Tinubu Risks Impeachment Over Unconstitutional Vacation, Says SDP’s Adewole Adebayo
The Presidential Candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Prince Adewole Adebayo, has called for the immediate impeachment of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, accusing him of breaching the 1999 Constitution by overstaying his vacation abroad without formally transferring power to the Vice President.
In a fierce press statement released on Wednesday by the Adewole Adebayo-Bugaje Presidential Campaign Council, the opposition camp described the President’s prolonged absence as a “reckless abandonment of constitutional duty.” The council expressed deep concern that both the President and Vice President have left the country simultaneously, leaving Nigeria’s 200 million citizens without a constitutionally empowered leader in residence.
According to the statement signed by the Council’s Director of Communications, Comrade Mark Adebayo, President Tinubu’s failure to transmit a written declaration to the National Assembly violates Section 145 (1) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended).
“A country cannot be run like a private estate or an absentee-landlord enterprise,” Prince Adebayo stated. “When a President treats the grundnorm of our democracy with contempt by abandoning his post without transmitting power, he abdicates his legitimacy to govern. This is a severe infraction, and the constitutional remedy for such a breach is clear: impeachment!”
Criticisms of the National Assembly
The campaign council did not spare the legislature, labeling the current National Assembly a “rubber-stamp” body that has failed its oversight duties. Adebayo asserted that under normal democratic circumstances, lawmakers would have already initiated impeachment proceedings against the President for gross misconduct. Instead, he claimed, the legislature has become “totally unuseful” for democratic checks and balances, operating merely as an extension of the executive arm.
The SDP candidate contrasted Tinubu’s current absence with the administrative precedents of former President Muhammadu Buhari, who formally transmitted power to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo whenever he traveled abroad for vacation or medical leave. Adebayo warned that leaving a nation facing severe economic instability and complex security challenges leaderless creates a dangerous vacuum that compromises national sovereignty.
End to Medical Tourism
Looking ahead to his governance blueprint, Prince Adebayo promised a massive overhaul of Nigeria’s healthcare sector to end the culture of government officials seeking treatment abroad.
“Under my watch, medical tourism by public office holders would significantly reduce or fizzle out entirely,” Adebayo promised, vowing to upgrade domestic health institutions with “uncompromising alacrity.” He added that under his administration, any public official choosing to undergo medical treatment abroad would be forced to do so entirely at their own expense.
The campaign council concluded by calling on civil society organizations, constitutional lawyers, and the Nigerian public to speak out against the current administration’s actions to protect the integrity of the nation’s democracy.
