Newly appointed interim National Publicity Secretary of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) and former Minister of Youth and Sports Development, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, is certainly a multi-talented man on a steady transition to the ladder of success in building himself into a sellable brand.

Speaking with Saturday Sun in Abuja, Abdullahi x-rayed why the ADC will wrest the presidential seat from the clutches of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the forthcoming 2027 general elections.

He argued that the total administrative collapse in the country, excruciating pain, suffering and the escalating insecurity across the country under the APC-led government gave rise to the coalition to rescue the country.

The question on the lips of every Nigerian is where will the coalition under the ADC platform take the country to?

The immediate concern of the coalition is to save the country. We have been taking through so many cycles of disappointments and missed opportunities that there is a tendency for Nigerians to say we have seen all this before.

But the reality is that there are some things that happened in the last one and a half years that we have not seen before, which constitute existential threat to this country.

The last time we saw a situation where opposition parties are deliberately undermined to create space for the incumbent was during Sani Abacha. But in a democracy, 1999 to 2023, we did not see that situation. Labour Party (LP) is in crisis, the NNPP is in crisis, the PDP is in crisis, the SDP is in crisis, and every other party is in crisis.

Yes, in fairness, we cannot say this crisis is solely the fault of the ruling party, but the reality is that the ruling party has actively undermined every single opposition party, especially the PDP. The PDP is almost more or less dead today, because the ruling party cannot stand to have PDP survive as a political party.

That is why, when Minister Nyesom Wike said that the people from the coalition are just angry people, mentioning their names and criticising them, he didn’t realise the role he played in bringing about this coalition. He played an active role, because if he had let go and allowed the PDP to survive, the majority of the people in the coalition today would probably not have joined.

Senator David Mark, who leads the coalition today, is a thoroughbred PDP man, Senator Ben Obi, Akobudu, Liyel Imoke, Sule Lamido, Adamu Waziri, we can go on and on, are people who have never been to any other party in their lives but the PDP.

What makes a man to say that he will never enter his father’s house again must be something very serious. So, for these people to say, we are leaving means that something was wrong. If Minister Wike was willing to compromise and say, let us allow the survival of our party. But he has rather behaved in a way that made people suggest that he must destroy PDP.

I don’t know if that is true or not, but there are indications that things have happened along that line. What the coalition is doing, which is the major objective of the ADC, is to save the country’s democracy. We don’t allow a situation where Nigerians will arrive at 2027 and the only option will be left to them is no option.

That is not democracy. That is not what people who fought for this democracy envisaged. The coalition’s principal duty is to save Nigeria’s democracy by giving people at least one alternative. Let the ideas compete, let the APC market its credentials of over four years when the time comes.

Let the coalition show what we can do better and differently, and let Nigerians decide. That is democracy. It doesn’t call for a fight; it doesn’t call for all this name-calling and abusing people. It doesn’t call for all that.

The second issue is that the very institution that defines democratic rule is the National Assembly. In the military rule, there is a judiciary and an executive. The only thing missing and which makes it a dictatorship, is the legislature. When there is no National Assembly, there is no democracy because the executive authority is too powerful to be left unchecked.

The framers of our Constitution, the founding fathers of this country, built in the National Assembly to do what to serve as a check on excessive use of presidential or executive authorities. To a varying degree, they have played this role since 1999, the beginning of this fourth republic, until 2023.

Today, we have a National Assembly that is acting as cheerleaders to the executive, a National Assembly clapping for the executive at every time, dancing for the executive, and wagging its tail at the executive. That is not what the National Assembly is meant to do.

The National Assembly principle is that of embedded autonomy. You cooperate when it is necessary, but ensure that the government does the right thing. It is not adversarial. You don’t have to be fighting the government, but you have to be there to tell the president you cannot do this.

I will give you one example. It is an extreme necessity for a federal government to truncate democracy in the state. The provision in the Constitution is for the President to declare a state of emergency, but the question of whether the President has the power to remove a sitting governor in the process or not is left for lawyers to debate.

What the Constitution is clear about is that 2/3 majority of the members of the entire National Assembly who are present must vote for it. Yet this decision was taken by a voice vote. By so doing, it is difficult for this National Assembly to exonerate itself from the accusation of undermining Nigeria’s democracy. So, that is what happens when you have a National Assembly that is completely sold and supplied to the executive power.

The second example is that the hardship in this country today is not just happening by chance. N100,000 is now used like N10,000. The value of money is the ability to use less to get more. It doesn’t matter whether I give you N10 million per month. What matters is what that N10 million can do for you. Yes, whether it can feed your family and take you to work and back.

