 presidential candidate in the 2023 elections, Prince Adewole Adebayo, has accused President Bola){kind=link}
Social Democratic Party (SDP) presidential candidate in the 2023 elections, Prince Adewole Adebayo, has accused President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of losing control of his government amid the worsening security situation across the country.
Adebayo made the allegation on Tuesday during an appearance on Politics Today, a Channels Television programme monitored by the Nigerian Tribune.
He said the persistent wave of violent crimes shows a government either overwhelmed or unwilling to confront the crisis head-on.
According to him, Nigeria has the resources and institutions to curb insecurity but lacks the sincerity and political will to act.
“The government needs to come out and confess the truth that they are enabling this insecurity, and they cannot pretend that they don’t have all the tools that it takes to tackle insecurity.
“The first enemy of government is government. The first enemy of the people is the government. You cannot commit a crime and last one week or one month, if you don’t have government people cooperating with you”, he noted.
Adebayo wondered how huge ransom payments move through the financial system without triggering security scrutiny, insisting that President Tinubu must immediately overhaul the nation’s security structure.
“I cannot go now to the bank manager in my bank and say to them that I want to withdraw 6 million naira; they will not answer me—(calling the) EFCC, money laundering.
“But people are paying millions of naira in ransom. The people collecting the ransom are not worried about where they are carrying the money to.
“What I am letting you know is that President Tinubu, in my own humble view, has lost control of his government and he is flailing around—he needs to put his hands together, organise his government, and make sure that he understands that the police cover this country effectively because every local government in Nigeria has a police division,” he said.
He argued that every local government area in the country is equipped with at least one police division, yet these structures are not being deployed for effective response.
He questioned the contradiction between the government’s capacity to arrest critics swiftly and its alleged inability to confront armed groups.
“There is a DPO; even in some large or massively populated local governments, you have more than one division of police there.
“Are you telling me that in Eruku, in Isapa and in all those places, there is no division there? Are you saying that if there is a youth corps member in Eruku criticising the APC or the government, they will not go and arrest the person?
“This is a government that could capture somebody in Nairobi, Kenya and bring him here for trial and sentence the person, but they cannot capture people who are going around.
“How do you go and carry hundreds of people? Have you been a nursery school teacher before? To get 35 children to cooperate with you in the class, is it easy? How will you carry 35 people?” he said.
Adebayo urged the President to reorganise the nation’s security framework without delay, warning that the current arrangement cannot deliver timely intervention.
He criticised what he described as misplaced operational priorities and expressed concern over the ease with which armed groups conduct mass abductions.
The SDP chieftain called for honesty, accountability and firm leadership, insisting that Nigerians deserve protection from the expanding climate of fear.