members, including high-profile politicians, into the party.

He emphasized that while the SDP is open to new members, the party will not rush to reshuffle its leadership to accommodate them.

In an interview with Punch, Agunloye stated, “It will happen, but not now. Otherwise, you may have a convention every week or every month because people are joining—important people are joining, people whose names are known are joining, and people whose names are not known are also joining.”

The SDP has recently seen a surge of political figures from other parties seeking a platform ahead of the 2027 elections.

However, Agunloye made it clear that while the party welcomes these new members, they are primarily joining to secure a viable election platform and not necessarily to take over the party’s leadership.

Agunloye explained, “Their primary aim is to win elections. “A convention for accommodating people into the leadership of the party is not why they joined. They joined because they wanted to win elections. Although there may be one or two people who joined to muscle down the party, that is not why the majority joined. The drive is about winning.”

He acknowledged that some defectors might have entered the SDP with aspirations to gain leadership positions, but he stressed that this was not the primary reason the majority of new members joined the party.

The main drive, he said, was to find a platform where they would not face the same challenges and frustrations they encountered in their previous political affiliations.

Agunloye also cautioned that mishandling the integration of new members could lead to instability within the party, which would ultimately hinder the SDP’s ability to succeed in upcoming elections.

He said, “The struggle for party leadership is not unexpected, but it is part of the issues we must handle properly. Otherwise, their coming will become counterproductive. Two things would have been responsible for people changing parties and rushing into another: either they were not treated well in their former party, or they joined hoping that the SDP would provide a better platform to achieve their goals. If we fail to provide that, they may leave.”

Despite internal pressures surrounding the integration of new members, Agunloye reiterated that the SDP remains committed to building a broad-based political movement in preparation for the 2027 elections.

He concluded, “We are open to new members, but we must ensure that the influx does not disrupt our unity and focus on achieving electoral success.”