Leading member of the opposition African Democratic Congress (ADC), Mallam Salihu Lukman, has alleged that the top echelon of the party is making moves to impose their preferred candidates for various elective seats ahead of the 2027 poll.

Lukman, in a statement titled “ADC and the Prospect of Internal Democracy”, on Tuesday, called on the Senator David Mark-led leadership of the party to guard against the ugly trend.

Lukman, a former Director General of the Progressive Governors Forum (PGF), claimed that when national leadership positions in the ADC were shared among zones, coalition leaders who were only nominees on the committee that negotiated the sharing arrangement promoted themselves to become the leaders of their zones.

He said, “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 suggests perhaps the 2027 elections are 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.

“We must caution our leaders, Nigerians will not be deceived by any cosmetic design of presenting another party, which is only a duplication of 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 the 2027 elections. Therefore, the first test of Senator 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.”

According to the Kaduna-born politician, another significant challenge is determining the steps to be taken by Senator Mark’s leadership to provide a new orientation to party administration at all levels.

He said, “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 necessary capacity to mobilise all the financial resources required for the party’s operations, 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 Senator 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 the APC, where, ahead of the 2015 elections, the APC presented a delightful manifesto with all the promises, but ended up disregarding it once the elections were 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 was to have a new manifesto. What steps will be taken by Senator Mark’s 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?”

The statement added that Mark’s leadership is beyond producing candidates and winning the 2027 elections.
He said, “For those of us who spearheaded the process of negotiating the coalition and producing ADC as the party 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 Senator 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 members of the cabinet or members of the board of a parastatal of the 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 a 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 the state level and all 23 local governments and 255 wards in the state should commence. We appeal to all political leaders to relate to everyone who qualifies to be part of the transitional leadership of ADC at all levels in the State with respect and a 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.”

Mallam Lukman expressed confidence that ADC can become the envisioned internally democratic party.

“First things first, the Senator 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 have failed, and we should abstain from participating in the 2027 elections.

May God strengthen the capacity of Senator Mark and his team to provide the needed leadership for us to succeed in making ADC the envisioned internally democratic party.”