The African Democratic Congress (ADC) has accused the administration of President Bola Tinubu of orchestrating a covert campaign to destabilise the emerging opposition coalition ahead of the 2027 general elections.

In a statement issued on Monday, July 7, by the party’s Interim National Publicity Secretary and National Coalition Spokesperson, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, the ADC alleged that former state chairmen and members of the party’s state executive committees from the North East and North West regions had been invited to a secret meeting with senior officials of the Federal Government.

“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 statement read.

The party claims the alleged move is intended to create division within the ADC, discredit its leadership, and undermine the coalition’s growing influence as an alternative political force. According to the statement, the strategy forms part of a broader effort to weaken multi-party democracy in the country.

“Let it be clear, this surreptitious dalliance with the ADC State Chairpersons by appointees of the federal government… is a coordinated assault on multiparty democracy,” Abdullahi said. “This is how one-party states are born—through intimidation.”

The party pointed to recent events—the July 1st Coalition Declaration and the July 2nd unveiling of the ADC as the opposition’s new platform—as the catalysts for what it described as a reactionary pushback by the ruling party.

“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,” the statement continued.

The ADC called on President Tinubu to intervene and restrain his aides and appointees allegedly involved in the plot. “The president needs to prove to Nigerians that he is indeed a democrat,” Abdullahi said. “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.”

The party maintained that it would resist any attempt to stifle democratic space and affirmed its commitment to building a broad-based opposition ahead of the next elections.