Victor Umeh is the senator representing Anambra Central Senatorial District in the National Assembly. In this interview, he speaks on his defection to the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) and the broader challenges facing opposition coalition politics ahead of the 2027 general election, among other issues. EVINCE UHUREBOR reports
There are reports that you’ve resigned from the ADC. Is that a fact?
Well, it is true because I’m an ally of Mr. Peter Obi.
The African Democratic Congress (ADC) was supposed to be the grand coalition to challenge the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). What exactly went wrong?
You are a close watcher of political developments in Nigeria. When the coalition came together on July 2, last year, it came with a lot of hope. People came together, and Nigerians celebrated that people who can actually stand firm to put their feet down to offer Nigerians new hope, have come together. We started from that moment to the end of the year.
And coming into the New Year, time started ticking and along the line, legal twists were introduced in the matter. Somebody who resigned as a member of the National Working Committee (NWC) of the ADC went to court to challenge something the party had done to his full knowledge.
In fact, I have his post on his own Facebook page, where he congratulated Senator David Mark for emerging as the National Chairman of ADC alongside with the National Secretary, Rauf Aregbesola. But suddenly, he appeared and went to court, claiming that he was the rightful person to take over in the event of his colleagues resigning.
What he didn’t understand was that only himself cannot resign and constitute himself to an NWC of the party because the entire people that were in that NWC resigned. He also resigned, so he recanted and made himself a willing tool to be used to destabilize the party, and he went to the court. But having come into this year, when things were shaping up and everybody was getting ready to go into the political season, the Court of Appeal struck on the March 12, and made an order.
After finding an appeal brought before it to the incompetent, the court and the chairman of the panel proceeded to make a sweeping order that everybody should maintain status quo ante bellum. That’s not even the problem; the court went further to say that parties shall not take any step that will render the proceedings at the trial court nugatory. What that meant was that it tied the hands of the party.
And then the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, who was waiting for the order to be made, gleefully came on television and announced that INEC no longer recognises Mark and Aregbesola as the leaders of the party. In a swift action, he removed their names from the INEC portal, denying them recognition. That’s what snowballed into the crisis.
Some are wondering why Obi joined the ADC if the legal uncertainty and external influence were already visible before he got into the party.
There were no pending litigations when the coalition came together. A committee was appointed to do due diligence, check on the party, and at the time the coalition came together and unveiled itself on July 2, 2025, there was no pending case.
But people like Dumebi Kachikwu, the 2023 presidential candidate of the party were already making a lot of public pronouncements about the direction of the party and threatening to take legal action…
He had no power to do what he tried to do. He was a presidential candidate of the party in the 2023 general election. It is only in Nigeria that somebody will contest an election and make himself a leader of the party, whether he wins or loses. In the organ of the party, he has no authority to do anything. T
he party was magnanimous enough to make him its candidate. He went to the election and was not seen in the election. He lost woefully. So, that will not entitle him to now say that he owns the party.
This move from one party to the other raises questions about Obi’s political judgement. He moved from the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Labour Party, ADC, and is now aligning with the NDC. At what point does strategic flexibility begin to look like political instability and a lack of judgement?
Nobody in Nigerian politics can say he has not moved from one party to the other. The only thing is counting the numbers in the sequence.
The reason why people support Obi is because they believe that he will change things, that he will be extraordinary rather than ordinary. But now he’s giving the APC the opportunity to label him as a political drifter. They’re saying he’s moving to all these parties and that this repositioning looks inconsistent. What is your response that?
I’ll ask you to check the famous story in the Bible, where everybody was accusing Mary Magdalene of committing adultery. and Jesus told her accusers: Any of you who is not without any guilt, throw the first stone.
The signs were there… you don’t need to tell somebody who is wise enough to know when the odds are piling against him
Movement from party to party happens in Nigeria because of the lack of stability in our polity. Political parties in Nigeria have not developed to the level of exercising control over its members. In some places, like in America, if you’re a Democrat or a Republican, you’ll be associated with your party sometimes for the rest of your life.
In Nigeria, the political parties will be there and people who are in authority will continue to destabilize them. What we faced in the ADC is a conscious effort to make people run away from the party. You will not be there to actualize your objective. When the party becomes murky, you cannot remain there.
