The African Democratic Congress (ADC) has alleged that President Bola Tinubu’s administration is engaging in a calculated scheme to weaken and disrupt the expanding opposition coalition by courting the party’s state chairmen.
In a statement issued by Bolaji Abdullahi, on Monday the ADC’s Interim National Publicity Secretary and National Spokesperson, the party claimed that former state chairmen and key members of its State Executive Committees in the North East and North West zones were invited to a clandestine meeting with senior federal government officials.
The ADC asserted that this move is a deliberate strategy to advance what it described as Tinubu’s push for a “one-party state,” warning of dangerous implications for Nigeria’s democracy.
“We have credible intelligence that the aim of this meeting is not for national security or peacebuilding. It is to intimidate, coerce, and if possible, co-opt these individuals into a fabricated scheme against the opposition coalition”, he noted.
The party noted that “This is not politics. This is sabotage,”
The ADC noted that the motive is clear: “to sow confusion within the party, delegitimise 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.
Abdullahi who declared that the Tinubu’s administration had been rattled by success of the ADC, added that the current moves aimed at watering down the party’s efforts.
“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 destabilising 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”, he stated.
The party challenged President Tinubu to prove to Nigerians that he is indeed a democrat, adding that “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.”
Discussion about this post