NO GODFATHERISM, NO IMPOSITION OF CANDIDATES – LUKMAN WARNS COALITION LEADERS

NO GODFATHERISM, NO IMPOSITION OF CANDIDATES – LUKMAN WARNS COALITION LEADERS

A key member of the opposition coalition, Salihu Mohammed Lukman, has cautioned the Senator David Mark-led national leadership of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) against god-fatherism and imposition of candidates ahead of the 2027 general elections.

Lukman, a former national vice chairman (North West) of the All Progressives Congress (APC), in a statement on Tuesday, said some ADC leaders had started behaving as if the 2027 elections are already won.

The coalition of opposition leaders comprising former Vice President Atiku Abubakar; former governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai; former governor of Rivers State, Rotimi Amaechi and many other bigwigs recently adopted the ADC as platform to challenge the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2027 general elections.

Under the arrangement, the ADC adopted Mark and former Interior Minister, Rauf Aregbesola, as interim national chairman and secretary respectively.

But in his statement titled, “ADC and the Prospect of Internal Democracy”, Lukman said when the national leadership positions of ADC were shared to zones, the coalition leaders who were only nominees into the committee that negotiated the sharing arrangement, promoted themselves into becoming the leaders of their zones.

Lukman, a former Director General of the Progressive Governors Forum (PGF), 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 suggest perhaps the 2027 elections is 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 duplicated copy 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 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.”