National Publicity Secretary of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) and former Minister of Youth and Sports Development, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, has expressed fears on the possibility of the 2027 election holding, citing certain endemic factors from both the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), and the APC-led government.

In this interview with Sunday Sun, abdullahi passed a vote of no confidence in President Bola Tinubu, describing him as unelectable. He also asserted that the defection of Mr Peter Obi from the ADC affected the opposition coalition, not the ADC.

Would you agree that the ruling party has boxed opposition parties to a corner with the litigations, intra- and inter-party squabbles?

I won’t put it that way. Opposition parties have been boxed, yes, but being boxed into a corner, I don’t think so. They have been crying from day one when the work of opposition coalition building started, but people thought that we were just crying a hoax.

When we started to say that the ruling party and its government were determined to foist a one-party state on the country, people thought we were just being dramatic, but in the fullness of time everyone can now see clearly that the agendum has unfolded. We can see clearly everywhere the direction the country is going.

Since, let us even say, the return to democracy in 1999, we have not experienced any moment in an election year, a few months to the poll, when the issue of party registration will still be subject to litigation. It has never happened.

This is the first time we are getting to know that the subject of whether INEC issues a token to a party or not is national news. It had always been purely routine administrative. But today, which party has received token to upload their candidates has become a big issue.

Even the routine administration of managing parties has also become so over-politicised. It doesn’t portend good for democracy itself. What we are seeing today is not boxing the opposition parties into a corner; it is democracy itself being assaulted, being suffocated, and being boxed into a corner.

The opposition parties know what they are faced with, and from day one we try to build a unified coalition of all oppositions, but when some of our leaders decided to leave the coalition to join another party, the NDC, it affected the work of coalition building, but did not affect our commitment to giving Nigeria and Nigerians a formidable opposition political party in the ADC.

We have faced this from day one. And it is no longer an issue for us. We have learnt to take it in our stride. It doesn’t distract us anymore. We practically live in the courts, but despite that, we are still standing; despite that, we still conducted the most comprehensive direct primaries in the history of democracy in Nigeria that no other party has been able to do before us.

Talking about your primaries, will you say that the Atiku-Amaechi ticket is the best for the ADC?

I have earlier said that I have no iota of doubt in my mind about that. We had three aspirants: Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, His Excellency Rotimi Amaechi, and Alhaji Muhammad Hayatudeen. We are convinced that any one of them will do better than what we have at the moment. We do not doubt that because we are not even sure that anybody is in charge of this country anymore, given where we are today.

We are confident that any of those three aspirants will do better for Nigeria than the incumbent. We engaged in a democratic process INEC foisted on us. The Electoral Act foisted on us two options: either to do a consensus or a direct primary. At the beginning, we tried everything to forge a consensus, but that became almost practically impossible.

The only option we had was direct primary, which was herculean, because it needed an INEC-level logistics to be able to conduct direct primaries in the 36 states of the federation and the FCT. But was what we did very perfect? No, elections are never perfect anywhere, but it reflected the desire of the majority of members of the ADC, and we are very proud of what we did with the primaries.

From your assessment of INEC, will you say so far so good that it has done well to convince you of its capacity to conduct free, fair and credible elections in 2027?

I think INEC is conflicted. INEC is conflicted, and there is tension between its desire to maintain its independence and the pressure it is facing from the ruling party. Sometimes it yields to the pressure and at other times it tries to wriggle out and maintain its independence.

We have sympathy. We feel for the INEC chairman, Prof Joash Amupitan, because we know the kind of pressure that they are putting him under. But it is not about him; it Is about the institution, INEC. Politicians are not the only ones on trial; ADC is not the only party on trial; NDC is not the only political party on trial. INEC is also on trial. The judiciary is on trial.

INEC has an opportunity to prove to us that its primary loyalty is to the Nigeria Constitution and the Nigerian people, because whether they like it or not, everything, every regime comes to an end, and give account of their stewardship someday.

Only recently, I attended the memorial of Prof Humphrey Nwosu, people celebrated him because he stood firm in the face of military assaults. History will talk about Amupitan, he has to make up his mind on what chapter of Nigerian history he would like to occupy. He should decide whether he wants to be on the chapter of glory, or the chapter of ignominy. He has an opportunity now.

Deep down, what are your fears for the 2027 elections?

My greatest fear, personally, is that the government will contrive a situation where the election will not hold, because INEC was complaining last week that they have not received funding.

There is so much procurement INEC usually embarks on. A lot of them are offshore, outside the country. If by now INEC has not received funding for those procurements or has not been able to do those procurements, then the election is threatened. That is my number one fear.

Secondly is that insecurity may create situations where the election will not hold in many parts of the country. Will this be sufficient enough to affect the credibility of the election? Is INEC doing sufficient risk assessment to be able to determine or delineate areas that are volatile and that elections might not hold because of insecurity?

