•Prince Adewole Adebayo
Presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party, SDP, Prince Adewole Adebayo, has declared that an SDP-led administration will end the current system where ordinary citizens subsidise the lavish lifestyles of public officials.
Speaking through a press release signed by Comrade Mark Adebayo, Chief Media and Communications Advisor of the Adebayo-Bugaje Presidential Campaign, the SDP candidate said his government will redirect trillions of Naira currently wasted on luxury items into education, healthcare and critical infrastructure.
“We will stop Nigerians from subsidizing the lavish lifestyles of politicians,” Adebayo stated.
He stressed that “the widespread economic hardship across the country is not due to a lack of resources but rather the result of a ruling class that prioritizes institutionalized waste over human capital development.”
Adebayo critiqued the current political culture, noting that “successive budgets have systematically funnelled enormous public capital into executive comforts while millions of families deal with inflation, fuel duty increases, and crumbling social services.”
Citing fiscal estimates from civil society tracking reports, budget analyses and state-level disclosures, the campaign said the cost of political opulence runs into multiple trillions of Naira annually.
According to the statement, recent federal reviews indicate that nearly ₦1 trillion is regularly earmarked or spent across cycles on luxury utility vehicles, presidential fleet upgrades, State House renovations, and loosely defined regional empowerment schemes for political aides.
It added that mid-2026 budget implementation data shows that just 33 state governments expended over $300 million, about ₦410 billion, on governors’ offices, Government Houses and executive travels within six months, pointing to an annual state-level lifestyle drain exceeding ₦1 Trillion across all 36 states.
“If what we read from independent tracking of state and federal agencies by concerned NGOs and experts are of any substance, we consider consistent multi-billion Naira deviations for luxury armor vehicles, such as recent single-agency procurements exceeding ₦10 Billion for official management fleets, alongside state governments buying luxury vehicles entirely outside standard appropriation bills as criminal wastes in the midst of mass suffering induced by the anti-people policies of the current APC administration,” the statement said.
Adebayo emphasised that under an SDP administration, these multi-trillion Naira leakages will be completely plugged.
He maintained that four years is sufficient for a determined, transparent leader to restructure public finances, eliminate unconstitutional vehicle allowances and deliver functional infrastructure, matching historical benchmarks of focused governance in Nigeria.
The SDP candidate urged Nigerians to reject the cycle of voting for leaders who treat public resources as personal accounts, reaffirming the party’s commitment to an economic system focused on public welfare, domestic production and transparent service delivery.