It doesn’t matter whether I am paying you N70,000 minimum wage or N200,000 minimum wage, as long as it was just a piece of paper. Money is what it can buy. The costs of energy alone, I am not talking about those who have cars alone, because there are also those who use public transportation, have wiped out whatever amount of money is paid. These were pivotal policies. I am not an economist and cannot argue whether those policies are good or bad or unnecessary.

The only measure of it is how it impacts the people. Any policy that sends the majority of people into more poverty and spreads pain ought to be carefully examined and deeply interrogated. That interrogation should happen at the National Assembly.

A lawmaker should be able to get up to say, No, this policy will destroy the livelihood of my constituents and will affect my people. That is why he is in Abuja. But if he is not able to do that as a result of institutional compromise or any other reason, then he subverts his authority as a representative of his people.

Those are the two things. The rest are implied. You cannot have a situation today where almost every part of the country is insecure. We are not at war, but more people are dying in this country than countries that are actually at war. I am not saying that this federal government caused it, but what I am saying is that Nigerians are more afraid than they were three years ago.

What I expect is a situation where the Nigerian government will say, this is what we are doing about insecurity, and Nigerians can say, you are actually working so hard. We can see it. We will vote for you to continue doing the good work you are doing or we, in the ADC, will say, no, they are not doing enough; this is what we will do differently. Then the people will pick from the credible alternative and say, let us make our choice.

But when the President, I believe, was misadvised to travel to Benue and tag the killings going on there as communal clashes, saying that it must stop, people of Benue looked at each other and asked themselves, “What communal clash?” Which community against which community? This is not a communal clash, but just people coming into our homes and killing us.

Unfortunately, it is spreading to the other parts of the country right now. My state, Kwara, is one of them. It has always been one of the most peaceful states in this country, and that is why we name it the state of harmony. Now banditry is growing in Kwara State.

You ask a question about what ADC is about. This is what we are about as a coalition for Nigeria and that is why it is cynical for anybody to tag us as an anti-Tinubu coalition. No, we are not anti-Tinubu, we are pro-Nigerians. We are not against Tinubu, we are for Nigerians. It is not even about President Tinubu.

He has contributed to the development of this country over the years, and I don’t think anybody should stand up now and say, why him? He has the right to be the president like any other person, and speaking personally, I will not be part of any enterprise that is solely designed to say Tinubu cannot be president. No.

But, we are saying that we are not seeing enough, people are dying, people are suffering, and people are hungry and angry. He has not impressed us, Nigerians. Over the years, what we have seen at every point when anybody raises those questions is to term them enemies of the state and abuse them with all kinds of derogatory things.

And every governor who has found the need to join the APC, after all, I don’t blame them because they say, if you can’t beat them, you join them. That is a conspiracy against the Nigerian people. Everybody joining them and surrendering the space is a conspiracy against the Nigerian people.

As the coalition goes into this battle, what are your fears about the name calling you are already getting?

Nobody is worried about anybody calling us names. We are IDPs, we are failed politicians, we are aggrieved politicians, and we are bad politicians. We have lost elections. That is fine, no problem, we accept the tags, but is it not true that you have destroyed the opposition?

Again, are you establishing a one-party state in Nigeria? Is it not true that you have destroyed your policies and the livelihood of Nigerians? Is it not true that Nigerians are feeling more insecure today than they have ever been?

This issue of calling us names and abusing us doesn’t mean anything. If your temperament and comportment allow you to abuse people, please go ahead and abuse them. I am not going to descend to that level. I don’t abuse people. We know that it is not going to be easy. President Tinubu himself said something that power is never served a la carte. That is one quote you can attribute to the President. Opposition is never easy or a tea party, never.

But we have seen it before in this country, people have even warned us that Tinubu is not Goodluck Jonathan. Yes, we agree that Tinubu is not Jonathan. But I believe without a doubt that President Tinubu loves this country. It will get to that point where Nigerians will say no. I do not doubt in my mind he fought for this democracy and will not want to see it die. I am very sure. That is where we derive our confidence

To answer your question on my fears for the coalition, I will say that the government would want to hold on to power, like all governments will do, and they have the resources to control the apparatus of the state.

But we have seen it before that people who control the apparatus of state, people who have all the resources you can imagine, have lost elections in this country, because, like the late Chinua Achebe said, no man, no matter how powerful, can win a battle against his people. What we are doing is APC versus Nigerians.

Can you douse the fears in many Nigerians thinking that personal ambition among the coalition members may destroy your ultimate goal?

