Was it an ADC Convention or Talkathon?

By EMAMEH GABRIEL

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.” – Theodore Roosevelt, Citizenship in a Republic

“The trouble with political jokes is that too many of them get elected.” – Sir Clement Freud, The Observer

President Tinubu is that man in the arena, bloodied but unbroken, taking the hits while trying to steer a nation through storms he did not create. And the critics are the ones pointing fingers from the safety of the stands.

The African Democratic Congress has just confirmed what Sir Clement Freud knew all along: the trouble with political jokes is that too many of them gather in Abuja to pretend they are ready to change Nigeria’s fortune.

President Tinubu was right on Tuesday during the inauguration of the NRS building when he jokingly told the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, that he would send him to the other side to scatter them as he likes, that “they are confused”. It is true. The ADC is a congregation of confused people.

The ADC rolled into Abuja on Tuesday, ignoring court orders, like a convoy of broken-down vehicles held together by prayer and masking tape. They called it a national convention. The Independent National Electoral Commission was nowhere in sight, and the ADC did not lose a minute of sleep over that fact. Why would they? They had more important things to do. They had to attack President Tinubu. They had to blame the APC for everything from the falling naira to the rising cost of tomatoes. They had to fill the air with so much smoke that nobody would notice they had no fire of their own.

And for hours, that is exactly what they did. One after another, they climbed the podium like men stepping onto a sinking ship and blamed the captain for the leak they themselves had drilled. The former vice president spoke. Former governors spoke. Former ministers spoke. Former senators spoke. They emptied their lungs on every problem you can name – the economy, security, power, fuel, education, healthcare – and then they sat down. Not one of them said what they would do differently. Not one of them offered a single idea that did not fit on the back of a stamp. They came with empty hands and left empty-handed.

Here is the thing about pointing a finger. When you point at someone, three fingers point back at you. And those three fingers told a story the ADC did not want Nigerians to hear. Ninety per cent of the problems they blamed on President Tinubu were problems they created, nurtured, and handed over like a cursed inheritance. They were governors when states collapsed. They were ministers when the refineries died. They were senators when the national debt tripled. They held the steering wheel for sixteen years under the PDP – sixteen years of hundred-dollar oil, sixteen years of zero savings, sixteen years of roads that swallowed vehicles whole, sixteen years of darkness and excuses.

They ran this country into the ditch, and when it became clear that Nigerians would no longer buy their brand of destruction, they did not repent. They simply jumped ship. When the APC was still wobbling through its formative years, they climbed aboard like seasoned stowaways, dusted themselves off, and continued from exactly where they had left off. The same hands that emptied the national till. The same mouths that promised heaven and delivered fire.

Then came Buhari. He was no angel, but he did one thing the others could not stomach. He cut their oxygen. Not completely, but enough to make them gasp. Enough to send some of them scrambling for cover. Today, several of those same characters are dancing with the EFCC, explaining the source of this house and that company. Their feet are not yet in the courtroom dock, but their shadows have been there for years.

And now, having exhausted one umbrella and torn another, they have gathered under a new one – the ADC – like bats fleeing the sunrise, hoping Nigerians will not recognise their faces. They want to pour the same old poison into a different bottle and sell it as liberation. As Shehu Sani rightly wrote: when some Nigerians are tired of drinking Coke, if you pour that same Coke into a Fanta bottle and hand it to them, they will warmly welcome it as a serious change. That is the ADC’s entire strategy. Same content. New label. And they expect applause.

The ADC convention was not a gathering of alternative visionaries. It was a reunion of the aggrieved. It was a support group for men who miss the taste of government food. They have been away from the federal trough for barely three years, and already they are crawling up the walls. They cannot survive one election cycle without their hands in the national cookie jar. That is not opposition. That is withdrawal symptoms.

But the most delicious detail – the one that tells you everything you need to know – was hanging around their necks. Three thousand delegates. Three thousand laminated tags. And on every single tag, in letters bold enough to embarrass a blind man, was the word ‘DELIGATE’. Not ‘delegate’. Deligate. As in a political party that cannot spell the name of its own members. They wore those tags all day. They smiled for the cameras. They waved at the crowd. They gave speeches about saving Nigeria. And not one person among the three thousand, noticed that they were walking around with a typo around their necks. A typo. On a name tag. At a convention.

These are the people who want to be trusted with the Nigerian economy. These are the people who want to manage your taxes, secure your borders, and decide your children’s future. They cannot spell the word that describes the very people they claim to represent. If a surgeon walked into an operating theatre with his gown on backwards, you would not let him touch you. If a pilot boarded a plane wearing oven mitts, you would walk off. But the ADC expects Nigerians to hand them the keys to the country while they cannot tell the difference between ‘delegate’ and ‘deligate’. The mind reels.

And then there is the cast of characters. Look at the faces on that stage. They are, every one of them, sore losers. Men and women who have tasted defeat, and have never once looked in the mirror. They hop from party to party like frogs from one lily pad to another, leaving behind wrecked structures, unpaid staff, and court cases that will outlive their grandchildren. They have no ideology because ideology requires thinking, and thinking requires admitting you might have been wrong. They have never been wrong. Everyone else has been wrong. The voters have been wrong. INEC has been wrong. The courts have been wrong. The only people who have never been wrong are the ones on that stage, standing under a banner that read ‘DELIGATE’ while demanding to be taken seriously.

President Tinubu said they are confused. That was him being polite. The truth is more damning. They are not just confused. They are unserious. They are unprepared. They are a walking contradiction, a party that wants to govern a nation but cannot govern its own delegate list. A collection of politicians who want to fix the economy but cannot fix a spelling error. An opposition that wants to be taken seriously but shows up dressed for a comedy.

The ADC called its gathering a national convention. It was nothing of the sort. It was a talkathon. A long, loud, empty exercise in blame-shifting. They came to bury Tinubu. They came to point fingers, not to offer hands. They came to complain, not to build. And when they were done, they went home with nothing but photographs of themselves wearing tags that called them delicate.

Nigerians deserve better. They deserve an opposition that is prepared, that is serious, and that can at least spell the names of its own members. The ADC has shown that it is none of those things. They are a crowd of angry politicians who cannot stay away from government resources, who are not ready to lead, and who have mistaken a talkathon for a convention. The rest of us should call it what it is – a circus without a ringmaster.
President Tinubu was right to laugh. The rest of us should join him.