What happened to the African Democratic Party (ADC) is another in the series of puzzling developments in the political arena since President Bola Ahmed Tinubu came to power. Members of the party woke up one morning to discover that their party had become a headless body, beheaded by no less a body than the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the almighty umpire on Nigeria’s political turf.
The implication of the INEC decision not to deal with any of the groups contending the headship of ADC in court is that the ADC seizes to be a political party due to the vacuum created in its headship. And so long as the severed links with the umpire lasts, ADC remains off the 2027 contest, indeed, off the register of parties.
The question is whether a long existing party such as ADC committed an offence so grievous as to warrant the present status INEC has reduced it to. Someone just has to be in the INEC books as the arrowhead of the party to keep it alive. Before the new entrants flocked in as a coalition, the party had somebody at the helm of affairs. Who was it?
That is where the INEC misfired. Rather than leave the vacuum, INEC would have had the wisdom of interpreting the court ruling of status quo ante bellum (state of affairs before the war) to mean returning the headship of the ADC to the man who presided over it before the coalition.
The Joash Amupitan led INEC should quickly return the name of Ralph Nwosu as the ADC chairman if they really mean to obey the court order. If Amupitan desires to prove to the world that he is not an amputee in a position such as that, he must look away from petty ethnic sentiments while also shunning blind loyalty to the man who appointed him. He must serve the nation, not the way his predecessor, Mahmood Yakubu, did but in a manner that equity would rejoice over him.
Events around the few political parties that stand out as opposition seem to present a pattern carefully planned by the ruling party. What has happened to them in the recent times appear too organized to be regarded as coincidences. To an ordinary eye, the pieces are falling in their right places to give a reason for the nickname of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the Jagaban, the master planner, the master strategist in Nigeria’s politics. Had the Jagaban applied his political ingenuity to the economy of the nation, had he banished insurgency using the brain and brawn available to him, he would not have needed to snake his way back to Aso Rock in 2027.
The Labour Party first fell on the Jagaban noose when a least known Lamidi Apapa suddenly dipped his hands into the pie to claim ownership of the party’s crown. Several court cases arose from him before the Julius Abure debacle descended on LP. For many painful months, the ding-dong continued in the house of Labour Party between Abure and Nenadi Usman who headed an interim executive chosen by the party stalwarts to arrange congresses at different levels. The courts gave vague judgements that got conflicting interpretations by both parties. It dragged to an extent that Peter Obi, the pillar of LP’s success in the 2023 elections pulled out of the party with his Obidient group to join the ADC coalition. LP went quiet.
As if someone had followed Peter Obi, ADC, which had been on a smooth sail to a fruitful coalition all the while began to rumble from one end. Another little known Nafiu Bala Gombe, once national vice chairman of the party, appeared on the scene to claim headship of ADC since the former chairman, Ralph Nwosu, had resigned.
The obvious conclusion in all of this is that some invisible hands are plotting to frustrate a popular Obi and make sure that no platform becomes available to him in the 2027 general elections. It’s like opponents marking a mercurial Diego Maradona or Lionel Messi, all of Argentina, charging towards their goal post in a soccer match. Those dogging Obi like his shadow should bury their heads in shame because their actions clearly indicate submission to the intrinsic superiority of the former governor of Anambra State.
By that judgement to remove David Mark and have no one else in the position to give life to a promising party, Amupitan showed himself as a bad student of King Solomon, the wisest man on earth who refused to divide a child disputed by two women. Cruelly, the INEC chairman drew the sword to slice the child into two. Who is he trying to please?
Former ADC chairman Nwosu was on video recently accusing Bala Gombe of perfidy. He said that his former deputy chairman in the ADC was completely part of the decision to collapse their executive to make way for David Mark and his group while they all join hands to promote the party nationwide.
According to him, Nafiu is a beneficiary of the present administration’s “anti-coalition budget of billions of naira.”
“I know Bala for more than three years now. I know where he used to stay when he comes to Abuja. But nowadays, he stays in the biggest of hotels, and he moves around with the biggest of convoys,” Nwosu said.
What is the great Jagaban afraid of? After the 2023 elections, tongues wagged, doubts filled the air over a victory handed over to him in the wee hours of that day, in disregard of the infamous glitches reported on the IReV. The 2027 election presents to him an opportunity to prove that his victory was real and well deserved. He should make every effort to see Obi on the ballot and must be willing to run transparent, glitch-free polls to show the world his capability in beating Obi silly.
The glitches for 2027 are already happening in real time, not in the virtual space of IReV portal but in the INEC, the courts and big-time monetary inducements to people who are willing tools against a common good. The way we are going, Nigeria might be seeing a replica of the Abacha days when, the parties were dubbed five fingers of a leprous hand by the late Bola Ige because the parties all “yearned” for Abacha to be president.
Paradoxically, a professed Abacha detractor is presiding over the country as his spirit hovers on the face of Nigerians.
The Judiciary which at a point had maintained that it would not dictate to the parties what they must do in their internal matters, in the eyes of right-thinking men, have acted outside that decision.
The feeling is that too much court in our politics renders our democracy tasteless. Electoral democracy has so much to do with numbers, verifiable numbers, for it to conform to the definition of government of the people for the people and by the people. If the courts get into the habit of knocking off genuine winners through flimsy technicalities or putting a stamp of legality on cooked up victories, then the nation must ask itself some questions.
Time was, when the courts weighed the people’s feelings before judgement. Democracy can’t be government by the courts but by the people. If infringements are spotted in an election, the natural thing should be for the courts to order a fresh election for the people to have a say in who governs them. A judge who is fond of giving unpopular rulings definitely incurs the people’s discontentment. And this discontentment rubs off on the entire Judiciary. A case in point was how a church congregation in Imo State reacted when the presence of a judge among them was announced, just after the Supreme Court judgement on the Imo guber election in 2019. The reaction was far from complimentary.
The cat and dog relationship between the ruling party and the opposition introduces so much confusion in the matter. A saying goes that when a fowl is found lying asleep or dead at the doorsteps of a fox, the conclusion is that the fox had done its usual hunting successfully. But when the fox lies lifeless at the doorsteps of the fowl, it is assumed that it’s taking a nap.
I have a word for the opposition. They should be legally smart to avoid these needless embarrassments. On late, another faction has popped up in ADC. Truly, many are the afflictions of the opposition. Will the Lord deliver it from them all?
Dr. Odu can be reached through [email protected] or SMS 07016722929
