Reported by: Oahimire Omone Precious | Edited by: Oravbiere Osayomore Promise.
The presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Prince Adewole Adebayo, has delivered a blistering verdict on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s performance as commander‑in‑chief, accusing him of failing to lead the armed forces, neglecting actionable intelligence, and diverting his security advisers into partisan politics at a time when bandits have turned rural communities into killing fields. In an interview on Sunday, 31 May 2026, Adebayo said the president had shown “woeful failure” in his constitutional duty to protect Nigerians and had spent too much time on political calculations while insecurity spiraled out of control.
“It’s a failure of President Tinubu as commander‑in‑chief; he failed woefully to lead the armed forces correctly; he failed woefully to pay attention to intelligence,” Adebayo told Channels Television’s Sunday Politics. “He is spending too much time on politics and diverting the attention of security advisers into helping him with his politics.” The SDP candidate, who also flew the party’s flag in the 2023 general election, insisted that the president’s reaction to the security crisis had been consistently late and ineffective, with military deployments arriving only after bandits had already carried out attacks and fled.
Adebayo’s broadside came less than 48 hours after the Defence Minister, General Christopher Musa, rated the Tinubu administration’s security performance at 65 to 70 percent, a claim that drew immediate scorn from opposition figures and civil society groups. The SDP candidate dismissed such assessments as disconnected from reality, pointing to the two‑week‑old mass abduction of 46 pupils, students and teachers from three schools in Oyo State, the recent killing of two local government officials in Zamfara, and the relentless attacks on farming communities across the North‑West. “The fact of the matter is that no one’s life is better off except those who are in government,” Adebayo said. “Even you asking the question knows that your life is no better off in terms of all the economic indicators. I know that my life is not better off, and those of my neighbours are not better off.”
The SDP presidential candidate, who formally submitted his name to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) earlier this month after emerging from the party’s national convention and presidential primary in Bauchi State, framed his criticism as part of a broader indictment of the ruling party’s governance record. He argued that the All Progressives Congress (APC) could not blame previous administrations for the country’s woes, as the party had been in power since 2015. “One, that four years ago or three years ago, 2023 that we’re talking about, all the grim pictures and the bleak statistics that Mr Morka referred to were grim pictures and horror movies — they were written after eight years of APC in government,” he said, responding to APC spokesman Felix Morka, who had appeared on the same programme to defend the administration’s record.
On the programme, Morka had argued that Nigerians were “more hopeful” and that the president had tackled “the root causes of all of those distortions—whether it was the fuel subsidy or whether it was the crazy arbitrage in the foreign exchange system.” He also cited the improvement in foreign reserves from $3 billion to nearly $50 billion as evidence of growing international confidence. Adebayo, however, rejected the comparison, insisting that macroeconomic numbers meant nothing to families who could not afford food, school fees or healthcare. He also accused the president of trying to dominate the political space and weaken opposition parties, warning of “a danger of one‑man rule.”
Adebayo’s criticism comes at a time when the SDP itself has been engulfed in a leadership crisis. A faction loyal to the reinstated National Chairman, Shehu Gabam, expelled Adebayo and 12 other key party figures on 20 May 2026, even as the INEC‑recognised structure continued to recognise him as the party’s presidential candidate. Despite the internal turmoil, Adebayo has remained defiant, insisting that the SDP remains a unified platform capable of offering Nigerians a credible alternative to the APC. He has pledged to tackle corruption, insecurity and poverty head‑on, promising that under an SDP government, “the era of corruption ends on day one.”
As the 2027 election cycle gathers momentum, Adebayo’s direct attacks on the president’s handling of the armed forces and intelligence apparatus have set the tone for what promises to be a fiercely contested race. The SDP candidate, who has consistently argued that security demands “realism and data‑driven planning, not optimism,” has positioned himself as the most strident critic of the administration’s counter‑insurgency strategy. Whether his critique will resonate with a weary electorate remains to be seen, but for the families of the 46 abducted pupils and teachers in Oyo State, and for the countless other Nigerians who have lost loved ones to banditry, the question is no longer about political rhetoric, but about whether any leader can finally turn the tide of violence.
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