By Sunday Ani
Social Democratic Party (SDP) presidential candidate, Prince Adewole Adebayo has said it would have been scandalous to have the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu as a member of the third force, just as he insisted that the candidate of Labour Party, Peter Obi also cannot be a third force.
Adebayo who insisted that Tinubu is part of the problems plaguing the country and it could have been disastrous if he was admitted as third simply because he was having problems with his party, the APC.
He said: “Imagine if we had gone to choose Bola Tinubu and we still pretend to be a Third Force; that would be a scandal because he is part of the APC. He is part of the problem and he cannot say because he is having a problem in his party, one week later, he has become a Third Force.”
He also stated that could also not be Third Force because he was a member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) before he was disappointed. “Peter Obi is not Third Force. He is a nice guy; I don’t have any problem with him but he is not Third Force. He is a PDP man who got disappointed in his former party’s primary election. The Labour Party cannot lead the Third Force because the person they chose is not a Third Force person, he’s a PDP person,” he insisted.
Adebayo noted that the Third Force is a group of people who are disappointed with the way and manner the two mainstream political parties, APC and PDP, have ruled the country, and is looking for an alternative, which the SDP represents. “The Third Force is where the majority of Nigerians who are disappointed with the APC and PDP congregate to take back Nigeria from bad leaders and move it forward. Before you got disappointed personally, you would have chosen to exit the two parties and be on the Third Force and try to build a new platform. You cannot just crash into a Third Force because you were kicked out of your conservative or mainstream politics. The Third Force is not for someone who is trying to look or go shopping for tickets, you have to belong to that movement right from the outset,” he stated.
He noted that SDP remains the Third Force and given his capacity and capability on issues, he remains the best man for the job. “I have been an effective chief executive all my working life; so the issue of whether I can be a Commander in Chief, whether I understand security and understand the safety of people, or whether I can manage Nigeria’s critical security infrastructure, engage in diplomacy shouldn’t even arise. I have the energy, the vigour, the intellect, the compassion and the honesty to manage the country’s resources very well. Those are the things that people should look at and I think I have all those and I have demonstrated that in my life,” he said