The African Democratic Congress has accused President Bola Tinubu’s government of targeting its leaders in the North East and North West.
ADC recently revealed that APC’s attack is an attempt to undermine the opposition coalition formed to challenge Tinubu in the 2027 elections.
Speaking via a press statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Bolaji Abdullahi, ADC said that the coalition will not sit idly and watch desperate politicians push Nigeria toward a one-party system.
According to the party, former state chairmen and senior members of the ADC’s state executive committees in the North East and North West recently felt intimidated during a closed-door meeting with top-ranking officials of the Federal Government.
ADC stated that the meeting was not for any good purpose; instead, it was an attempt to cause confusion within the coalition party.
“We have credible intelligence that the aim of this meeting is not for national security or peacebuilding.
It is to intimidate, coerce, and if possible, co-opt these individuals into a fabricated scheme against the opposition coalition. This is not politics. This is sabotage.
The motive is clear: to sow confusion within the party, delegitimise its new leadership, and derail its rising momentum as the new face of the opposition in Nigeria,” it read.
Describing ADC as a party owned by Nigerians, Bolaji cautioned President Tinubu to warn his followers not to try any form of manipulation to frustrate the effort of the coalition.
He further noted that the coalition belongs to citizens who are tired of the lies and the hardship, stressing that the people will keep demanding change until they get it.
He concluded by saying that the president has to do more to prove to Nigerians that he is indeed a democrat.
“Let it be clear, this surreptitious dalliance with the ADC State Chairpersons by appointees of the federal government who should be focused on urgent national security priorities and challenges that the country is facing is a coordinated assault on multiparty democracy.
This is how one-party states are born, through intimidation.
The July 1st Coalition Declaration and the July 2nd unveiling of the ADC have clearly rattled the ruling party.
It is now obvious that the Tinubu administration, having lost the trust of the Nigerian people, cannot withstand the pressure of a united and credible opposition.
But rather than correct its ways, it has resorted to its old playbook of destabilising opposition parties.
Let it be clear: the coalition movement is an idea whose time has come.
This party belongs to every Nigerian who is tired of the lies, the manipulation, and the hardship.
It belongs to every Nigerian who wants to restore decency, vision, and justice to governance.
We would therefore not allow a handful of desperate men to turn Nigeria into a one-party dictatorship. And it would be our patriotic duty to resist it with every democratic means available to us.
We call on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to take note of these sinister moves by some of his appointees and call them to order.
The president needs to prove to Nigerians that he is indeed a democrat.
He needs to remind his men that if the Goodluck Jonathan administration were as intolerant and as subversive of the opposition, the APC would not have come to power in 2015 and he would not have been a President today,” he added.
