Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi is the National Publicity Secretary of the opposition African Democratic Congress (ADC). In this interview by SAM NWAOKO and MUIDEEN OLANIYI, he speaks on the exit of Peter Obi and Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso from the coalition; the race to get the party’s tickets, the need to revisit ‘Ibadan Declaration’, and the possibility of defeating President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in a three-horse race in 2027

RECENTLY, a former governor of Anambra State, Peter Obi and another former governor of Kano State, Rabiu Kwankwaso quit the ADC-led alliance, citing “endless court cases, internal battles, suspicion”. The coalition was meant to stop a divided opposition in 2027. Now Obi and Kwankwaso are gone. Is the ADC-led alliance dead, or is there a Plan B?

There are two legs to your question. One is the reasons that the two gentlemen you have mentioned gave for leaving the coalition. What I have repeatedly maintained is that they didn’t need to give us any explanation why they are leaving. The coalition is a free association of people.

But what is clear to us is that they were not pushed by the coalition. They simply jumped because it suits their interest to do so. So, I said that they may have reasons for leaving the party, but definitely, it is not because they were pushed out of the party. It is because they jumped out of the party. They must have their reasons for doing so.

Now, did it affect us in any way? Of course, yes. We felt that it was a surprise to many of us. And politics, you know, is about addition, not subtraction. So, when two major people like that leave a party, you know that you have lost two major stakeholders. But we have recovered since then, and we have stabilised because the objective that we hold is still the same, building a coalition that is capable of challenging for power in 2027. So, we will continue to do that, and we will continue to make our case to Nigerians that we believe that they are convinced about what we are trying to do.

Having said that, we have sufficiently recovered and it is time to rebuild our party. We have recalibrated. Those who followed them were those who came with them and would follow them anywhere they go. But our party is intact and we have commenced the process of giving out our nomination forms. We have sold about 796, meaning that we now have 796 aspirants who want to contest elections on the platform of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) at the national level – that is, the House of Representatives, the Senate, the governorship and the president. So, ADC is intact and we do not have any problem that is directly related to the exit of those two gentlemen.

Many Nigerians see this as failed opposition merger. What went wrong internally that made Obi and Kwankwaso leave?

Nothing went wrong. I don’t know which many Nigerians you are referring to. That is probably your own opinion, that the departure of Peter Obi and Kwankwaso means a failure of the coalition. What we had tried to put together was not a merger. What we tried to put together was a coalition that brings all opposition leaders into one platform because of what was going on in all the other political parties. The ruling party had done everything to ensure that all the other political parties were destabilised.

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And that was the basis for the coalition in the first place. When opposition leaders realised that they faced existential challenges within their political parties, and they had to create an alternative platform to protect Nigeria’s multi-party democracy and to ensure that this government does not continue in the bad ways that they have started. So, we tried to build a coalition that would ensure that the election in 2027 will only be a two-horse race. Now, it is likely to be a three-horse race or so.

So, that does not mean that we have abandoned the objective. It is still the same. So, we left Ibadan talking about presenting a single candidate against the ruling party. Is that impossible now? I don’t think so. Is it more difficult? Yes. But what we are hoping for is a situation where we move from declaration to accord, where all the opposition political leaders, maybe political parties, can still come together and agree on a unified candidature. So, that is not impossible, as you say. For us, the work of coalition building is not straightforward. But it is something that we will continue to work on.

You granted an interview recently where you said the Ibadan Declaration will be “reviewed”. What exactly is being reviewed, and who will ADC now back for president in 2027?

Yes, I said it will be revisited. It will be revisited in the light of this development. So, we will now look at it and ask ourselves what is possible. Since the two gentlemen left, they were supposed to be part of that coalition. So, now that they have left, we have to go back and ask ourselves whether it is still possible in the context of what they have done, whether it is still possible to present a common and unified front, regardless of whether they are now in another party or we are in a different political party, the African Democratic Congress.

Can we say the coalition is truly ready for the election of 2027 amidst these defections?

