- Your ‘Kasuwa Ndollar’ primary threatens democracy, APC’s Okechukwu tells ex-VP
Former African Democratic Congress (ADC) presidential candidate and businessman, Dumebi Kachikwu, has said Nigeria’s leading opposition figures lack the wherewithal to handle the nation’s multi-faceted challenges.
Kachikwu said former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate in the 2023 general election, Mr. Peter Obi, cannot offer concrete solutions to the nation’s recurring crises beyond their social media commentary.
Speaking on a national television programme yesterday, the former ADC flag bearer said Nigeria’s opposition politics has been reduced to “performative outrage” where prominent politicians react to tragedies with statements and tweets but fail to propose actionable alternatives.
According to him, whenever the country is hit by major incidents, ranging from insecurity and violent crimes to economic hardship, the same political figures emerge to condemn the situation without outlining how they would address it if entrusted with power.
“In the last two years, every time we’ve had a national tragedy, all you hear from the people you mentioned – Atiku and Obi – is talk, mostly tweets. ‘It’s a shame’; ‘It’s a tragedy’; ‘We are sorry,’” Kachikwu said. “They jab at the government, but they never, ever speak to solutions.”
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He argued that such responses fall short of the responsibility expected from politicians who aspire to lead a country of over 200 million people, especially given Nigeria’s persistent security and economic challenges.
Kachikwu stressed that meaningful opposition should go beyond criticism and instead present clear policy options, particularly on important issues, such as terrorism, kidnappings, violent crime, and governance failures.
He questioned why opposition leaders have not articulated detailed plans on tackling insecurity, reforming the economy, or strengthening institutions.
The former presidential candidate warned that Nigerians must become more critical of political messaging and resist being swayed by rhetoric without substance.
Kachikwu maintained that without concrete proposals, repeated condemnations of government failures amount to political grandstanding rather than leadership.
Kachikwu’s remarks add to the growing debate over the quality of opposition politics ahead of the 2027 general election.
Political alignments have intensified and public scrutiny of both the ruling party and opposition figures has deepened.
Also, a foundation member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Osita Okechukwu, has faulted former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s allegation that democracy is facing an existential threat due to the weakening of opposition parties by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration.
The immediate past Director General of the Voice of Nigeria (VON) said instead, the inordinate presidential ambition of Atiku, a former Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) flag bearer, should be held responsible for any threat to the country’s democracy.
Okechukwu, who was reacting to Atiku’s warning in a statement yesterday in Abuja, advised the Wazirin Adamawa to dig deeper.
The former VON boss stated that it was Atiku’s “Kasuwa Ndollar” style of politics and not the present administration that is responsible for all his allegations.
The APC chieftain argued that a deeper and more honest introspection by the former Vice President would reveal how Nigeria’s democracy descended into its present sordid state.
He said the crisis emanated from Atiku’s breach of the rotation convention in the 2023 presidential election.
Okechukwu accused Atiku of embarking on the same route ahead of the 2027 general election with his insistence on “Kasuwa Ndollar” presidential primary election in the African Democratic Congress (ADC).
The APC chieftain noted that Atiku’s non-adherence to the rotation convention and Section 7 of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) constitution contributed significantly to the destabilisation of the main opposition party and the alleged descent to a one-party state.
He said: “Atiku Abubakar is, regrettably, one of the foremost culprits of this unforced error, which gravely cannibalised the PDP.
“Digging deeper will inform His Excellency Atiku Abubakar that the breach of the rotation convention — an elite consensus foundation of the Fourth Republic — played a decisive role in this sordid mess.
“I fear that he is about to repeat the same mistake in the ADC. No other ADC’s presidential aspirant has his war chest.”
The former VON boss recalled that the rotation convention was consciously a formalised elite consensus in 1999 to promote unity, equity, inclusion, and national stability, based on a turn-by-turn rotation of presidential power between the North and the South.
Okechukwu reminded Atiku that without the convention, he would not have become the Vice President in 1999.
The APC chieftain noted that had patriotic northern political leaders, like Alhaji Abubakar Rimi, Umaru Shinkafi, Adamu Ciroma, Bamanga Tukur, and Dr. Sola Saraki, among others, not honoured the zoning arrangement, Olusegun Obasanjo, having just survived General Sani Abacha’s gulag, where General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua did not come out alive, might well have abstained from contesting.
Okechukwu also reminded Atiku of his dramatic walkout from the 2014 PDP national convention, protesting that it was the North’s turn to produce the President and that then-President Goodluck Jonathan was breaching the rotation convention — an action that culminated in Atiku joining the APC.
“Whereas one admits that my great party, the APC, has its own fault lines, is it not a calamity that the same Atiku Abubakar, widely acknowledged as the mastermind of PDP’s rotation breach and its resultant destabilisation, is now allegedly setting the stage for a similar breach within the ADC, when he knows that our presidential primary is ‘Kasuwa Ndollar?’
“Or, should President Tinubu now be blamed for this fresh violation of the same zoning principle, the deliberate breach of rotation?” Okechukwu said.
He submitted that Atiku’s assertion that “the systematic weakening of opposition platforms represents a grave danger to Nigeria’s democratic future” deserves more rigorous self-scrutiny and contextual honesty.
The former VON boss posited that Atiku cannot harvest Buhari’s 12 million vote bank because the majority in the North subscribe to the rotation convention and also know the former Vice President as Mai Kasuwa and among Nigeria’s less than transparent clan.
