By Alabi Williams
Last week’s ceasefire in the war between U.S., Israel and Iran, released many countries to return briefly to their domestic issues. The war had become the major attraction, as nearly every country was affected by the disruptions in oil production and transportation around the Gulf. Here at home, Nigerians are subjected to increased pains because the government pays more attention to politics. The World Bank said last week, that Nigerians were paying 12 per cent more for PMS than obtainable elsewhere, including countries that were fighting. And it could get worse.
While warring countries showcased uncommon dominance in air and sea power, our leaders in Abuja worked tirelessly to capture the political space and close the door on the opposition. It took Pakistan, that used to operate at same medium power ranking with Nigeria, to broker the two-week ceasefire.
Pakistan is struggling with a lot of issues like Nigeria, including violent sectarianism, wobbly economy and unstable democracy. Yet, the country leverages military capacity to be noticed globally. Pakistan is a nuclear power and when their leaders talk, the world listens.
Nigeria was nowhere on the table as the world searched for a ceasefire in the Gulf. The government could not even provide a safety net for citizens as the war savaged global energy. Instead, political strategists in Abuja went on a spin, this time, to drag the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), into the arena of crooked politics. INEC stated that the African Democratic Congress (ADC), no longer had a leadership and that official recognition had been withdrawn from its activities.
This contorted journey began with amendments to the electoral Act 2022. What was supposed to be an improved version in 2026 turned out to be regulations weaponised against a weakened opposition.
For instance, the Inter-Party Advisory Council
(I-PAC), complained of a troubling expansion of the powers of the regulator to constrain candidates’ selection by parties. It is usually a constitutional prerogative of parties to determine how they select candidates. The new act has narrowed the space, which stakeholders lament will limit grassroots and popular participation. No salient reason was advanced for this amendment apart from a hidden agenda to cut off other interest groups.
Pro-democracy campaigners are also not comfortable that political parties are mandated to submit comprehensive membership registers, including National Identification Numbers (NINs), within a short time. The motive, they feared, was to set an impossible deadline calculated to exclude some players. That’s not a good strategy in a multi-party system.
The Movement for Credible Elections (MCE), a coalition of pro-democracy campaigners stated that, “in a country where millions of eligible citizens still remain outside the national identity database, such provisions risk disenfranchising legitimate party members and proportionately disadvantaging smaller parties. This is not reform; it is systemic exclusion disguised as electoral reform.”
At a time the country requires an uncommon leadership to address decades of misgovernance and transform the country into a stable homeland and notable player in global affairs, as it used to be, the Tinubu government is busy emasculating opposition parties and heating the polity.
The ADC palaver is one headache Nigerian doesn’t need now. It is contrived and those behind it should step back. The only leadership of ADC Nigerians have known for nearly one year is that led by David Mark. Through the hard times in off-cycle elections in Anambra, Kano and Rivers, it was only David Mark and his team that weathered the storm. Even in the recent municipal FCT elections, no puppet showed up as a factional leader.
But once Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso showed up, and the crowd in Kano posed a sizeable electoral threat, Abuja had to create jobs for some idle hands. They set the spanners to work and a faction was declared. The matter is for the courts to decide. However, let it be said that even the law did not envisage that a political party would be left without an officially acknowledged leadership for a moment; certainly not at this crucial election season when parties are busy with pre-primary activities. The ADC had fixed congresses to take place nationwide, and INEC was duly notified. To now declare the ADC headless looks like a devious plot from military playbooks.
But it was clear where that mischief came from. The APC is not even hiding its stained hands. There is sufficient evidence out there, knowing the damage the ruling party has done to the Peoples Democratic Party, through the FCT Minister Nyesom Wike. The institutions of state, including the judiciary and the police have assisted one man to take over the reins of a major opposition party; not to fulfil the obligations of an opposition party, but to hand over whatever remains of PDP to President Tinubu in 2027.
Federally-controlled financial crimes agencies have been used to lure PDP governors, not good governance. The things that are said of politics in Uganda, Cameroon and Zimbabwe are now happening here. And these absurdities are defended and celebrated by regime apologists, persons who pretended to be pro-democracy activists under military regimes.
