Concerned about recent developments in the African Democratic Congress (ADC), prominent party member Mallam Salihu Lukman has cautioned the party’s leadership against practices of godfatherism and imposition at various levels.
Lukman, a former member of the National Working Committee (NWC) of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), also warned against the assumption that the 2027 general election would be an easy win for the party.
In a statement titled “ADC and the Prospect of Internal Democracy” released on Tuesday in Abuja, Lukman criticised certain coalition leaders who, after being nominated to serve on negotiation committees, are now positioning themselves as zonal leaders through manipulation.
While acknowledging the role of Senator David Mark’s leadership in finalising the party’s coalition agreement, Lukman expressed concern that some individuals are already undermining internal democracy by influencing the leadership selection process to serve personal interests.
“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 emerged as the leaders of the reformed ADC to some extent, disregarded 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.
Read Also: No leader in Nigeria has Buhari’s intimidating profile today – Lukman
“We must caution our leaders, Nigerians will not be deceived by any cosmetic design of presenting another party, which is only a duplication 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 Sen. 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.”
Setting the agenda for the interim National Chairman of the party, the former Director-General of the Progressive Governors Forum (PGF) stressed the need for the leadership of the party to provide a new orientation to party administration 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 of the Sen. 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 the Sen. Mark leadership to produce a new ADC manifesto? Or will the new leadership allow the tradition whereby candidates for elections produce their manifestos, with hardly any bearing with the party’s manifesto?”
