Salihu Moh. Lukman
Kaduna
After more than eighteen months of hard work and negotiations, Sen. David Mark is today, Tuesday, July 29, 2025, together with his team, taking over as the new national leadership of the African Democratic Congress (ADC). When some few of us started advocating for a coalition of opposition leaders, most Nigerians, including many of the leaders who are now positioning themselves as the drivers of the process, were quite pessimistic and contemptuous. Some of them, until the last three months, resisted joining us in meetings that negotiated the process. We were accused of promoting or being sponsored by some leaders who nursed presidential ambitions.
Notwithstanding, we remained focused and continued to engage everyone. We were very clear that Nigerian democracy needed a rescue mission, in fact, a restart. The major problem is the culture of imposition that is widespread across all the registered political parties in the country. It is largely responsible for the absence of internal democracy within all the parties. And it is also the cause of why elected leaders are unaccountable and unable to be committed to delivering on electoral promises they made to citizens. Sadly, with hardly any exception, all our political leaders, who we had to mobilise to lead the rescue mission are beholden to the same problem we want to correct.
With that clarity, we committed ourselves to organising a coalition of opposition political leaders that will operate based on collective orientation. It was a very difficult task because most political leaders tried to manipulate the orientation of meetings to gain advantages. Throughout the negotiation process, almost every decision and initiative were suspect. Without doubt, we succeeded in keeping all the coalition leaders together by the grace God and through ensuring that concessions are given, which guaranteed some minimum balance and confidence. Perhaps, it also needs to be acknowledged that the leadership of Sen. David Mark in the last few months enabled us to seal the agreement that produced the result of the emergence of new leadership of ADC, which is what earned him the position of National Chairman.
With the emergence of new leadership of ADC, does it mean the work of the coalition is over? Does it even mean ADC has become that envisioned party that will guarantee internal democracy whose operation will not be dictated by the culture of imposition? The answer to both questions is no. If anything, the work of the coalition is just beginning. The truth is that the negative side of almost all our opposition political leaders is already at play. Many are taking steps to manipulate the process of leadership reformation of the ADC. Loyalists are being promoted in a manner that suggest perhaps the 2027 elections is already won. The struggle to ensure that loyalists of leaders emerged as the leaders of the reformed ADC to some extent disregard the consideration for intellectual capacity, integrity, performance track records, name recognition across all demographics, respect in community and political circles, independent mindedness and general acceptability to all or majority of stakeholders, which we agreed to.
The worrisome reality is that most leaders are behaving as if the 2027 elections is a walkover. When the national leadership positions of ADC were shared to zones, coalition leaders who were only nominees into the Committee that negotiated the sharing arrangement, promoted themselves into becoming the leaders of their zones. The coalition leadership had to issue out transitional operational guidelines specifying categories of leaders to participate in meeting at all levels. Even then, some of our leaders ensured that the Zonal meetings that produced the new leaders of ADC are to their advantage. At the rate things are playing out, ADC is being setup to become another variant of our old parties.
We must caution our leaders, Nigerians will not be deceived by any cosmetic design of presenting another party, which is only a duplicated our old parties. With the way things are going, coalition leaders will emerge as godfathers, and the next thing is that they will impose their surrogates at all levels as leaders of the ADC. This will naturally be followed by anointing preferred candidates for 2027 elections. Therefore, the first test of Sen. Mark’s leadership of the party is the extent to which he can mitigate all these and ensure that ADC is not a party that will be controlled by godfathers. To what extent can the party guarantee collective leadership at all levels? This will largely depend on the ability of the new leadership to ensure that the process of decision making at national level, leadership reformation at states, local governments and ward levels are not skewed to favour anybody.
Another very important challenge is the question of steps to be taken by the Sen. Mark’s leadership to provide new orientation to party administration at all levels. For instance, will the reformed ADC take steps to develop a competent bureaucracy in the party Secretariat with established rules and professionally staffed? Or will the party leaders recruit their loyalists as staff in the party Secretariat? Will the ADC develop the needed capacity to mobilise all the financial resources required for the operations of the party, including election financing? Or will the party operate based on the old tradition of relegating its funding to depend on the generosity of leaders?
The other critical question that Nigerians anxiously await initiatives of the Sen. Mark leadership is the issue of the direction the party intends to take towards addressing the challenges facing the country. With the painful experience under APC whereby ahead of the 2015 elections, APC presented a delightful manifesto with all the promises, but ended up disregarding it once elections are won, what will be different with ADC? What is even the manifesto of ADC? When we negotiated with the former leadership of ADC under Chief Ralph Nwosu, one of the agreements we reached is to have a new manifesto. What steps will be taken by the Sen. Mark leadership to produce a new ADC manifesto. Or will the new leadership allow the tradition whereby candidates for elections produce their individual manifestos, with hardly any bearing with the party’s manifesto?
A lot of hard work and sacrifices made it possible for the emergence of Sen. Mark and his team as the new leaders of ADC. We are grateful to Chief Ralph Nwosu and his team who were former leaders of ADC who agree to resign from their positions based on the conviction that Nigerian democracy truly required a rescue mission driven by a democratically functional political party. Will the new team of Sen. Mark leadership justify the sacrifices made by Chief Nwosu and his team? Or will they adopt the mentality of some coalition leaders of imagining that 2027 election is a walkover, and therefore proceed to conduct themselves almost as if election has been won and what is left is only to appoint people into government? Once that is the case, the return to the old practice will be accelerated and in not too distance time, it will be predictable who the ADC candidates will be at all levels, including presidential elections.
