The Social Democratic Party (SDP) has vowed to rescue Nigeria from poverty and insecurity if elected in the 2027 presidential election.
The SDP’s presidential candidate, Adewole Adebayo, stated this at the party’s September national convention, entitled, “Consolidating the blueprint for a new Nigeria to secure our homeland and defeat poverty”, on Wednesday in Abuja.
He maintained that Nigeria’s immense natural resources were divinely provided to guarantee prosperity for the country.
”Our intention is known to God, and it’s simply that we will get Nigerians to accept that we don’t desire to be poor, and we don’t desire to die of insecurity. Everything we need to succeed is already here,” he said.
Adebayo emphasised that the SDP stood apart from other opposition parties because its members were driven by collective nation-building and not personal self-glorification.
He drew a historical parallel with the aborted 1993 presidential election widely believed to have been won by the late MKO Abiola, noting that the poverty the party fought to defeat decades ago had since grown and consumed citizens.
”The poverty that SDP fought with Nigerians’ mandate to defeat and eradicate in 1993, that poverty has grown up and has consumed babies,” he stated, stressing the urgent need for a unified national rescue mission.
The presidential candidate argued that Nigeria’s underdevelopment was not a result of a scarcity of natural wealth but a failure of visionary governance.
”If God wanted us to be poor, he would not deposit under us sufficient minerals that no civilisation in human history had got before,” Adebayo asserted.
He outlined a grassroots strategy focused on door-to-door mobilisation to win the hearts and minds of everyday citizens.
Adebayo urged party members to reject politics driven by personal enrichment and instead focus on uniting the country ahead of the upcoming elections.
The party’s vice-presidential candidate, Usman Bugaje, reinforced the SDP’s reformist stance.
Bugaje warned that the country might face critical threats if citizens continued to value transactional “big man” politics over genuine structural change.
”People should be here not because they want money; people should be here because they want this ten-page change,” Bugaje stated.