Is that a legitimate fear? Yes. But so far, we have held it together, contrary to what the government was saying a few months ago that the coalition is dead on arrival. But, today, is the coalition still saying dead on arrival? Instead, they are now saying that this person is a thief, that person lost the election, that person is mad. It has now become your papa, your mama kind of fight in the gutter. They are no longer saying dead on arrival.

It has been so far, so good. But what we are doing is to put in place strong processes and procedures that all members must subscribe to and be fair, just, and equitable. Our chairman, Senator Mark, has said it repeatedly to everyone that he will be transparent and fair-minded to everybody.

We derive our confidence from the fact that David Mark is our National Chairman. Do you want to bribe him? Do you want to intimidate him? Do you want to scare him? What do you want to do to him? He recognised, more than any other person, the historical significance of this moment.

We are also lucky that we have Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola as our National Secretary. Everybody knows that he is a gentleman, but he is very tough. I try to imagine anyone approaching him with money to help rig the election. God bless you. So these are the kind of systems we are trying to build.

Our hope is that this system will create an atmosphere that will inspire confidence in everybody to agree to contest fairly. If we lose, we rally around everybody. This was how the APC won Nigerians over in 2014. And while the PDP was doing a no-contest election and adopting the sitting president, the APC did a transparent primary that everybody saw was different.

And when the winner emerged, what happened? Everybody rallied around and danced Dorobuchi with the new candidate. We hope that we will be able to do that. That is the spirit of this coalition. There is no predetermined agenda. Nobody is anointed.

Nobody is telling anybody to step down. Nobody is telling anybody to deputize for anybody. We are providing a level playing grounds, and we hope that this will be enough for us to live up to the standards that we believe Nigerians will hold us to.

Will it be right to say that the coalition is going into battle inheriting ADC without perfecting the transition arrangements, judging by the volume of internal hostilities already? And do you see APC hatching onto this to destabilise ADC?

Let me ask you a question. Is this so-called National Publicity Secretary a Ghanaian? He has been in Nigeria all these months that we have been in conversation about ADC, and he just suddenly found his laptop to issue a statement. You must know where that is coming from. You must understand what is going on. It is either the government is helping them or they are trying to help the government for whatever benefits.

What was Dumebi’s position in the NWC of the party, his position in the NEC and BoT of the party that will form the basis to contest whatever he is claiming? He was just a presidential candidate of the party. So, how can a presidential candidate of the party now arrogate to himself the knowledge and authority of what the party does?

I resolved that I am not going to go into a discussion on this; all I want to assure Nigerians is that we are on solid legal grounds as far as ADC transition is concerned. It took a long time for us to get here.

We knew that a day like this would come. So, we are not bothered at all. My only appeal is for the media not to promote the narrative of fractionalization, because there is no faction. One man cannot be a faction. He was just a candidate. He was not a party official.

One other area people are also concerned is that Nigerian election, political party administration is about financial war chest. Where will the funding of the ADC come from?

You know that I won’t discuss that with you. You should leave that for now because we are not going to have that conversation. However, we know what we are going into.

We are talking about some of the most experienced politicians in this country who have contested elections, who have won elections, and who have lost elections. So, they know what it takes. We are not just some grey-eyed boys coming from nowhere and saying we want to gain power. We know what it takes.

One thing you cannot wish away is that the PDP gave you prominence. Do you feel the pain of the current situation facing the party, and turning it into almost a carcass?

There is no doubt about that, and I feel the pain. Of course, it really pains me. It is not just because I was a member of the PDP, but because I am a Nigerian. In the entire Nigerian democratic post-independence history, I don’t think there has been a party as strong and pervasive as the PDP.

That is the party of Solomon Lar, the party of Sunday Awoniyi, great Alex Ekwueme, and the party of Olusegun Obasanjo, among others. It is tragic to see what that same party has become. It has become a plaything for some people. It must concern every Nigerian to know that the only hope is in the coalition. What we are talking about transcends 2027.

We hope to build a party. Some of us are in this ADC because we believe it allows us to be part of something that will endure. Let Nigerians begin to believe that it is important to build a party that has traditions. I would like to hand over my membership of a party to my son, to my daughter, as it is done in other countries where children will say, in my family up to the fourth and the fifth generations, we are PDP, we are APC, we are ADC. That is what it means when you say democracy is consolidated.

But what we are seeing here is the destruction of the very foundation of that democracy. When you create a crisis in other parties just to hang on to power, you are undermining that democratic consolidation effort.

You earlier alluded to it, but in one or two words, will you say that President Tinubu has failed you so far?

I don’t want to go personal. I have outlined all the principles guiding ADC, and I speak on behalf of the party. I don’t want to go personal because it is not my style, and I am not going to do it. (Saturday Sun)