The National Publicity Secretary of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Bolaji Abdullahi, says the party has spent more time dealing with court battles than campaigning or building its structures since emerging as a coalition opposition platform in 2025.
Speaking on Arise Television on Thursday, Abdullahi said the party has been bogged down by an “avalanche” of litigation.
“The party since the start has been burdened by this avalanche of court cases, to the extent that I like to say that we spent more time in courts than we spent on the campaign ground or trying to build our party structure,” he said.
Despite the headwinds, Abdullahi insisted the party has evolved into a formidable political force.
“In spite of all these encumbrances, we’ve built a formidable opposition political party. Two, three years ago, I doubt if we’d be having this conversation about the African Democratic Congress,” he noted, pointing to the public discourse around the party as a measure of its growth.
Abdullahi alleged that the legal challenges are part of a deliberate strategy by the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to weaken the opposition ahead of the 2027 general elections.
“We said it at the start that the idea is to discourage opposition and create a situation whereby in 2027, only President Bola Tinubu will be a viable candidate on the ballot,” he alleged. “That’s the agenda of the ruling party. So everything you’ve seen since then is not so much about the opposition. It’s about what the ruling party is trying to ensure—that they don’t have any real challenge.”
Both the APC and the presidency have consistently denied any involvement in the ADC’s internal legal crises.
Defending the coalition’s legitimacy, Abdullahi maintained that the party followed due process before its formation, questioning why it continues to face roadblocks.
“People may look at us and say, ‘Oh, why are they not solving their problem?’ But we did everything that we needed to do to go into the African Democratic Congress, and the records are there,” he said. “Each time they throw these obstacles at us, we wonder what this is all about. It’s not about law. It’s not about the judiciary; it’s about politics. And that’s why we wonder why some judges are making themselves available to be used for these kinds of things.”
**The Leadership Tussle**
The remarks come amid a protracted leadership crisis within the ADC, sparked by the resignation of former National Chairman Ralph Nwosu and the subsequent emergence of a caretaker leadership led by former Senate President David Mark in July 2025.
The move triggered a factional dispute pitting the Mark-led leadership against former Deputy National Chairman Nafiu Bala, who challenged the transition on the grounds that he was constitutionally entitled to assume the party’s leadership following Nwosu’s exit.
On November 5, the Federal High Court in Abuja, presided over by Justice Peter Lifu, ruled in Bala’s favor. The court declared the Mark-led caretaker committee illegal and nullified its actions—including the process that produced former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar as the party’s 2027 presidential candidate—while also rejecting a purported resignation letter allegedly signed by Bala.
The ADC has since rejected the judgment, filing an appeal while maintaining that the legal setback will not halt its political activities.
Reacting to the ruling, Atiku described it as a calculated attempt to undermine his political support in the North and thwart his presidential ambition. However, party counsel Kalu Kalu argued that the ruling did not explicitly nullify the nominations of Atiku or other candidates produced under the Mark-led leadership, claiming observers were reading conclusions into the judgment that were absent from its actual orders.
