Dr. Sam Amadi is the Director of Abuja School of Social and Political Thought. In this interview, he speaks on the impasse over withdrawal of recognition for the David Mark-led leadership of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and other issues. ANAYO EZUGWU reports

The ADC has gone to the Federal High Court, perhaps not to do what the Court of Appeal asked them to do because they seem to have filed an entirely new suit. Does that amount to an abuse of court process?

The issue of abuse of court process would be read to be anything done to undermine the integrity of the courts. Oftentimes, we’ve seen multiplicity of suits, not just in Nigeria, but also in the United States. So, what the ADC is doing, in my view, is that many people have argued that perhaps they could go to the local court to ask for a definition or determination of what is status quo ante.

So, they could file several suits first, challenging maybe the decision in the first place. They had the option to go on appeal. What they’re doing now, I think, is to secure some degree of finality. Of course, litigants always look for favourable hearing. Oftentimes the courts get vexed by incident or seeming suits that either trivialize the decision or try to push a small gap to secure good.

But I think the courts will look at this as normal suits trying to secure favourable hearing. And if they consider it abuse of process, which has a very narrow definition, cases filed to vex the court, cases filed when the court is focused on issues, meaning the court is discharging its responsibility, with abuse of suits, the same thing is seeking in various ways. The court will look at it and may strike it about. I think looking at it from good faith, this is just another measure by the party to ensure that it’s on the ballot and it is able to legalize and regularize its ongoing congresses.

What do you make of the romance between the Kabiru Turaki-led faction of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the ADC. How is that likely to play out and would that be a disadvantage for the Nyesom Wike-led faction?

The meeting between the ADC and the Turaki faction of the PDP, you can put it in two ways. One, I think it’s also strategic to the Turaki-led group.

It looks like with the recent upper hand by the Wike group and the fact that the Wike group has gone on with a convention, all of us are waiting whether the judiciary will give it a premature or whether the judiciary will say this is not the right thing to do.

But tactically, I think it’s just clear that they might be out for now of that PDP platform, which is a good brand, if it’s well-managed. So, their political future probably lies with some degree of alliance with ADC. Now, they have said that they are not going to endorse President Bola Tinubu.

Until we get a party registration commission as the Uwais Commission recommended, you won’t see clarity as INEC staffers provide conflicting decisions

So, even if at the end of the day, they win back the legality, which is now in some kind of doubt, they will collaborate with the ADC in one way or the other. Maybe, in the extreme case, they have a single candidate, and it was what we saw with the All Peoples Party (APP) and the Alliance for Democracy (AD) during the 1999 election, when Olusegun Obasanjo ran against AD that worked with APP to get a single candidate.

We might see that happen or some degree of collaboration around pushing back what they consider as APC’s one-party state strategy. So, it could be that, for example, the protest that the ADC leaders had a few days ago, if this collaboration works, they can all jointly engage INEC and jointly push for space within the electoral system for opposition politics.

So, best case, they come together, endorse one candidate and have more capacity to win the ruling party, which would be in the best interest of the opposition party or they collaborate in several ways. So, it’s a good, it’s a win for them, but it suggests that they might not win the control of the franchise that’s now PDP.

Can you analyze the bottlenecks or the challenges that the PDP might encounter because the ADC that they hope to form an alliance is currently in court. Can this marriage work in the event that the ADC is able to get its act together?

The uncertainty around the ADC is clearly regrettable. If this was designed and executed by the ruling party as alleged, then it’s working. ADC had a momentum until recently, and we’re getting clarity around the need to work together. It was nice seeing Rabiu Kwankwaso, Peter Obi, Atiku Abubakar, Rotimi Amaechi, Rauf Aregbesola and the chairman himself. There seemed to be some bonding going on. And the problem the ADC had was that it was nondescript. It couldn’t define itself very well, either ideologically or in terms of structure.

The Obidients are on the one side, the Atiku people on another side, the Amaechi people on another side, each attacking each other. But during these two weeks, there have been some sense in which we’ve seen, maybe Kwankwaso coming in also helped facilitate that coherence but we’re now seeing this bombshell. So, what is happening, even in the South East, there’s a lot of people who seem to feel confident around the outcome of this crisis because the planned ADC congress are going on in many places.

And then when you talk to them, I think the other standard is that somehow the Mark leadership forced themselves on the platform to get INEC to put them. But we’re not in a spirit that everything that has a legal challenge in Nigeria is unpredictable. There’s no kind of judgment Nigerian courts are incapable of giving. I mean, every legal dispute is arguable. Every legal dispute has some legal logic supporting it. And so there is always a possibility that A or B can win.

That creates a secondary level of uncertainty around ADC that no matter how you might think that maybe Nafiu Bala does not have a case, he may have a case. So, that’s why people say, let’s stop judicializing politics. The point then is that PDP faction may be taking the risk, if you like. But if they look at the worst case scenario, the worst case scenario is that if Mark loses, hey can move or migrate to a different political platform, but I think it makes sense that these two parties are working together.

Is the crisis in ADC self-inflicted or is there outside players who have created and masterminded this crisis?

One of the things that surprised me about crisis in the political parties or opposition parties is that their intensity was not there in 2015 or backwards. So, two things, I think that the environment created for this election is such that it leads to error.

Some of the crises are error and some of these errors were forced, in the sense that if you look at the electoral landscape, the rules, the way it’s been managed, there’s some sense in which party managers, ADC, PDP, New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), and so on, there’s an incentive for conflict.

And I put it at two points. One is INEC’s build-up before Joash Amupitan came on board. INEC’s response to party crisis was not authoritative and decisive. I watched when the Labour Party crisis played out, and each time, it was, go back, go forward, they will advise section A and section B. INEC never came out clear as a regulator with clear authority to party registration. Until we get a party registration commission as the Uwais Commission recommended, you won’t see clarity as INEC staffers provide conflicting decisions.

So, basically, the lack of authoritativeness and due process and clear-minded clarity in INEC management of the parties incentivized disputants, people who may have normal conflicts, I mean, that goes with party management, to externalize and accelerate and deepen those divisions.

So, everybody thinks we can get a better option from INEC. Two, the court was central to all this. Look at the Supreme Court decision. The apex court said it was internal affair. It was not authoritative. If two people have real conflict over ownership, over processing the party, you can’t say party internal affair. How would the party manage? That is a real dispute that needs authoritative legal statement.

The courts, through their weak interpretation, through their lack of clarity, and also, some would say a large degree of corruption has made matters worse. And then, that made the political actors external, whether it’s APC, or any other party. People have more incentive to be able to hold their parties to ransom.