By CHARLES IWUOHA

The African Democratic Congress (ADC) has raised the alarm over a desperate and dangerous plot by elements within the Bola Tinubu administration to undermine and destabilize the growing opposition coalition.

In a statement issued on Monday by the party’s Interim National Publicity Secretary and National Spokesperson, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, the ADC revealed that former State Chairmen and key members of the party’s state executive committees in the North East and North West have been summoned to a secret meeting with top officials of the Federal Government.

The statement disclosed that the party has credible intelligence that the aim of the meeting was not for national security or peace building.

"This is to intimidate, coerce, and if possible, co-opt these individuals into a fabricated scheme against the opposition coalition. This is not politics. This is sabotage,” the statement reads.

According to the ADC, the motive is clear: to sow confusion within the party, delegitimize its new leadership, and derail its rising momentum as the new face of the opposition in Nigeria.

"Let it be clear, this surreptitious dalliance with the ADC State Chairpersons by appointees of the federal government who should be focused on urgent national security priorities and challenges that the country is facing is a coordinated assault on multiparty democracy. This is how one-party states are born—through intimidation,” the ADC said.

“The July 1st Coalition Declaration, and the July 2nd unveiling of the ADC, have clearly rattled the ruling party. It is now obvious that the Tinubu administration—having lost the trust of the Nigerian people—cannot withstand the pressure of a united and credible opposition. But rather than correct its ways, it has resorted to its old playbook of destabilizing opposition parties.”

“Let it be clear: the coalition movement is an idea whose time has come. This party belongs to every Nigerian who is tired of the lies, the manipulation, and the hardship. It belongs to every Nigerian who wants to restore decency, vision, and justice to governance. We would therefore not allow a handful of desperate men to turn Nigeria into a one-party dictatorship.

"And it would be our patriotic duty to resist it with every democratic means available to us.

“We call on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to take note of this sinister moves by some of his appointees and call them to order. The president needs to prove to Nigerians that he is indeed a Democrat. He needs to remind his men that if the Goodluck Jonathan administration were as intolerant and as subversive of the opposition, the APC would not have come to power in 2015 and he would not have been a President today.”