The 2023 presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Adewole Adebayo, said getting the former Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, to dump the All Progressives Congress (APC) and join SDP took some engagements.
Naija News reports that on Monday, March 10, 2025, El-Rufai, a northern political heavyweight and ally of President Bola Tinubu, announced his defection from the ruling party to one of the opposition parties, the SDP.
The former governor said the APC has strayed from the dreams and vision of its founding fathers.
In an interview on Channels Television on Tuesday, March 11, 2025, Adebayo extolled El-Rufai’s intellectual capacity but noted that the former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) has some weaknesses to work on.
According to Adebayo, the SDP will not accept some ideas that El-Rufai has used over the years.
He said, “The issue is that I see him as an asset, as a hard-working person and he has verifiable, and measurable track record of public performance,” the SDP chieftain said on Channels Television’s The Morning Brief breakfast programme on Tuesday.
“What I believe is that he has his weaknesses which he needs to work on but I am not his mentor or therapist.
“What I know is that Nigerians have a bird’s eye view of El-Rufai, they will consider some of the comments that he’s made and some other aspects and overall, Nigerians will say: ‘Here is a very good public servant.
“You can accuse El-Rufai of anything but you cannot accuse him of lack of ideas. I can just say that he joined a lousy group of people and then he’s learned his lessons now but it doesn’t mean that there are not people in APC who are intellectually gifted and who, in different circumstances would have done better.
“I was describing them as a group; it doesn’t mean that there are no intellectuals inside but I disagree with their mission and I disagree with the way they use talents, and I was also surprised that they couldn’t live with him for that long.
“The idea of the SDP is that if you are going to be in charge of Nigeria, you need to persuade people; El-Rufai did not run or crash into our party; we had discussions with him, we had ideological interactions, and even now, there are works in progress – some of his ideas that he is used to over the years, the SDP will not accept, and we are working on that.
“But my welcome note to him is to say: this is the place you can come to; not that he is fit for every job in the SDP, or every position in the SDP but with time, because he has intellectual curiosity, he has the ability to test ideas and he knows that we are very strong when it comes to social services and social intervention; we don’t believe that you have to privatise everything – we believe that some should be left to the government.”
