The coalition-backed African Democratic Congress (ADC) has said that the party should not be judged by the results of the recent by-elections held across 16 constituencies.

The elections held on Saturday, August 16, to replace lawmakers who died or resigned after the 2023 general elections.

According to the results announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the ADC failed to secure any seat as the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) won 12 of the 16 seats across nine states.

The All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) secured two seats in Anambra, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) won one seat in Oyo, while the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) claimed one seat in Kano.

Speaking on Channels Television’s ‘Politics Today’ on Wednesday, spokesman of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Bolaji Abdullahi, attributed the party’s performance to the timing of the election and the ADC’s level of preparedness.

Asked why the ADC had a poor outing in the by-election, Bolaji said: “We’ve explained it, we’ve issued a statement, and we’ve talked about it several times. For us, the election happened less than a month after we came into the party. Most of the candidates, we didn’t even know them, and that’s why we said we cannot judge the ADC by that.

“You’re just talking about us transitioning into establishing our real leadership at this time. So, the by-election that you talked about happened too early in terms of transition for the party. So, we don’t want to be judged by the outcome of that election; there are other elections coming, and we will be ready for those.

Meanwhile, in its initial reaction to the results of the election, the ADC, in a statement attributed its poor performance to widespread violence, vote buying, and irregularities allegedly perpetrated by the ruling party.

The party claimed that the election was marred by vote-buying, ballot box snatching, voter intimidation, violence and alleged failure of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS. (Vanguard)