The way the entire APC media have propagated the factional dispute in ADC was enough evidence where the trouble was stoked. They make the dispute look like their trump card, to decimate a thriving opposition, despite the advantages available to the ruling party. The only condition that could create the magnitude of fear we’re seeing in APC is lack of self-confidence.
They want a pliable and inexperienced puppet they could manipulate to surrender ADC the way PDP has been conquered. Even in doing that, they do not wish the opposition well. In their choice of placeholders, they did not look for men with character and vision, timber and calibre, who could rally a major opposition.
The implication is that no party is safe from plundering apart from APC. Unwittingly, perhaps, this government has sown the fear of one-party rule in the polity, which is considered reckless and dangerous in the global community.
Now, the ADC wants the outside world to hear about the shenanigans going on here. They have unveiled plans to open 12 foreign liaison offices to establish what they called a “Special Representatives Network (SRN)” in key international capitals.
The idea, they say, is to draw international attention to undemocratic practices, attacks on opposition members, and electoral integrity issues in Nigeria, ahead of the 2027 general elections. They are looking at Washington DC, New York, Ottawa, London, Brussels, Berlin, Paris and Geneva. Other global cities are Nairobi, Addis Ababa, Accra and Pretoria.
The ADC seeks to appoint envoys in these places, to serve as points of contact to brief foreign governments, international media and democratic institutions. The party plans to launch a national system to track incidents of threat, harassment and attacks on political actors.
That is a bold step, perhaps taking a clue from APC’s previous efforts to externalise domestic politics during the regime of Goodluck Jonathan. It would be nice if the ADC gets to actualise the plan. Hoping that funding wouldn’t present some constraint.
Some people worry that externalising local political issues might amount to washing our dirty linen in the public. They argue that all politics is local and there ought to be ways to contain it at home. However, the brazen nature of attacks the ADC has suffered in Edo, Kebbi, Kaduna, Rivers, Lagos, Cross River, nearly all over the country, are not assaults to keep under wraps, especially when law enforcement is not providing the needed neutrality and bringing perpetrators to justice.
ADC campaign offices and events have been attacked and materials destroyed. The latest attempt to neuter its leadership deserves the ears of the listening world.
It is a shame that close to three decades of this Fourth Republic, the country’s leadership plots and condones underhand tactics to frustrate multi-party democracy. Those responsible seem to forget that the country was once declared a pariah state for the same electoral malfeasances. And they’re doing it at the time President Trump is interested in Nigeria.
Now, it is reported that the U.S. State Department is taking a look at INEC’s capacity to credibly manage federal elections, drawing from observed weaknesses during the 2023 elections. The verdict is that “current developments suggest that same pattern may be emerging again.”
Former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, who is a leading member of ADC is reported to have hired a Washington-based firm, Von Batten-Montague-York, L.C. for $1.2 million to burnish his image, preparatory for 2027. The contract is to also counter the Nigerian government’s influence and engage with U.S. officials on governance and advocate against the planned derecognition of opposition party leadership by INEC.
There are reports of plans to recommend to President Trump and the Congress that Global Magnitsky sanctions be imposed on any Nigerian politician or official of INEC who engages in efforts to rig Nigeria’s electoral process. The measures are to include freezing all foreign assets, restricting access to the global financial, and imposing travel bans on individuals and their immediate family members.
The Iran war kept President Trump busy. It appeared the two-week ceasefire gave him a window to see how Nigeria is doing. Nigeria and the United States have an ongoing collaboration on insecurity. Last week, the U.S. issued an advisory authorising their embassy staff to depart from Abuja, due to security concerns.
Some theorists didn’t see any reason for that because to them, killings by terrorists have become normalised. Rather, they suggested that the reason for the threat alert was because Trump was angry that President Tinubu denied him a military base in the country.
But the government was more careful in responding to the U.S. advisory. The FG said the country was stable and safe, even though it knows it is not. Last week’s attack by terrorists on the military camp in Benisheikh, Borno State, was an undeniable disaster.
Yet, the government that ought to pay attention to fighting terrorism is busy plotting political chaos at home, and fishing for more trouble it doesn’t need.