By Debo Lewaji
Only those who are passionate about the game of football can understand the pains of a victory that is awarded without the much-anticipated field play. Imagine a high-profile El Clásico encounter between Real Madrid and FC Barcelona, or a title-defining game in the EPL between Man City and Arsenal, or a UEFA Champions League final between Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) and Real Madrid. Neither of the fans would be excited should a winner be declared on the basis of non-appearance of one team or a last-minute disqualification of the other. More than the victory, the real excitement in any triumph is in the contest, seeing how the big boys on either side square up against one another from the back line – the goalkeeper and the defenders, through the creative midfielders to the ruthless finishers!
It is in this context that I consider most disappointing the recent court ruling regarding the African Democratic Congress (ADC) and its implications on the party’s participation in the 2027 Elections. Quite expectedly, there have been different reactions to the Thursday 5th November ruling of Justice Peter Lifu of the Federal High Court sacking the David Mark-led caretaker committee which, by effect, nullified the nomination of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar as the party’s presidential candidate. Referring to the ruling, ADC, through its spokesperson Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, accused the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) of a desperate attempt “to cripple the opposition and deny Nigerians the right to choose their leaders in the forthcoming general elections”.
In its own reaction, APC, of course, washed its hands of any accusation of collusion regarding the ruling. “You cannot invade a political party owned and built by Nigerians, hijack it with the connivance of a so-called National Chairman without a prior meeting and approval of a mini National Convention of the National Executive Committee and hope to bluff your way out of such a brazen act by blaming and blackmailing the ruling party for a misfortune deliberately stoked by you,” Olorogun Festus Keyamo, the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, said in a statement on X.
The entreaty in my title above is both to their Lordships – temporal and spiritual. First, to the distinguished judges of the Appeal Court, to whom ADC had rightly taken its immediate recourse and, perhaps more importantly, to the heavenly forces we cannot see but whose compassion is not bound by any facts or constitutional inflexibility. The earthly and the supernatural must combine forces to somehow create a way out of the whole mess for Nigeria’s sake.
Besides being sentimental, I am aware that my appeal does not carry much weight. Matters of the law are decided by facts and the brilliance of those entrusted with the task of arguing cases. As the minister said, himself a learned advocate of distinguished pedigree, “the law is decided on facts and evidence, rather than sentiments and outrage”. On the one hand, it has been established for ages that even the heavens help those who help themselves. So, either way, my prayers would remain infertile unless the ADC hierarchy wakes up to do the right thing and stops whining.
I am comforted to read that Alhaji Atiku Abubakar had vowed to be on the ballot whether the powers that be liked it or not. In a statement posted on his verified X account, the experienced politician declared: “Let no one mistake the latest court ruling for the will of the Nigerian people. No manipulation, conjecture or concoction can erase our place in this contest, silence our campaign or deny Nigerians the right to choose their future. We are on the ballot and the people must be allowed to decide. Those who boast of having thirty-two governors and claim to have bought, pressured or coerced leaders from other parties into their fold should have no reason to fear a free and fair contest. Yet, instead of presenting their record to Nigerians, they continue to deploy every tactic available to weaken the opposition: political pressure, manufactured narratives, courtroom manoeuvre and attempts to compromise the voters’ register with AI-generated photographs, false names and fictitious identities. These are not the actions of people confident in their record. They are calculated attempts to make genuine competition impossible and push Nigeria towards a one-party state. Let me be clear to every Nigerian who has stood with us. I am in the race. I am not going anywhere. We will be on the ballot. If those in power believe in their numbers and their record, let us meet at the polls in a free, fair and credible contest.”
I do hope the INEC Chairman and his team nationwide are listening. In a single statement, the Turaki had just given them all the lead they need to catch the ruling party in their game. My fear, anytime I read statements like this from the opposition, is that there are just too many grounds on which a loss in an election that is still eight weeks away can be rejected for not being free, fair and credible!
But first, let Atiku Abubakar, and indeed all those vying for the highest office in the land, have their day. Any victory to Bola Ahmed Tinubu in an election where Atiku is absent would forever be tainted. Atiku would be entitled to see himself as the president that Nigerians loved to have but never had, which is why some commentators are already describing him as another MKO Abiola.
I actually admire the confidence of Atiku, which is why every well-meaning Nigerian must pray that he is on the ballot in the 2027 elections to have his fair chance. But to win a battle of wits, he must recognise the political sagacity of the ‘Bola’ he so disparagingly refers to; after all, they are both part of the old political elites that have held sway in the country for decades. Interestingly, if there is any politician whose antecedents demonstrate the uncanny capacity to show the opposition the way out of the mess they appear intractably in, it is this same ‘Bola’, a man who has probably dealt with far more political enemies than the ex-VP would ever dream of. Many simply love to hate and disparage him. There were millions who voted against him in the 2023 elections without knowing exactly why they did so.
Talking about a way out of the current quagmire, was the VP not on a joint ticket with Chief Olusegun Obasanjo when the PDP railroaded all states in the South West except Lagos into their fold, also withholding the Federal allocation to Lagos as the last stroke? What we all recall of those troubling times is not a Governor Tinubu whining and lamenting. Silently but strategically, he assembled the best legal team, flew in an international forensic expert of unquestionable repute and, one after another, the lost states were retrieved from the dominant PDP government. In the Courts!!!
Honestly, sometimes I wonder if half of the energies and huge funds reportedly committed into the never-ending attempts to fish out dirt on PBAT in the US were focused on the legal and political battles at home, perhaps life would not have been made so easy for the president in an atmosphere with such severe social and economic strains.
