The African Democratic Congress (ADC) has demonstrated its determination to consolidate its leadership with all the political bigwigs that participated in the formation of the coalition.
Sunday Telegraph gathered that the party has directed former Governor of Anambra State, Peter Obi and his Kaduna counterpart, Nasir El-Rufai, among others, to officially leave the Labour Party and the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and other parties respectively and join the party with their supporters and structures.
A source that is privy to the developments in the party, said the leaders have been creating structures at their state levels to take the party to the grassroots.
Recall that ADC had in July exempted Obi and El-Rufai from defecting from their current political platforms. The ADC, which was recently adopted as the flagship platform of the opposition coalition, is widely believed to be courting Obi and other influential politicians, who have yet to formally declare for the party.
Following the latest developments in other major parties like the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that is working assiduously courting some of her members that are yet to defect to ADC, the coalition has now mandated them to resign from their current platforms and join the party within the next few weeks.
According to a source, the party is working underground with the states and the states are pulling together.
The source said: “The stakeholders at their various state levels, people are coming together and creating structures at the state level but you know there is a position at the national level to allow the current leadership to stay for some time before they would now call for congresses and all that.
“So that’s the major thing that they are doing. What they are doing is like a house cleaning. What they are doing is to build a platform. It’s only when you build a platform and when everybody has agreed that they are members of this party, that’s when you can begin to talk about candidature.
“But I think that, hopefully, in the next couple of weeks, they will take charge of that. You have to leave your party if you are coming and going. But let me tell you something; most of the people that you are seeing that have not left their parties, they are taking structures and they are exploiting states.
“You know, I can’t speak for Peter Obi but I’m sure that without going direct, you can say that people who have interest and plan to use the platform of ADC, necessity requires of them to leave their parties. But you know I don’t speak for any ADC.”
The source also denied the rumour that some former party officials are leaving because they are sidelined. He noted that what is ADC today was decided upon in the presence of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
“The then leadership led by Ralph Nwosu and his exco decided to hand over to the new people, so that they can rebuild and rebrand the party.
“On the basis of that, you will see that except someone like Dumebi Kachikwu, who is saying that he still wants to contest and control, which is neither here nor there. You cannot say because you are a presidential candidate, you are now the owner of the party.
“Why is Peter Obi not the owner of Labour Party? Why did Buhari not go to the grave with the All Progressives Congress (APC)? Why didn’t Atiku Abubakar carry the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) along when he was leaving the party?
“Not even by the party’s constitution or by any measure can you lay claim to ownership? The only people you can talk about are maybe, two or three members like chairmen of Nasarawa, Benue and Borno states but what the party did is that 33 out of 36 state chairmen plus Abuja, agreed on the takeover and if you disagree, you are in the minority.
“So, three cannot override 34 and that is why I don’t think they’ve gone to court on the matter because like the chairman of chairmen will always say, ‘it was an agreement by majority of the chairmen to welcome the new leadership of the ADC.’
“Another issue you can talk about is the guy from Gombe State, who says he is now the National Chairman but the moment they brought up his resignation letter, he kept quiet. They’ve already given him a position at the zonal level consequent upon which he by himself resigned as a deputy national chairman. You understand? So, it goes to no use.
“And I don’t even think that by their constitution, he is the next in rank. Let’s us even assume that the national chairman said he was going, he is not the next in rank. The next in rank is the deputy national chairman politics.
“And I think the party has now formally submitted the list of their elected officials to INEC and they are waiting. And they are waiting on INEC to recognise their new leadership.”
Apart from Obi and El-Rufai, the party is also expecting other stakeholders that have identified with the coalition to join officially join them in rescuing Nigeria from the ruling party. It is expected that in the coming days and weeks, many politicians, political actors and other Nigerians would join the coalition in moving the country forward.
But the ADC’s Interim National Publicity Secretary, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, explained that both Obi and el-Rufai were allowed to complete certain electoral processes within their former political parties.
He said: “They were given the opportunity to finalise pending elections, including by-elections and the selection of governorship candidates, within their legacy parties.”
He reassured the public that both Obi and El-Rufai remained committed to the ADC coalition and would formally join the party after completing those processes.
