Adedayo Adeyeye: A Committed Loyalist

The Chairman of the Nigerian Ports Authority, Adedayo Adeyeye, is unapologetic about his unflinching support for the president, Bola Tinubu. As a second-term bid looms, he is again leading the campaign through his SWAGA group, reports Vanessa Obioha

No one seems more assured of President Bola Tinubu’s ability to turn the economy into a thriving one than Senator Adedayo Adeyeye. Listen to him for a few minutes and you begin to understand why he believes the president is the right man to steer the country toward the future Nigerians deserve.

That conviction was demonstrated recently at a press briefing in Lagos, where Adeyeye, a former senator and current NPA chairman, unveiled the next agenda for the South-West Agenda for Asiwaju (SWAGA) — the political movement he founded in 2020. In measured but emphatic tones, he reeled off what he sees as the president’s achievements over two years, from infrastructure development to investment in education, before declaring that Tinubu would win a landslide in 2027, no matter what his critics say.

The next time we met Adeyeye, he was seated on a sofa in his hotel suite, leaning back with ease. His assistants lingered, listening closely; now and then he turned to them to confirm a detail or memory. When he wanted to drive home a point, Adeyeye leaned forward, hands in motion as his voice cadence gained momentum. Once the point was made, he settled back again, palms resting lightly and reassuringly on the sofa, his gaze steady, as if inviting the next question.  Throughout our conversation, the politician never once lost the thread of his arguments. Even when he digressed into other matters, his thoughts would find their way back, unerringly, to where they began.

Listening to him was like listening to someone who had always walked in step with time. Every conviction was backed by an anecdote, drawn from his own encounters. For instance, when he spoke about the removal of fuel subsidy – a move by the president that many found disheartening and which has driven up the cost of transportation and food – Adeyeye illustrated this with a recent trip to Ghana.

“I was in Lagos when someone suggested I spend my Easter in Ghana,” he recalled. “I called my wife, who was in Abuja, and asked her to pack a few clothes and join me in Lagos.”

They hired a cab for the journey, and almost immediately after crossing the Nigerian border, he noticed bottles of petrol lined up on roadside tables, sold like bottled water.

“I asked the driver and he told me that that was how they sell petrol there.”

In Port Novo, he stopped at a petrol station for snacks, only to find it hadn’t dispensed fuel in five years. The supermarket inside was the only part still in operation.

“All the petrol stations in Benin Republic, none of them were functioning, not one. So I told my wife to see what was going on in this country and note it.”

The situation was the same when they got to Togo and even Ghana. The filling stations were either shut or selling at prices that made Nigeria’s fuel seem impossibly cheap.

“In Ghana, they were selling fuel at N990 at that time while in Nigeria it was N180,” he said. “I told my wife to see the price. And Nigeria is selling at a lower price, is it possible? Are we not deceiving ourselves? Some of them weren’t even buying from their own countries but from Nigerians who smuggled fuel to them.

“With what I saw in Ghana, Togo and Benin Republic, fuel subsidies were not sustainable. If the economy must move forward, it must be realistic. That was the situation President Tinubu met on ground.”

Adeyeye does not ignore the hardships caused by the subsidy removal. “Of course, prices go up because of the increased cost of transportation,” he said. “That’s what led to food inflation, especially in urban areas. But it’s coming down, and the government is finding a remedy. I commend President Tinubu for taking that decision on his first day, because if he didn’t, we would still be in a quagmire.” In his view, the advantages outweigh the drawbacks.

There is also buoyant revenue for state governments.

“State governments that were going to run bankrupt are now buoyant. Since 1999, they have never had it better. There is more money available to state governors now. “Their revenue has tripled. No state government is complaining. Have you heard any governor say he doesn’t have money? Some of them don’t know what to do with the money. They are wasting it. It’s unfortunate. But some governors are doing well, and when you see what they have achieved, you may want to ask what the others are doing.

“I want journalists to hold these governors accountable. A lot of money is being wasted in the system. The president has created a system whereby all the tiers of government can function effectively. He has not made any effort to tamper with the federal allocation account. He has allowed the system to flow normally, according to the way it has been prescribed by the constitution. So the state governments are in the best of days, but what we now need is to hold them accountable, and ask them to perform at the same level in which the federal government is performing.”

The ability to fund major projects like coastal roads and airport upgrades is all linked to the fuel subsidy removal.

“If fuel subsidies had not been removed, where would we find the money to do coastal roads? Where will we find the money to do all these major legacy projects, road construction going around the country? Where will we find the money to say, ‘tear down that airport, we will build another one?”

He also credits the president for floating the Naira, which he believes has curbed elite extravagance, and for reintroducing government-backed scholarships through the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND). “Do you see the video of university students dancing when they received their NELFUND in Sokoto? That was how I felt back in the day,” he said, recalling his own admission to university in the 1970s when education was free.

Born in 1957 in Ise-Ekiti to the royal family of Oba David Opeyemi Adeyeye, Agunsoye II, the Arinjale of Ise Ekiti, and Olori Mary Ojulege Adeyeye, a princess of Are, Ikere-Ekiti, he remembers when the Western Region offered generous scholarships to students. “If you say you didn’t go to university in the ’70s because your father was poor, it’s a lie,” he said. “It was free. Daily Times used to publish the names of students offered admission. There was no JAMB then, no lobbying.”

He recalled his own experience that time, when he was helping one of his sisters run a bar in Ibadan.

“I had just landed a job when my other sister came and told me that my name was on the admission list that had been published,” he said. “It was a Saturday, and I was supposed to start work on Monday. I disputed the news because I wanted the job. I even offered to defer my admission to the following year so I could work, but they refused. I was offered political science.

“How much were they asking us to deposit then? N70. After that, the Western Region would give you N300. This was at a time when you could eat with 50 kobo. You couldn’t even spend all your money — the federal government would still give you N500. And that,” he added, “is what Asiwaju is bringing back.”

For Adeyeye, these interventions in education are part of tackling insecurity at its roots. “If you reduce out-of-school children, especially almajiris, you cut off a ready source of recruits for banditry and terrorism,” he argued.

With the 2027 elections just less than two years away, Adeyeye sees three pillars determining the outcome: security, economy, and unity. On all three, he believes the president is on the right track.

And with SWAGA back in motion, he is determined to spread that message across the country.  No opposition, he believes, will stop the president’s second-term bid.

“Asiwaju will win more votes in 2027,” he said with quiet certainty.