Politics is all about give and take. How impossible could achieving truce in ADC have been? Did anyone still recall how effortlessly President Tinubu solved the Honourable Speaker Mudashiru Obasa’s impeachment and reinstatement in Lagos State Assembly without a whimper from the members since then?
I am utterly surprised, even embarrassed, that given the combined status of the distinguished politicians who made up ADC and how seriously they expect Nigerians to take their professed determination to take over power, how come they couldn’t settle an internal, potentially destabilising issue in their party that had lingered for so many months? Much in the same vein like Obi, who surprisingly abandoned a party he single-handedly brought into national prominence, and started running from pillar to post. No be juju be that? How could anyone rightly blame any of these self-inflicted disruptions on APC or the Jagaban witchcraft?
Let us even examine how the ADC and its bigwigs got themselves into this mess in the first place.
The erstwhile head of the party’s national officers, Chief Ralph Nwosu, had resigned, apparently to make way for some incoming heavyweight politicians into the party. Thereafter, a caretaker committee emerged under former Senate President David Mark and Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola as Chairman and Party Secretary respectively. Soon after the duo’s assumption of office, Alhaji Nafiu Bala Gombe, the National Deputy Chairman, filed an ex parte motion before Justice Emeka Nwite of the Federal High Court asking that he be declared the authentic chairman since he did not resign his own position. Rather than file a defence as requested by the court, David Mark proceeded to the Court of Appeal and subsequently to the Supreme Court, questioning the authority of the High Court to hear the case. In both instances, Mark was referred to the High Court, where the substantive matter remained pending. Along the line, a favourable judgement was also secured from another High Court, authenticating the takeover, altogether wasting several months in prolonged litigation with interlocutory appeals. In the meantime, both factions continue to rely on the different judicial pronouncements to claim authentic authority, operating parallel structures, including having separate presidential candidates.
Again, the Yorubas say, bi ogiri o lanu, alangba o le raye wo ogiri. Without an opening, how could the lizard have entered the wall so effortlessly? Those accusing APC or the president of being behind the intractable crisis in some of the opposition parties are being insincere or simply playing politics.
You may parade all the Excellencies and magisterial personalities the nation ever produced, but if you must avoid laying mines that would explode sooner or later, your coming into a party to take over established structures must be approached with humility and discernment. A tree does not make a forest, so the chairman alone does not make the entire party. If the least official is treated with ignominy, he can turn around to scuttle your pack of cards. I have watched some of the disgruntled members explain their grouse in the media and it was so obvious that if an olive branch had been extended to them in good time, with an adequate win-win proposal presented, we would probably have seen these cases out of the courts a long time ago.
So I plead with Atiku and the ADC, for their own sake, and for the love of the Nigerians they want to save from hunger but who must first have a nation they can call their own at the end of the 2027 elections, that they go beyond grandstanding and put their best into winning the battle in the courts. They are well advised to strengthen their legal team and do less boastful posturing on social media, as though the justices can be browbeaten into granting them their desire without an effort. Alternatively, it might just be easier to go back and persuade the discontented members to embrace reconciliation and peace. Do whatever needs to be done: buy, persuade, cajole or coerce (borrowing a leaf from ‘Bola’, whom Atiku accused of using all of those tactics and more to make those cross-carpeting politicians dump their parties for APC).
Forget the Messianic posturing; all these politicians are birds of the same feather. They over-promise and under-deliver. Sadly, the albatross particularly weighing Atiku down is that he doesn’t seem to have managed his relationships well. All many Nigerians remember now is his principal, Obasanjo, saying he can’t be trusted, and Ibrahim Babangida reportedly echoing the same sentiments – two influential former Presidents whose words still carry a lot of weight.
Nor could we have forgotten so quickly how he himself ‘persuaded’ PDP, against what was generally understood as the agreed rotational pattern within the party, to field him as the party’s candidate in 2023. Without doubt, there are many admirers and sympathisers of his who felt he might have mismanaged his timing; throngs of Nigerians who do not necessarily dislike him but who fear that abandoning the spirit of the rotational presidency between the North and the South might engender the same distrust that led to the disintegration of a PDP that was until recently one of Africa’s best-rooted parties.
Notwithstanding the above, if Atiku is not on the ballot in 2027, any victory recorded by Tinubu would be tainted forever.
Meanwhile, Peter Obi, the presidential flag bearer of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), has challenged President Tinubu to visit 33 states to prove that he is capable of remaining in office. Governor Seyi Makinde of the Allied People’s Movement had more or less expressed similar sentiments when he dared Tinubu to replicate his youthful agility, as he jumped up and down the podium for the cameras. These are statements that make you wonder if the opposition are bewitched by Tinubu. Obi is such a likeable guy, but I sincerely wish his publicists would stop blowing up every little incident, like painting a picture of victimisation at the international airport when a car that brought him to the airport was clamped for wrongful parking. The latest news is that he was deliberately prevented from welcoming the victorious Nigeria U-17 female World Cup winners!
If Bola Ahmed Tinubu wins in 2027, and there is no sufficient evidence yet to believe he won’t, it is partly because Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi and the rest of the opposition unanimously gave it to him on a platter.
Prince Debo Luwaji, an Entrepreneur and Public Affairs Analyst, can be reached at luwajidebo@gmail.com
Disclaimer: This is an opinion piece. The views and claims expressed are the author’s own and do not represent the position of BizWatch Nigeria or its editorial team.
