Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, National Publicity Secretary of African Democratic Congress (ADC), over the weekend spoke on how the APC government has inflicted much hardship on Nigerians and why they cannot be trusted beyond 2027. Euclid Myke covered the session.
Q. There is a court order that restrained the party’s chairman David Mark and Secretary Rauf Aregbesola from parading them as leaders of the party. What is the party doing about that?
When we saw the report yesterday that there is a court order restraining INEC and the leadership of the ADC from performing their roles, we found it a bit curious. Curious in the sense that even as a layman, we know that you give an injunction to something that has not happened. You don’t give an injunction to something that has already happened.
So INEC has already acted and recognized the leadership, so you can’t give an injunction to something that has already happened. So we found it quite curious. Then we requested for the document, the actual ruling.
We found that there was actually no such thing. Now that leads us to the logical question. So what was the motive of the people who were spreading this disinformation and misleading the public?
We saw the people spreading these stories and they are people who are directly connected to people within the government circle. Itt’s the continuation of the same agents of destabilization that have been working so hard to ensure that Nigeria is dragged down to a one-party state. So luckily for us, unfortunately for them, the ruling was very clear. The prayer that was put before the court was outrightly rejected and the only thing here that has implication for us is that we should be put on notice and that we should make our appearance on September 15.
The decision that brought about the new leadership was taken at the 99th NEC meeting of the party that was observed by the Independent Electoral Commission as required by the rules. The decision was unanimously carried.
So what you find is a situation where a small number of minorities, one or two people, are going behind to begin to say they object to what has been done, even though they could not stop the NEC from taking that decision. So it’s a curious situation that the minority will now seek to go to court and use the court to overturn the decision that the party has taken. And don’t forget, the question of leadership of a party has been settled by the Supreme Court.
Q. Former Presidential candidate of the party, Dumebi Kachukwu said that the new ADC leadership is an assemblage of retired politicians.
He has no business in this conversation, he is not even a member of the African Democratic Congress. A one-time presidential candidate or any candidate of a party does not own the party, does not have a say in the direction the party goes. You were given the ticket of the party to run a particular election. That does not make you a permanent candidate of the party and does not allocate to you the power of the leadership of the party, not of the NWC, not of the NEC of the party. So you wonder what the basis is for what this individual is doing.
When you begin to castigate people on account of their age, when does it become a crime to be an older person? So you keep saying old people, old people, is it a crime to be an older person? That’s number one. Number two, he’s talking about all recycled politicians.
Who is in a position in this country that is not recycled? Mention one politician in this country who has not been to one party or the other, or has not held one position or the other. Are we going to manufacture a new political class overnight? It’s the same recycled people who do politics in Nigeria. And we’re not going to bring foreigners to play politics in Nigeria.
Q. What efforts are the leadership of the party making to reconcile aggrieved members and bring them back to the fold.
We’ll be happy to talk to anyone willing to talk. We have people, even those within the leadership, the rank of the leadership that voluntarily resigned their position. We had people who had expressed one grievance or another.
We have managed to recognize some grievances, legitimate grievances, and we have dealt with them. But when people are just being belligerent, to the extent that you have no reason to doubt that they had an ulterior motive, which is to destabilize the party and create a condition that makes it difficult for the party to move forward, then we can’t continue to appease those kinds of people.
So whoever is willing to sit down to have a conversation to say, look, this is my grievance, or these are my grievances, and I will be happy for it to be addressed, I can assure you that those grievances will be addressed to the extent that they can be accommodated.
But if what you are doing is to continue to drag the party back, to continue to create a condition that Nigerians would think that we are permanently in crisis, don’t forget this was the same thing that was done to PDP. This was the same thing that was done to Labour Party. This was the same thing that was done to SDP.
It is these same agents that were driving these, the same forces that were driving these, that are also driving these particular individuals. The person who went to court, with due respect, I’m very confident that I know him, I’m very confident that he doesn’t have the resources to push this. So who is funding it? Who is encouraging it? So if they are willing to talk, we are willing to talk to them. But if what they want to continue to do these things that they are doing, we’ll move on and we’ll be willing to match them for whatever it is worth.
Q. You had accused the administration of President Bola Tinubu of falsifying the infrastructure development report, sectionalism and nepotism. Do you still maintain this position even after the clarifications from the Presidency?
If you take a roll call of appointments that the current administrations have made and attach their positions to it, we don’t need to add anything. To be clear to you, they have been engaged by a government that recognizes only a small circle of cronies and friends to operate with them.
Now having said that, in reaction to this accusation of, it was in reaction to the accusation of the government favouring a particular part of the country and ignoring a particular part of the country, that the government decided to publish what they would call the facts, that they hope will disprove the allegation that they have been biased against a particular part of the country. But what they ended up doing by releasing that information is confirming the allegation.
Because when you see situations where projects that belong to one geopolitical zone is being listed as part of the projects executed in another political zone, and you see projects repeated, double entry for some projects. Some projects are exaggerated; a 34 kilometer road is listed as 130-something-kilometer road. Then you begin to ask yourself, is it somebody trying to be creative with statistics, trying to doctor statistics to make it fit the narrative of equity and balance? Or is this sheer incompetence? Either way you look at it, it doesn’t exonerate the government.
So what we are saying is that we will choose to say that they are competent, they are competent in trying to create statistics that will suit the propaganda they try to push. And that was why we said what we said. You know that the government is in its panic mode, and ended up confirming rather than denying the allegation of sectionalism and bias.
Q. What is your take on the just concluded Bye-election where the ADC could not win a seat despite claiming to be the party that will unseat President Bola Tinubu in 2027.
The by-election happened less than a month after we went into ADC, so we didn’t even know the candidates. So for us, we repeatedly maintain we don’t want to be judged by the outcome of the by-election. Let our opponent, let the ruling party continue to think that the by-election is a measure of where we are. They will be shocked in 2027.
