APC, ADC, INEC and frenzied defections
By Adekunle Ade-Adeleye In his highly sophistic response to accusations of political unsteadiness, particularly his many defections, former Anambra governor and ex-Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate, Peter Obi, argued that
By Adekunle Ade-Adeleye
In his highly sophistic response to accusations of political unsteadiness, particularly his many defections, former Anambra governor and ex-Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate, Peter Obi, argued that he really never defected from any party but was pushed out. Not only was he lying through his teeth, he was quite oblivious to the self-denigrating fact that admitting he was repeatedly ‘chased out’ of political parties amounted to an admission of political fecklessness. So far, in his peregrinations, he has chalked up four political parties. Speaking on Lyon Mack TV to his interviewer who appeared listless, bored and exasperated with his simplistic answers, he justifies his revolving door approach to politics on the grounds of INEC’s shenanigans, disagreements with party leaders, and intraparty political dynamics – all meaningless arguments to expiate his leadership deficiencies and lack of ideological profundity and purity.
While Mr Obi was the archetypal defector, perhaps together with the grandmaster himself, former vice president Atiku Abubakar, there were other equally accomplished defectors who had made a career out of migrating from one party or the other, often whimsically. Most of the defectors, not to say their media agonisiers and sympathisers, either blame the ruling party for their footloose politics or suggest that there was a covert plot to turn the country into a one-party state or to conjure the Sani Abacha-like fait accompli. To the blamers, the defectors are all innocent, and every administrative or legal response by the electoral body is an indication of a conspiracy with the ruling party. They are incensed that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) now controls 32 states out of 36, having started out with 22 states before the 2023 elections. That dominance has permeated the National Assembly to the point of nearly choking the opposition. With some 87 senators out of 109, and 280 House of Reps members out of 360, the Senate and the House of Representatives are brimful with APC lawmakers.
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But the defections have not been as capricious as imagined. After the 2023 polls, and as the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) began to fracture, the stage was set for states and lawmakers, who really never liked being in the opposition for too long, to make their moves. Between 2015 and now, the PDP has been beaten thrice and repeatedly outflanked. Few politicians, fickle at the best of times but now contending with the worst of times, are ready to give the opposition the benefit of the doubt of rebounding in the future. What, therefore, began as a trickle of movements and defections soon became an avalanche. In a little under three years, as the PDP quagmire became more pronounced and intractable, more governors gave up on the party, and scores of lawmakers followed suit. The eager defectors sneered at the general postulations that President Bola Tinubu was trying to concoct a one-party state, and also sniveled at the far-fetched idea that the president and his aides were attempting to re-enact the style and politics of the late General Sani Abacha who arranged to be the candidate of all the existing parties of the day.
For the three feuding political parties capable of presenting some opposition and resistance to the APC today, the bone of contention has always been about leadership. As it is in the LP, so it is in the African Democratic Congress (ADC) and the PDP. The common thread in the raging legal battles is the incompetence with which the high-profile politicians who seized control of the LP and ADC took over the reins of power. The takeovers were clumsy, imperious, and stand in total disregard of those parties’ internal dynamics and extant rules. In short, the court battles predated the consolidation of the Tinubu administration.
More, it was idealistic to expect that the ruling party, because of its professed allegiance to democracy and the rule of law, would take measures, including shutting its doors against defectors, to promote and strengthen the opposition. No such altruism exists anywhere, not even in older democracies. It didn’t exist when the PDP held the reins of power for 16 years, and would not exist should ADC ever grope its way into office on a hypothetical future.
Had the Electoral Act 2026 not forbidden defections beyond a certain deadline, the last-minute rush out of the PDP to both the APC and ADC would have continued steadily until hours before the primaries. And while the LP has been mortally injured in battle, the PDP and ADC have locked legal horns at the Supreme Court close to the deadline for completion of membership registration. INEC’s delisting of ADC executives is wrapped in fierce and emotive arguments, but it is undisputable that the ADC leadership contest had lasted nearly as long as when Alhaji Atiku, himself a serial defector, clumsily engineered the party’s takeover instead of founding a new one. Last week, after the Nyesom Wike faction conducted a successful convention, and the Seyi Makinde faction remained unyielding, the last batch of PDP defectors scurried across creaky bridges to safety: some to the APC, and the rest who seemed to loath the APC more than they cared about the void into which they were leaping, went to the ADC to take their chances, no matter how slim.
