The African Democratic Congress (ADC) has alleged plot by elements within President Bola Tinubu-led All Progressives Congress (APC) to destabilise the opposition coalition.
ADC in a statement by interim National Publicity Secretary, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, alleged that top Federal Government officials have summoned former ADC state chairmen and key members of the party’s state executive committees in the North East and North West to a secret meeting.
According to the statement, the party’s intelligence report revealed that the aim of the meeting “is to intimidate, coerce, and if possible, co-opt these individuals into a fabricated scheme against the opposition coalition.”
It described the meeting as sabotage, and said the motive is to sow confusion within the party, delegitimise its new leadership, and derail its rising momentum as the new face of the opposition in Nigeria.
“Let it be clear, this surreptitious dalliance with the ADC state chairpersons by appointees of the Federal Government who should be focused on urgent national security priorities and challenges that the country is facing is a coordinated assault on multiparty democracy.
“This is how one-party states are born—through intimidation,” the party added.
ADC noted that it’s July 1 coalition declaration, and the unveiling on July 2, rattled the ruling party, adding that “It is now obvious that the Tinubu administration, having lost the trust of the Nigerian people, cannot withstand the pressure of a united and credible opposition.
“But rather than correct its ways, it has resorted to its old playbook of destabilising opposition parties.”
It however stated that the coalition movement is an idea whose time has come, as the ADC belongs to Nigerians who are “tired of the lies, the manipulation, and the hardship.
“It belongs to every Nigerian who wants to restore decency, vision, and justice to governance.”
The party assured that it would not allow a handful of desperate men to turn Nigeria into a one-party dictatorship, and promised to resist it with every democratic means available.
“We call on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to take note of this sinister moves by some of his appointees and call them to order.
“The president needs to prove to Nigerians that he is indeed a democrat.
“He needs to remind his men that if the Goodluck Jonathan administration were as intolerant and as subversive of the opposition, the APC would not have come to power in 2015 and he would not have been a President today,” it added.
