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Senator Godswill Akpabio, the Senate President, recently, while reading the defection of some few members of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) in the Senate to other parties, tactlessly declared that ADC was dead. This was despite the fact that ADC is still the party with the second largest number of Senators in the Senate. Femi Gbajabiamila, Chief of Staff to the President, instructed Hon Abejide to remain in the ADC, and not come to the All Progressives Congress (APC) to fight ADC, scatter it and destroy it. He openly offered to support Nafiu Bala Gombe to destroy ADC through unnecessary and unwarranted litigations. Bala went to court seeking to use the court to hijack the leadership of ADC, after resigning his position as an officer of the party. President Bola Tinubu accepted this strategy of APC to destabilise the opposition when he declared that it will be his pleasure and he will be happy to see the opposition disintegrate. Followers read the lips of their leader and act accordingly.
APC did exactly the same thing to the then major opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Tinubu appointed Nyesom Wike of the PDP, and the former governor of Rivers State, as the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) under the APC government. He was given a marching order – destroy the ability of the PDP to produce a presidential candidate come 2027. He is carrying out this order with reckless abandon. The very good thing about Wike is that he is not discreet about it. He told his fellow PDP members that if they don’t approve of Bola Tinubu as presidential candidate of PDP in 2027, it would be a fight to finish. He fought and eventually finished PDP at the Supreme Court (SC) on 30 April 2026 where the SC held that both the Turaki-led faction and Wike-led faction were not legitimate leaders of the PDP. Any aspirant who contests under the PDP risks being disqualified unless there is a judicial rescue to this beleaguered party driven to insignificance by the marauding interference of APC using its moles in PDP.
During the build up to the coalition, the Social Democratic Party (SDP) was one of the parties that the coalition leaders were consulting. Immediately the talks started garnering momentum, internal crisis erupted in the party leading to the removal of the National Chairman of SDP, Alhaji Shehu Musa Gabam. This Chairman was the one negotiating with the opposition leaders to adopt the SDP as destination party for the 2027 election. His colleagues in the National Working Committee of the SDP ganged up against him and removed him. After the coalition leaders adopted the ADC as the party for 2027, the court reinstated him. Today, the SDP has become divided and rudderless because the other faction appealed the case. The legal process has put uncertainty on the party, and its participation in the 2027 election has become questionable.
There is also a political association, which claims that it was qualified to be registered by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), having met all the registration criteria. The coalition of opposition leaders considered this political association for use if it was registered. Immediately the powers that be saw that the opposition leaders were considering the political association for adoption, they hanged the registration in limbo. The pursuer of the registration of All Democratic Alliance (ADA), Dr Umar Ardo, had since dragged INEC to court to compel the registration of ADA. The opposition leaders, due to time constraints, adopted ADC as preferred political platform and jettisoned ADA.
The INEC, on the other hand, registered two new political parties, one of which is the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC). Dr Ardo revealed that the NDC didn’t meet the registration criteria before being registered. He is considering taking the matter to court to prove that NDC was not qualified for registration. In fairness to Dr Ardo, the National Officers of NDC were registered on the INEC’s portal by the orders of court. This meant that INEC did not voluntarily register NDC after considering whether it fulfilled the criteria necessary for registration. Also the National Legal Adviser of the NDC was also spotted on the Allied Peoples Movement’s (APM) page on INEC’s portal as the same person. It is believed in some quarters that the APC facilitated the speedy registration of NDC to use it to entice some politicians in the ADC to leave ADC with a promise that they will receive automatic presidential ticket if they moved to the NDC. This will divide the votes of the opposition coalition and make it easier for Tinubu to win in 2027. Whether the NDC will be on the ballot come 2027 will be clarified in due time. However, it is curious that INEC, which indicated on its portal that it was compelled by a court order, against its wish, to register the NDC, did not appeal the judgement compelling it to register the party. What made INEC to acquiesce to the registration? Only INEC, through its Chairman, Joash Amupitan, can tell.
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The overbearing influence of the ruling party to ensure that opposition parties do not participate in the 2027 election to ensure that Tinubu runs unopposed is suffocating the opposition. However, it is pertinent to note that it is the rat in the house that revealed to the rat in the bush that there is fish in the basket. The inability of the parties in opposition to discipline its erring members among themselves help embolden the ruling party to exploit such weakness.
In the PDP, the defeat of Governor Nyesom Wike in the 2022 PDP presidential primary election, in which he contested to be President, and in which he vowed to support anyone who won the primary election, triggered a lot of chain reactions. Wike wanted to be the Vice-Presidential candidate and was rejected. In frustration, he beguiled four other governors of his party to form a G-5 to fight the winner of the presidential election, Atiku Abubakar. The G-5 openly declared support for the presidential candidate of APC, Bola Tinubu, in open disobedience to the rules of PDP, which dub such conduct as anti-party activities. The punishment was suspension or expulsion from the party.
Unfortunately, PDP failed, neglected, and refused to suspend these five. It was terrible to see that Nyesom Wike fielded APC candidate at the presidential level, yet fielded PDP candidates at all the levels in the Rivers State. The PDP allowed him to get away with it because of the fear that suspending him then will affect its fortunes in the 2023 elections. After the elections, PDP lost at the federal level because of the activities of these G-5 members of the party, yet the PDP left them in their fold.
With the appointment of Wike as the Minister of the FCT, he upped his political game to gradually start assuming the position of leader in the PDP. He deployed his resources to ensure that those who supported the winner of the 2023 presidential primary election, Atiku Abubakar, were marginalised and thrown out. The PDP National Chairman, Iyorcha Ayu, was thrown out. Umar Iliya Damagum, the successor of Ayu, was courted by Wike initially to continue weakening the party. When Damagun retraced his steps from following Wike, he plotted his removal. It was this logjam that brought the PDP to its knees. All these were for Wike to pave way for his appointor, Tinubu, to run unopposed in 2027.
The lesson for the opposition parties is that they must realise that they are an endangered species. The threat to their existence is real. Indiscipline is the greatest destroyer of political parties. They must rise up to deal with indiscipline in their midst. The leaders must learn to obey their own rules and stop imposing leaders on their members. Internal democracy must be respected. Whether it is the matter of congresses and convention, or primary elections, the party’s constitution must be respected. Rule of law must be paramount, as opposite of rule of law is anarchy and chaos. There is no doubt that APC is the catalyst of the crises in the opposition parties but obedience to the rules of the party by its members and guaranteeing internal democracy will serve as a serious mitigating effect to the interference of APC.
It is worthwhile to admonish the opposition parties to be very careful on their over reliance on the provision of the law which ousted the jurisdiction of the courts to entertain any matter on the internal affairs of political parties. This provision is not absolute. Illegality automatically confers jurisdiction on the courts to intervene. This means that courts do not intervene if the parties conduct their affairs in accordance with the applicable provisions of the Constitution, the Electoral Act, and the Party’s Constitution. But once a party deviates from the legal framework stated above, and conducts its actions illegally, the courts are mandated to intervene to restore order.
