Prince Adebayo adopts frugality as campaign strategy

Emmanuel Alfred

It is campaign season and political parties are spending a lot of money to showcase their candidacy but what does this mean for the development of the country?

The Presidential Candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Prince Adewole Adebayo comes with a different kind of system in campaigning which is worthy of emulation.

It is a system that seeks to reduce excessive spending by political parties and politicians during campaigns and later on in government offices.

“In Nigeria, we are used to seeing the same set of crowds being rented for different parties to give a false sense of popularity. This cost a lot of money which should not be so” Prince Adebayo
Modern democracy is more like an evangelism where you move from door to door convincing the voters on why you should get their votes.
The SDP which is the longest serving Party in the country has a different principle and it was first adopted by the Late M. K. Abiola during the 1993 Elections.

It is a system built on community based campaigns where people are invited to attend Town Hall meetings and rallies to give them a chance to air their thoughts on the issues and the politicians.
“We are not carrying out expensive and wasteful campaigns because it results in selling out the Presidency and other offices.” Prince Adebayo
Let us understand the fact that any politician or political party that uses money to buy the votes of the people will enter the public office with an entitled mentality.
He will want to recoup the money spent which will lead to pilfering and mismanagement of resources. He will also will want to reward the financiers of his campaign thereby resulting in the country not enjoying the dividends of office.
Prince Adebayo and the SDP believe in politics with values because “every voter in each of the 176, 180 polling units in the country must know what you stand for and your promises. This will help them make informed decisions about you at the day of elections.”

This makes perfect sense because every citizen that is involved in voting should know about the candidates and know their abilities and what they bring to the table.

The SDP is the only party where people in the riverine areas are using canoes and boats to campaign and people in the northern region are using camels and donkeys with others trekking to rallies and Town Halls.

They also believe that the citizens should take charge of grassroot support by mapping out strategies themselves making it easier to assess them.
“There is no Senatorial District that we don’t have a Campaign Team because we run an assymetric campaign. That is why you haven’t heard that any State Chairman has been expelled or a Youth Leader has absconded with our money.”
This system allows people in the community to raise their resources within themselves and working within the budget, helping them to become directly involved and monitor how monies are expended.
“We are an opposition that is fighting people who don’t believe in modern politics and we can’t fight them using money. That will mean doing the same thing we are kicking against and you can’t say you want to eradicate corruption but you are busy running expensive campaigns.” He added

The SDP believes that the political space will be safe if campaigns are kept modest by allowing people run it in their communities which will in turn help the government focus on social investments when in office and not focus on repaying rich sponsors.