Of course. I mean, you have been to our Secretariat. As of Thursday, more than 796 people have collected forms to contest on the platform of the African Democratic Congress. I doubt even if the ruling party can say anything more than that.

So, when you run a political party and you have more than 120 people contesting for Senate on the platform of your party, you have some states and have five or six people running for governor. You have three people running for president. It can’t be better than that. So, our coalition, the African Democratic Congress, remains strong, remains intact.

So, people say, oh, these two gentlemen, Peter Obi and Senator Kwankwaso have left. Yes, they have left, but they have left only with the people who have come with them in the first place. The people who are originally part of this coalition have not left. And as you can see, I am sure you have had to fight your way through to the Secretariat because of the crowd in front of the office. So, that does not show or indicate that anything has changed. Even if they had remained in the party, I don’t think it would have been better than this.

We have seen what happened in 2023, where opposition parties split votes. Will history not be repeated in 2027 as Peter Obi, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, and Atiku Abubakar plan to challenge Tinubu of APC on different platforms contrary to their commitment to present a sole candidate during the Ibadan Declaration?

Why did you say Atiku Abubakar?

Is there no possibility now that the three of them will be going into the election, using different platforms in 2027?

What I am saying is that ADC has not conducted its primaries. So, you are being presumptuous when you say Atiku Abubakar. And you are talking to me. I won’t let you get away with that. There are three people who have collected forms on the platform of ADC. Why didn’t you say Rotimi Amaechi?

But if the question you are asking is that we are now going to have a three-horse race rather than a two-horse race. Yes, I agree with you. It makes it a lot more difficult because when you have a three-horse race, it always favours the incumbent. But that does not make our task impossible because it is very clear that Nigerians are done with the All Progressives Congress (APC).

The conclusion of most Nigerians is that this APC cannot continue, because if you give them another four years, they can only continue what they have done in the last four years, which is to further impoverish Nigerians and to continue to watch the insecurity in the country and the death of people. So, four more years of APC is four more years of burials, of mourning, of kidnappings, of payment of ransom. And that’s what Nigerians are tired of. Four more years of APC is four more years of hunger and starvation. That’s what Nigerians are tired of. So, the fact that we now have a three-horse race does not mean that it is impossible to beat this clueless government.

So, the opposition is ready to defeat APC in 2027?

Of course, that’s why we are doing this. And we are delighted to see Nigerians are fully mobilised. We insist that it is going to be Nigerians versus the APC in 2027.

A school of thought is of the opinion that your party, the ADC is not happy because of the exit of Peter Obi and Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso. Going forward, how is the ADC taking their exit as the political atmosphere gets more and more charged?

We are not happy that they left because politics is a game of numbers, and that number is addition, not subtraction. Naturally, we are not happy that we lost two key figures like that, and of course their supporters who came with them in the first place would naturally have left with them and follow them to where they are heading. All that is likely to cause a disruption in our plans. So, the exit of those two gentlemen definitely unsettled our calculations because what we set out to build was a coalition that will bring all opposition groups together under one roof so that we will be able to challenge for power in 2027.

So that was the original plan that we had and, of course when they left it affected the plans and calculations a little bit.

Perhaps you will agree that the new dynamics will now be how to manage the challenge posed by the entry into the presidential race by Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi. Has that been considered as a challenge for the party going forward?

We have three presidential aspirants: Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi and Alhaji Mohammed Hayatudeen. These three aspirants have equal chances and equal opportunities. We have two options through which we would select who our flag bearer would be. The option of direct primaries and the option of consensus. If we are able to engineer consensus, the better for us but should that fail, we still have the option of direct primaries.

In the end, what we can guarantee as a political party is internal democracy that shows that everyone is treated fairly and equitably, and hoping that that process would produce a candidate that would put us in a position to challenge for power in 2027.

Internal democracy is among the complaints that Obi and Kwankwaso cited as their reason for leaving. Meanwhile other observers have maintained that the ADC is only preparing grounds for an Atiku candidacy. How do you react to these allegations?