Then, thirdly, there is also the issue of natural occurrences. NIMET, some weeks ago, announced some places that are prone to flooding. As we head towards the election, do we have a plan for it not to take place? I am worried that INEC may not be ready for the election, whether deliberately or inadvertently. I have serious fear that INEC may not be ready for the election.

Another fear I am nursing is that the people are very bitter. People are scared because of insecurity. People are hungry because of this government’s economic policy that has pauperised the majority of the people. People are angry, and if the ruling party does not allow a free and fair election, if they rig the election, only God knows how the people will react.

They may rig the election and tell people to go to court, thinking that politicians will go to court, and that they will live happily thereafter. What if it doesn’t turn out that way? What if the Nigerian people actually see the 2027 election as their get-out-of-jail card?

And actually, this is what I see, because I know the calibre of people and the number of people that were calling and some even almost weeping on the phone when His Excellency, Peter Obi, and Dr Rabiu Kwankwaso left the coalition.

They say, what the heck are you people doing? Because you are our hope. They believe that the opposition will stick together and be able to win this election for them. If people have that kind of expectation of 2027 and the government brazenly rigs the election, only God knows what will happen.

Are you surprised by the kind of crisis bedevilling your former party, APC, especially after the party primaries?

I am surprised you are still linking me with the APC. I am in ADC now. I am the face and the voice of the opposition. I don’t have anything to do with them. The APC set a trap for the opposition when they insisted on either consensus or direct primaries. They thought they set a trap for us, but they fell into their own trap. They are the biggest victim of their own trap.

They feel that they could use the power of government to force and muscle people. We didn’t have that power, so we went to do primaries, and Nigerians can see that we, at least, don’t have as many issues. Yes, people are protesting here and there, but we don’t have issues as worrisome as the APC.

They are now caught in a major crisis, and I am very glad; I am very, very glad to see what has happened. When they started that Electoral Act, we warned the National Assembly that they were surrendering their political survival to President Tinubu.

But they then started begging him to give them their mandate back so that all of them will have an automatic ticket. They no longer think that their political survival is in the hands of the people that voted for them in the first place. They placed their political survival in the hands of the President. They forgot that when you do that, you have disempowered yourself.

We warned them to be very careful with that Electoral Act, and not do anything that will kill the opposition, but they were very busy singing On your mandate we shall stand. But now they are no longer able to stand on any mandate. They have collapsed on the mandate.

The eyes of many of them have cleared, and they realised too late that they are stranded. The automatic ticket they thought they would get became a mirage. Ultimately, the party’s national leadership ceded its power to the governors to decide, and many of the legislators are enemies to their governors. They are stranded and can’t go anywhere now.

They can’t come to us because it is too late. If it were not so, we would have welcomed some of them, but their situation teaches us a fundamental lesson that when you make law, don’t make it for a particular situation or to target particular people. You make a law for the interest of the country based on principles that will abide, and for the general interest of the people.

They didn’t do that; rather, they amended the Electoral Act to pursue parochial ends and selfish interests, and they are caught in their own trap. As their Minister, the PDP man, would say, as it is paining them, it is making us happy.

How much of Obi’s defection affected the ADC?

It affected the coalition, not ADC. I have alluded to this earlier. We all agreed at the beginning that all opposition should form a unified coalition and present a common candidate against the ruling party to stand a better chance.

When we left Ibadan, we were flying high, because the battle declarations said all opposition political parties would come together and field a single candidate. But we were a bit surprised when, after that, Peter Obi and Dr Kwankwaso decided to leave to join the NDC. They broke the coalition.

They have given all sorts of explanations, which is in the past now, but for us, what has manifested is the same thing that we were warning about when former governor Peter Obi said he was leaving ADC because of many court cases ADC had. We warned him that the court cases would follow him because it is not about ADC, but about the opposition.

Whenever he goes, the court cases will follow him. Instead of him staying and fighting here together and standing a better chance, rather than breaking apart. Now, the court case has followed him. He said he doesn’t like trouble, but bigger trouble has followed him to NDC. Where will he go now but to stand and fight?

Has his departure made our work a bit more difficult? Yes, it has, but has it made it impossible? No. We are convinced, at the ADC, that we still represent the best alternative for Nigeria, and the future of party politics in Nigeria.

This is because we are doing everything, not just for the 2027 election; we are putting in place a political party anchored on the philosophy of service to the people, grounded in a social-democratic philosophy that puts the interests of the people first.

We are trying to build a pipeline of the successive generation of Nigerian politicians, and you can see our NWC filled with so many young people. It is the same thing with our aspirants and our candidates. We have so many young people.

It Is the reason we call our national headquarters Global Campus. It is not just the secretariat of a national political party, but also a campus for breeding a new generation of politicians that believe in something.

What is your assessment of President Tinubu in the three years of his administration?

If you want to be charitable, you can say that President Tinubu has tried his best in the last three years or so. But if this is his best, why would Nigerians vote for him again?

