‘We won’t allow El-Rufai hijack our party’ – SDP’s presidential candidate warns

Adewole Adebayo, the 2023 presidential candidate for the Social Democratic Party (SDP) has said that the party leadership would not sit back and allow Nasir El-Rufai and other new decampees to hijack the party.

Adebayo said that El-Rufai and other members of the opposition parties who joined the SDP might have defected to use the party as a vehicle for their personal political fights.

Speaking during the 50th birthday celebration of his wife, Queen Lilian, Adebayo explained that some of these opposition leaders are aggrieved with President Bola Tinubu and are only looking for platforms to dish out their political vendetta on the ruling party.

He said it is important to make these opposition members who recently joined the SDP that the party is not a “getaway car for a conspiracy and robbery”.

Reiterating that he was still in the race for the 2027 presidential election, Adebayo said the party and its members are watching the new members for now.

“Of course, my party knows that I’m running for the 2027 election. As for the coalition, we are listening to them. We don’t want to be a getaway car for a conspiracy and robbery we did not plan. That’s not available.

“If the coalition is for the Nigerian people, the SDP is available. But if it is just a crime centre for disappointed Tinubu followers, they should go back to him and resolve their differences there. Don’t come to SDP to borrow us for a fight we are not involved in,” Adebayo said.