That is not correct and it is presumptuous for anyone to have said that. To the best of my knowledge, I think I am in a position to know what is going on in the party. No one has sat down to have any conversation about who would be the flagbearer of the party. The party leadership has not sat down to agree on who would be the flag bearer of the party.

I can also tell you that all the three gentlemen that had left, and those who had collected forms, no one among them can tell you that he would get the ticket of the party. That is the kind of party the African Democratic Congress is. So, anyone that tells you anything to the contrary, or that the party is being primed to endorse Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, that person is being preposterous and is not being fair to the leadership of the party because there is no iota of truth to it.

Your party is quieter now and all the issues about factions and the threats of Bala Nafiu seem to have died down all of a sudden. While the preparations for nomination of candidates go on, and you prepare for the elections, where is the place of those issues troubling the party, especially the cases in court?

The cases are in court and we know that we have to take it in our stride. We do not have to detain ourselves because of the distractions which the issues in court are, largely.

These matters don’t represent any encumbrance to the progress of our party, and that is why you see that regardless or in spite of them, the party has marched on. The only thing that was going to constitute substantial obstacle to what we are doing was the decision by INEC to use the pretext of the Court of Appeal ruling to de-recognise the leadership of Senator David Mark. But since the Supreme Court has directed and ruled that that action is illegal, INEC has restored David Mark and his executive to the portal, and what that means is that nothing is stopping us from moving on with the party’s administration and from preparing for the 2027 elections.

So, this is what we will continue to do; we will continue to deal with those cases when they should be dealt with at the courts. Then, we will remain vigilant. As far as we are concerned, they are not stopping us from doing what we should do.

You must be casting occasional glances at some other political parties as the preparations for the elections increase, because not all of them are really settled including the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). Are there people reaching out to you from the APC and other parties while we move towards the respective deadlines for nomination of candidates?

The ADC remains the only credible alternative in the country. We are not a one-man party. We are a coalition and we are inspired by one objective which is to ensure that the current brigandage that is going on in the name of government in Nigeria is eliminated.

Look at what we have in the country as the ruling class! Only the other day, we heard that the governors in the APC were quarreling among themselves on whether one of them looted the money they themselves looted from the federation account to donate to President Bola Tinubu’s campaign. If this is true, it is the most shameless thing that has ever happened in the history of Nigeria.

In the Second Republic when Muhammadu Buhari took over power in 1983, some governors were sentenced to many years in prison in 1984 just for awarding contracts of a few millions to party faithful, and for using government money allegedly against the prescription of the law. Now we have a situation where governors are brazenly deducting from their states’ federal allocations to contribute to the president’s campaign. It is the most egregious and the most shameless and brazen thing that has ever happened in Nigeria.

The APC no longer even cares to hide these sort of things from the public. They do it openly because they believe nothing can happen, and that nobody can do anything about it. Under the circumstance, anyone who is willing to be a part of the process to remove this anomaly, which is what APC represents, we will welcome them and we will be willing to work with them. Even Peter Obi and Kwankwaso in the NDC, we are not ruling out the possibility of working together.

We came to Ibadan and declared that we are going to present only one presidential candidate in 2027. So, as long as the objective remains the same, which is to put an end to this looting and brigandage by the APC, then we still have to continue to see the possibility of building alliances and possibly moving to some form of accord which will lead us to 2027.

So, we don’t see anyone to be our enemy, and anyone from the APC who feels dissatisfied by what is going on and want to be a part of this process of changing it, is of course welcome to our coalition. Our objective is singular.

What you described as ‘brigandage in the name of governance’ is what some people are relying on to campaign for the re-election of President Bola Tinubu. Will you be able to defend your description of some of the actions of this government as ‘brigandage’?

Since June of 2023, the APC government has borrowed from the World Bank, because on Tuesday they borrowed another $1.7 billion or so. Between 2023 and 2026 we are in now, the total loan the Nigerian government under the APC has collected from the World Bank is more than $7 billion. Does Nigeria look like an economy that is reflated with $7 billion?