If Obi is telling Nigerians that he is about principle, not convenience, and that he positions himself as a reform candidate, how does constantly changing platforms square with the idea of stability and longterm institution building?
When you interviewed Mr. Obi here, he said he will never take part in transactional politics. That is a mark of integrity and principle. If you are part of a system where everything is reduced to Naira and Kobo, you want to become a candidate, you just go and get money from the bank and buy the delegates.
He’s not known to be like that. He is somebody who has very great fiscal discipline. Obi doesn’t waste money. In fact, if he is contest an election and you ask him to bring money, he will ask you, do you want me to give you money to provide service to you? That is against his principle, and he has lived it.
People have identified him with that, and those who support him do not expect money from him anymore. So, if he’s operating in a system where everything is monetized, and he sees it going in the wrong direction, he can excuse himself. That’s what he has done repeatedly, and people who are now shouting that he’s a nomad, he moves from one party to the other, they have the same history of nomadic life in politics.
What happens if he discovers something untoward in the NDC?
Before we choose NDC, we had to look at the character of the people in the party.
And you didn’t do that in the ADC…
No, it was an amalgamation of all comers. People came from all backgrounds; all politicians were there. You cannot identify ADC with any personal leadership skill of anybody. Everybody who was wearing Agbada and known politicians, who have played it big in Nigeria, everybody came to the same place. And you cannot hold anybody really accountable.
In the case of the NDC, the major leader of that party is Senator Seriake Dickson and I serve with him in the 10th Senate. He’s one of the strongest senators in terms of principle. So, going to where he is, you can be reasonably assured of decency in the management of the party.
Why didn’t Obi and all the rest of you go there in the first place?
I mean, the ADC was trying to bring all the opposition together. So, you could have been part of that coalition… We had hoped that as the coalition progressed, we’ll be able to separate the wheat from the chaff, that things will fall in place and that the coalition will be able to discover in its midst somebody it can actually present to Nigerians to be able to win an election. But going forward, there was no such thing. It became a place where everybody wants to lead. No dialogue was possible.
Anybody you speak to, it must be me. It must be me. That’s when the party began to lose focus. I had reason to engage some people along the line, and I told them that ADC is going to run into murky waters because you have primary elections ahead of you and nothing has been put in place. Everybody continued to make claims of how one person will win the election against the other person. Even an opinion poll could not garner reasonable points.
Everybody is operating. It was on this programme on January 12, that I said that if ADC does not take strategic steps to defeat the ruling party, it will be a tragedy. What I was talking about was looking at the motley of aspirants operating in the party; that if the party fails to do a proper evaluation of their capacities, their integrity and all that, all of them will move on to the decision time and the party will wreck.
Where we are now, failure to do that house cleaning is responsible for the party not being organised. Even before the litigation crisis came, the party had not done anything to say it understands the yearnings of the Nigerian people, let us find somebody who can match their needs and expectations, so that we tell all the parties that candidate and move into the election.
Was it made clear to Obi that he was not likely to be the candidate?
No, but the signs were there. I was also in the party; you don’t need to tell somebody who is wise enough to know when the odds are piling against him because we were interacting with everybody and they will tell you, don’t worry about this.
But supporters of Obi were not registering in the ADC. We saw the records of the ADC registration. The highest records were from the North, where Atiku comes from, In the South, particularly the South-East, where Obi comes from, there was virtually nothing…
Those numbers actually could not be taken to be for any particular individual. We were interacting with everybody in the party from all the zones and if there had been a proper process for a primary, everybody will say they will support whoever wins the primary. But if you ask yourself the relevant questions; how are you going to conduct this primary.
The Electoral Act was amended and the delegate indirect primary was removed. What you now have is a direct primary and consensus. And there are some people in the party who are aspiring to be president, saying that the only consensus they will accept will be if it favours them.
As a former party administrator, I understand the meaning of direct primary. Every registered party member will vote in the nomination of candidates in a direct primary. Nigeria has 8,809 electoral wards, so the presidential primary will be conducted in 8,809 wards in Nigeria. Does the ADC, looking at its present organisation, in a position to provide people who will be able to conduct this primary in a free and fair manner across the 8,809 wards?