If this is the best he has to offer, because when you talk to them and listen to the first lady sounding almost frustrated, talking to Nigerians as if they are ungrateful, as if they can’t see how much they have done for us, and instead of us being grateful, we are still complaining.

That is to tell you that when a president and those who govern the country believe they have done the best that they could do, and the net consequence of that best, according to them, is what we are going through now, then it means that we should not expect anything different in the next four years, God forbid, if they win the election. That is what it means.

I challenge you as a journalist to mention one thing you can say they have done that Nigerians are satisfied with, and that they will feel their lives are now better today than they were three and a half years ago when they came to power. What is that thing that they have done? Instead, the woman was telling us to go and be selling kulikuli and akara.

Regardless of his intentions, I don’t think President Tinubu planned it this way, but I think he has done very badly. If I were him, I wouldn’t wait to get out of that place. I wouldn’t wait because it is obvious that whatever he was advised to do, whatever he assumed himself, whatever he calculated, had let him down disastrously and with disastrous consequences for the country.

When you talk to them, they will tell you of processes: we are doing this, we are doing that, the economy is growing, foreign reserves are growing. Then, what has that got to do with the people? If foreign reserve is growing, revenue is growing; it is not translating into improved quality of life for the people.

People are still dying because they cannot afford basic drugs to keep them alive. People cannot eat; people no longer have anything to do. Do you know how many businesses have closed down in the last three and a half years?

When people are complaining that businesses are closing down, they are advising us to open new ones by trying to sell akara and to roast corn because those are the businesses we should be doing. I think President Tinubu has done very, very badly; he has done very, very badly.

What about Nigerians claiming that Atiku is not a better viable option?

That is a political talk. People are free to support whoever they want to. When they say that Atiku is not an option, what does that even mean? What are they saying? He is an option because today he is the presidential candidate of the ADC by the wish and desire of the majority of the party members.

We are confident that Alhaji Atiku Abubakar will infinitely do better than President Tinubu. I can tell you that Atiku is not going to take rash decisions that will plunge the country into this calamity.

He Is a tested hand; he has always wanted this job. He has prepared for it. You can assume that in the last 40 years that he has been doing this, he has not learnt things, or he has not known how to get things done. President Tinubu, in fairness to him, is not a bad person, or he did not mean bad, but he thought Nigeria was Lagos State.

All his worldview was Lagos State. He thought he can apply the same solution he used in Lagos will fix Nigeria by bringing his Lagos boys and just applying the same in Nigeria. Nigerians have shown him ‘sege’.

Nigerians told them that they are not Lagos. Nigeria is infinitely more complex, infinitely more complicated. And no matter the brilliance of your policies, how you manage the politics of it comes first. You can’t just come forward and say subsidy is gone without pausing for a moment before you do that.

Does he think that it is for nothing that successive governments have not been that brash? They know that the dysfunctionalities it will create will be more than whatever benefit you want to achieve, because ultimately you are in office to protect the people.

That is why the ADC is saying that we will revisit the issue of subsidy, because we want to protect the people. The priority is to protect the people. If life is going to be more difficult for the people, and there is not going to be any sign of their suffering, then we have to reconsider it.

But the APC doesn’t have the humility to say, “We probably got it wrong; we have made a mistake, so let us do a step change. No, they continue digging, and when you say no, what you are doing is wrong; they send their internet boys to abuse you, to attack you, to do whatever, as if that means anything.

Politics is local. What are the chances of ADC making an appreciable impact in your state, Kwara?

We stand a very good chance, but as you said, it is not going to be easy. PDP in our state is driven by Dr Bukola Saraki, who is determined to recover from the Otoge disappointment and to do anything to restore his control of the politics of the state.

On the other hand, we have Governor AbdulRaham Abdukrazak, who is interested in placing someone who will protect his legacy. Then, for us, in the ADC, we represent the alternative between the two, and that is why we say we stand a very good chance. And like you have rightly said, it doesn’t matter whether I am contesting or not. At the end of the day, the party is what the people will vote for.

They will look at the chances that the party has, and will look at what the party represents and stands for. They have to ask themselves whether they want to go back to the past they left or the present that they are dissatisfied with, or they want to try something new that is not beholden to anybody but the people.

Why are the political elders in Kwara more preoccupied with politics than the insecurity in the state?

No, that is not true. At least effectively, we have two opposition political parties in the state, the PDP and the ADC. What they expect is for me to leave Abuja, return home and be commenting on the issues in Kwara. I have enough on my table, and when issues have national significance, I comment. But when we hear people say that they are also looking for someone to recruit in their fight against AbdulRaham.

I even saw one sponsored article saying that I am a lion in Abuja, but I keep quiet in Kwara. So, they are looking for someone who will be helping them to attack Governor AbdulRaham, but I said that nobody can recruit me into their personal fight.

They know what the issues between them are. They are not fighting because of the people of Kwara State, but because of whatever relationship they have that has gone sour. I am not going to be part of that. (The Sun)