And if you look at the purpose of collecting the loans, they would say it is to stabilise the economy; to cushion the effects of the fuel subsidy; to create jobs and so on and so forth. These are the pretexts under which these loans are being collected. And now it has come to an excess of $7 billion. Does this economy look like one that has benefitted from $7 billion?

I have not seen any denial, unless you show me that there is anywhere where they have denied that there were deductions in states’ FAAC allocations. A newspaper reported it, and major TV networks reported it, that the quarrel among the APC governors today is about the deductions from FAAC allocation to their states, to the campaign of President Bola Tinubu.

I have not seen any denial except that the president had intervened to stop the chairman of their so-called Progressive Governors Forum that was alleged to have looted the loot, from being removed. So, if that is not brigandage I don’t know what you will call it.

So, the people that are using the same brigandage to campaign are the people who are benefitting from it. Look at what they are doing! They call it “Renewed Hope Agenda”, but have you seen the lineup of the vehicles that they bought? SUVs running into hundreds, and this is the same government that is telling Nigerians to endure hardship because of the fuel subsidy removal; telling the people to endure suffering because of their economic reforms.

They are telling the people to endure suffering and endure hardship, and they are living a life of wastage, is that the kind of government that we want? Is that how we want to continue? A member of our party was coming to Abuja to obtain nomination form for the election, he was kidnapped and he died in the kidnappers’ den. Is that the kind of country we want to continue with?

So, if what is going on does not move any Nigerian of goodwill to say look, enough is enough, this cannot continue, then I wonder what will.

In the midst of all of these, there must still be some encouraging signs of good governance from the Tinubu’s government, with regards to moving the country forward which you might have seen. Which ones can you readily point at, even if remotely?

It is their job to tell us one thing which they have done successfully. It is their job. Are we going to deny that Nigerians are now hungrier than ever before? Are we going to deny that Nigerians are more indebted than ever before? Are we going to deny that Nigerians are poorer than ever before? That Nigerians cannot afford energy and transportation to travel to do their businesses?

Are we going to deny that Nigerians’ security situation is now worse than ever before? Are we going to deny that? They say that the economy is growing, that the Gross Domestic Products (GDP) is growing bigger; and that the external reserves are growing bigger, but the number of poor Nigerians is growing correspondingly.

How could we be talking about economic growth with a corresponding growth in multi-dimensional poverty among the Nigerian populace? What does GDP growth mean to an ordinary person who is hungry?

What do you think is the cause of this disconnect between the growing economy or GDP and the increasing poverty level among Nigerians?

It is because the people are never part of the consideration. If the people were a part of the consideration, at the point President Tinubu was announcing the removal of fuel subsidy, the first question he would have asked was how would this affect the people? How would this make life more difficult for the people? But this thing was done without care for the people, they didn’t even spare a thought for the people.

When you listen to the Minister of Finance, all he talks about is distortion of the market, ‘we don’t want a distortion of the market’; we are saying Nigerians are too poor to be abandoned to the market. We can’t allow the market to eat up our people. We cannot abandon the people to the markets.

Does your party have a manifesto or a plan to address these issues?

We have a manifesto. We set up a manifesto committee which submitted its report to the party months ago and we have clear positions on some of these issues. What we are saying is that for us in ADC, we put the people first. So, we are a social democratic party, and our priority is protecting the people. We saw that the APC who call themselves progressives are the most un-liberal party you can find in Nigeria. Their policies are so right wing and so neo-liberal that you wonder what they would have done if otherwise. So, when they claim that they are a progressive party you wonder what they are talking about, because no progressive party will engage in the kind of regressive policy that they have embarked upon which have brought hardship to the people.

So, we have a manifesto that is very clear, and we are saying that every single person that is contesting on the platform of our party will not be allowed to just do whatever they like. The party will hold them accountable to whatever promises they make to the people. So, we are very clear about what we want to do whether it is on security, the economy and others, the priority is protecting the people. (TRIBUNE)