₦airaland Forum

A key member of the opposition coalition, Salihu Mohammed Lukman, has cautioned the Senator David Mark-led national leadership of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) against god-fatherism and imposition of candidates ahead of the 2027 general elections.

Lukman, a former national vice chairman (North West) of the All Progressives Congress (APC), in a statement on Tuesday, said some ADC leaders had started behaving as if the 2027 elections are already won.

Daily Trust reports that a coalition of opposition leaders comprising former Vice President Atiku Abubakar; former governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai; former governor of Rivers State, Rotimi Amaechi and many other bigwigs recently adopted the ADC as platform to challenge the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2027 general elections.

Under the arrangement, the ADC adopted Mark and former Interior Minister, Rauf Aregbesola, as interim national chairman and secretary respectively.
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But in his statement titled, “ADC and the Prospect of Internal Democracy”, Lukman said when the national leadership positions of ADC were shared to zones, the coalition leaders who were only nominees into the committee that negotiated the sharing arrangement, promoted themselves into becoming the leaders of their zones.

Lukman, a former Director General of the Progressive Governors Forum (PGF), said, “The truth is that the negative side of almost all our opposition political leaders is already at play.

“Many are taking steps to manipulate the process of leadership reformation of the ADC. Loyalists are being promoted in a manner that suggest perhaps the 2027 elections is already won.

“The struggle to ensure that loyalists of leaders emerged as the leaders of the reformed ADC to some extent disregard the consideration for intellectual capacity, integrity, performance track records, name recognition across all demographics, respect in community and political circles, independent mindedness and general acceptability to all or majority of stakeholders, which we agreed to.

“We must caution our leaders, Nigerians will not be deceived by any cosmetic design of presenting another party, which is only a duplicated copy of our old parties. With the way things are going, coalition leaders will emerge as godfathers, and the next thing is that they will impose their surrogates at all levels as leaders of the ADC.

“This will naturally be followed by anointing preferred candidates for 2027 elections. Therefore, the first test of Senator Mark’s leadership of the party is the extent to which he can mitigate all these and ensure that ADC is not a party that will be controlled by godfathers.”

Weloveyou:
All this dramas from APC are mind games
I Love adc strategy

Weloveyou:
All this dramas from APC are mind games
I Love adc strategy

Ofunaofu:
This is putting the ADC coalition on its toes so that it doesn't toe the path of a certain party led by a D-lord, which lacks internal democracy and has had four national chairmen in two years.

jamafa:
DX one dey always say trash 😂

At d end, unah go complain of rigging again 😂

emkz:
It would seem as if the coalition leaders are working underground to do grassroots mobilization.

But this is not the case.

Where are the national offices of ADC? Where are the state offices of ADC?

APC National chairman and secretary are in Abuja. Aregbesola ADC national secretary is in Osun. No one knows where David Mark is. Atiku's whereabouts are unknown. The ADC publicity secretary has lost steam for releasing careless and myopic statements daily.

ADC has not shown seriousness in building the party. They are focused on the presidential ticket. Won't governors run in ADC? Councilors?

How will ADC be funded? One person cannot fund it. There is palpable fear. Without funding, ADC cannot take root.

Atiku might be regretting jumping away from PDP. He might have finally retired himself from politics.