The only safeguard against that is when our leaders of our new party, ADC, under Sen. Mark appreciate the enormity of work before us and begin to organise itself to provide the needed leadership to truly produce a new orientation to party management. As much as we acknowledge Sen. Mark’s leadership capacity, he should not expect Nigerians to trust that he will lead ADC into becoming the envisioned party that can have the capacity to hold elected representatives accountable. The truth is that Sen. Mark and the new leaders of ADC must earn the trust of Nigerians on account of which the party and its candidates can win the 2027 elections. The way to earn that will be based on the ability of the party to institute collective leadership at all levels based on which democratic emergence of party leaders and candidates for elections can be guaranteed.
Anything short of that will defeat the prospect of ADC to win 2027 elections. If the ADC can meet these expectations, within the next six months, it should be clear to Nigerians. An important checklist is the need to be fair and just to all party members. Already, there are complaints of unfair nominations of some leaders of the ADC from some states. How the Sen. Mark leadership is able to fairly resolve them is important. Related to this is the issue of guaranteeing the emergence of collective leadership at lower levels based on the operational transition guidelines. The ADC leadership must pay attention to states where some powerful politicians come from. Those are the politically infected category with the imposition virus who will damage the prospect of ADC from becoming the envisioned internally democratic party. The degree to which ADC can emerge with potentials to produce accountably elected leaders is dependant on how the Sen. Mark leadership resolve all the complaints being made.
The other associated issue is that ADC must not expect members to remain beholding to the party simply based on expectations. The party leadership must recognise that the trust of Nigerians on political leaders is low. The case of ADC will not be different. What this means is that the new generation of ADC members will not waste their time in the party if the expectation of producing an internally democratic party is weak. To that extent therefore ADC leadership should be ready for mass exodus of party leaders and members out of the party if within the next six months ADC emerges as another variant of our old party. With the logic of once beaten, twice shy, there is no need to hang on to any expectation based on false orientation.
The only question will be when party leaders and members leave ADC, where will they go to? This is why the framework and organisational format of the coalition must be retained for at least the next six months. With that, coalition arrangement must also be developed at states and lower levels such that leaders are constantly in negotiation mode, negotiating agreements based on circumstances confronting them, including whether ADC is emerging as the envisioned internally democratic party or not. If not, what initiatives should leaders take at all levels to present options to citizens that can guarantee emergence of accountable elected leaders?
Whether the Sen. Mark leadership can allow that to be activated to guide the reformation of ADC leadership at all levels based on the operational transition guidelines is another checklist. The extend to which political leaders at all levels will be committed to working with the coalition arrangement is also a determining factor about whether ADC can emerge as the envisioned internally democratic party. All these are issues that can be determined within the next six months. No one, including all of us who are privileged to spearhead and successful produce the ADC as the candidate for the envisioned internally democratic party, should be giving excuses if after six months there are no tangibly evidential justifications to confirm achievement. No political leader should expect citizens and electorates to continue to play the role of being pawns in a political chess game in which the only beneficiary are politicians and elected leaders. Whatever is required to produce leaders with humility and elected representatives in ADC must be done. It should be more honourable to abstain from participating in 2027 elections on account of failure to reform ADC to emerge as the envisioned internally democratic party than seeking to embark on another deceptive project of hoodwinking Nigerians into electing another round of unaccountable leaders.
The work of Sen. Mark’s leadership is cut out for them. It is beyond producing candidates and winning the 2027 elections. For those of us who spearheaded the process of negotiating the coalition and producing ADC as the candidate for the envisioned internally democratic party, whether we are part of the national leadership or not, we must remain united within the coalition to continue to engage the leadership of Sen. Mark to ensure they succeed. If, for any reason, we allow them to fail, we have equally failed. The prospect of succeeding is much stronger. However, it all depends on the extent to which we are ready to continue to make the sacrifices required.
Maybe we should also remind ourselves that politics is local. This requires that we all move back to our states and ensure that ADC at that level is run democratically based on collective leadership. In many states, this is already being threatened. Many high profile political leaders, especially former Governors are taking steps to serve as godfathers in ADC and leaders at these levels are reduced to acting as the members of cabinet or members of board of parastatal of government in which powerful politicians and former Governors are the Chief Executive Officers. Although faced with a lot of disadvantages, those of us who suffer the disadvantage of not being godsons of these high-profile politicians must take every necessary step to win the confidence of citizens at that level.
Coming from Kaduna State, we must take every necessary step to discontinue the political culture of divisive politics of religion and ethnicity. Any political leader who is associated with past divisive politics in the state must commit to reforming himself as basis for working with us in the effort to reform the ADC and make it a party that promotes a new united Kaduna State. Based on the transitional operational guidelines provided by the ADC national leadership, the process of instituting an all-inclusive leadership at state level and all the 23 local governments and 255 wards in state should commence. We appeal to all political leaders to relate with everyone who qualifies to be part of the transitional leadership of ADC at all levels in the State with respect and high measure of tolerance. We must commit ourselves to making ADC an equal opportunity platform at all levels. Anything short of this should be resisted.
We are confident that ADC can become the envisioned internally democratic party. First thing first, the Sen. Mark leadership must rise to its calling and give the party and Nigerians a new template in political party management in the country. The prospect of achieving that should be evidentially established within the next six months. Anything to the contrary should mean that ADC and the coalition has failed and we should abstain from participating in the 2027 elections. May God strengthen the capacity of Sen. Mark and his team to provide the needed leadership for us to succeed in making ADC the envisioned internally democratic party. Amin!
