2027: Godfathers scheming to hijack ADC, Lukman cautions Mark

Former National Vice Chairman (North-West) of the All Progressives Congress and one of the arrowheads of the coalition that collapsed into the African Democratic Congress, Salihu Lukman, has expressed concern over moves to undermine internal democracy in the opposition party by some of its chieftains.

Lukman raised the alarm in a statement entitled “ADC and the Prospect of Internal Democracy,” issued in Abuja on Tuesday.

Lukman, who urged the interim National Chairman of the party, Senator David Mark, to take more than a passing interest in leadership at the state and zonal levels, recalled an instance in which certain coalition leaders, who were only nominees into the committee that negotiated the sharing arrangement, promoted themselves into becoming the leaders of their zones.

He warned that the hijack of party structures by aspirants — which instigated internal conflicts in the ruling APC and the erstwhile ruling party, the People’s Democratic Party — was about to occur in the fledgling ADC.

“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 suggests perhaps the 2027 elections are already won.

“The struggle to ensure that loyalists of leaders emerge as the leaders of the reformed ADC to some extent disregards 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 the 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 duplicate 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 the 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.”

The former Director-General of the Progressive Governors Forum further submitted that another challenge the interim national leadership of the party would face is inculcating a new orientation among party administrators at all levels.

“For instance, will the reformed ADC take steps to develop a competent bureaucracy in the party secretariat, with established rules and professionally staffed? Or will the party leaders recruit their loyalists as staff in the party secretariat? Will the ADC develop the needed capacity to mobilise all the financial resources required for the operations of the party, including election financing? Or will the party operate based on the old tradition of relegating its funding to depend on the generosity of leaders?

“The other critical question that Nigerians anxiously await initiatives on, from the Senator Mark leadership, is the issue of the direction the party intends to take towards addressing the challenges facing the country. With the painful experience under APC — whereby ahead of the 2015 elections, APC presented a delightful manifesto with all the promises, but ended up disregarding it once elections were won — what will be different with ADC? What is even the manifesto of ADC?

“When we negotiated with the former leadership of ADC under Chief Ralph Nwosu, one of the agreements we reached was to have a new manifesto. What steps will be taken by Senator Mark’s leadership to produce a new ADC manifesto? Or will the new leadership allow the tradition whereby candidates for elections produce their individual manifestos, with hardly any bearing on the party’s manifesto?”

The statement added that Senator Mark’s leadership goes beyond producing candidates and winning the 2027 elections.

“For those of us who spearheaded the process of negotiating the coalition and producing ADC as the party for the envisioned internally democratic structure, whether we are part of the national leadership or not, we must remain united within the coalition to continue to engage the leadership of Senator Mark to ensure they succeed. If, for any reason, we allow them to fail, we have equally failed. The prospect of succeeding is much stronger. However, it all depends on the extent to which we are ready to continue to make the sacrifices required.

“Maybe we should also remind ourselves that politics is local. This requires that we all move back to our states and ensure that ADC at that level is run democratically based on collective leadership.

“In many states, this is already being threatened. Many high-profile political leaders, especially former governors, are taking steps to serve as godfathers in ADC, and leaders at these levels are reduced to acting as members of cabinet or members of boards of parastatals of a government in which powerful politicians and former governors are the Chief Executive Officers.

“Although faced with a lot of disadvantages, those of us who suffer the disadvantage of not being godsons of these high-profile politicians must take every necessary step to win the confidence of citizens at that level.

“Coming from Kaduna State, we must take every necessary step to discontinue the political culture of divisive politics of religion and ethnicity. Any political leader who is associated with past divisive politics in the state must commit to reforming himself as a basis for working with us in the effort to reform the ADC and make it a party that promotes a new, united Kaduna State.

“Based on the transitional operational guidelines provided by the ADC national leadership, the process of instituting an all-inclusive leadership at state level and across all the 23 local governments and 255 wards in the state should commence. We appeal to all political leaders to relate with everyone who qualifies to be part of the transitional leadership of ADC at all levels in the state with respect and a high measure of tolerance. We must commit ourselves to making ADC an equal-opportunity platform at all levels. Anything short of this should be resisted.”

He, however, expressed confidence in the capacity of Senator Mark’s leadership to instil discipline and inspire cohesion in the ADC.

“First things first, the Senator Mark leadership must rise to its calling and give the party and Nigerians a new template in political party management in the country. The prospect of achieving that should be evidentially established within the next six months. Anything to the contrary should mean that ADC and the coalition have failed, and we should abstain from participating in the 2027 elections. May God strengthen the capacity of Senator Mark and his team to provide the needed leadership for us to succeed in making ADC the envisioned internally democratic party.”

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