A chieftain of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Mallam Salihu Lukman, has cautioned former Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai and other party leaders against plunging the party into chaos over control of its structures in the state.
Lukman, a former National Vice Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), raised the alarm in Abuja on Wednesday, warning that ADC risked implosion if its leaders continued to prioritise internal power struggles ahead of the 2027 elections.
His intervention follows recent tensions within the party, including the controversial attempt to remove former Senate President David Mark as national chairman.
“Instead of working to build the party, we are setting ourselves up to produce a party whose business will be limited to presenting candidates for elections,” Lukman said. “People with ambition to contest elections have become restless and want to dominate the process of building the party’s structures to the exclusion of their opponents.”
He stressed that the same crisis rocking the national leadership was already visible in Kaduna, warning that such internal battles could weaken the opposition before 2027.
“The madness of controlling structures of ADC is the biggest threat before us. If ADC is to emerge as a strong party capable of defeating the APC in Kaduna State, we must agree to work together,” he cautioned.
The former APC chieftain directly appealed to El-Rufai and other influential figures in Kaduna politics, including Jaafaru Sani and Bashir Saidu, to resist supporting aspirants bent on capturing the party’s structures.
“I want to appeal to Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, Mallam Jaafaru Sani and Alhaji Bashir Saidu as opposition leaders in Kaduna State to please stop encouraging the madness of aspiring candidates seeking to take over ADC structures to the exclusion of others,” he said.
According to him, the ADC must avoid becoming another platform hijacked by power-hungry politicians, insisting that only unity and collective leadership could deliver victory in 2027.
“It is only if we are united in ADC that we can unite our people in the state to defeat the APC in 2027. We must put an end to the era when we produce emperors as governors,” he added.
Founded in 2016, the ADC has recently gained traction as part of a broader opposition coalition, attracting figures like former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and former Senate President David Mark, with ambitions of unseating the APC in the next general elections.
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