Atikulates vs Obidients: The Scramble for the Soul of ADC

By Richard Elesho

In the build-up to its adoption as the centre of gravity for opposition politics in the 2027 election cycle, the African Democratic Congress, ADC, took the stage by a storm, vowing to frustrate the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, out of government. Not many people ignored the threat. The movements and characters around the party heralded its vast potential for power grab. Its foundation membership included experienced politicians, retired military brats, academics, and technocrats, fuelling the hope for an iconoclastic performance.

However, as the nation wobbles towards the election timeline, internal wrangling over the ADC’s presidential ticket is profiling the party as a house divided against itself and setting its members on a collision course. At the centre of the permutation is zoning, and which region between the North and the South is likely to produce the presidential candidate. Unlike the APC, whose ticket is favoured to be retained in the South after an eight-year sojourn in the North, the opposition party is yet to make a pronouncement on zoning. The seeming deregulation is the appetiser plate for the current tension.

Arrayed in battle gear are the supporters of two prominent members believed to be nurturing presidential ambitions. To be sure, the party boasts many rumoured names with eyes set on Aso Villa, the nation’s seat of power, but not all of them are in contention.

The proxy gladiators are former Vice President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and erstwhile Anambra State Governor, Gregory Peter Obi. While both aspirants have managed to be mature, avoiding open confrontation, their supporters have not been infected by their dignified carriage. Indeed, they seem to have been on edge, sometimes using threats and vitriolic language to prosecute their agenda.

Atiku, the immediate past presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, dumped the party in July 2025 at the dawn of the ADC coalition agenda. He remained in limbo until November when he announced his defection to the ADC and has since not disguised his intention to run. Indeed, the 79-year-old Waziri Adamawa has the most enduring presidential ambition and an intimidating cult followership, especially in the North, a region with the highest political enthusiasm according to data obtained from Yiaga Africa, formerly Youth Initiative for Advocacy, Growth, and Advancement.

Obi, leader of the Obidient Movement and presidential candidate of the Labour Party, LP, in the 2023 election, has a huge youth followership. The 65-year-old formally dumped his party for the ADC on December 31 as the year 2025 was shutting down. At the well-attended defection ceremony in Enugu, he called on well-meaning Nigerians to join in the efforts to rescue the country. “We are ending this year with the hope that in 2026, we will begin a rescue journey,” he declared, adding, “we will resist rigging of elections by every lawful means in 2027.”

The defection pushed the discussion on the party’s presidential ticket to a new level. Some pundits had envisioned a possible pairing of Obi/Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, leader of the Kwankwasiyya Movement and candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party, NNPP, in 2023. Obi, who had promised to do a single term if elected, cleared all doubts about his lifetime dream.

On Monday, 2 February, when he attended a campaign rally to drum up support for the ADC candidate in the Abuja Municipal Area Council, AMAC, in the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, local government polls, Obi made known his intention to seek the party ticket in next year’s presidential election.

“You see this coming election, support us in AMAC; it will help me. Your support in AMAC is critical to our journey. I am involved and contesting the coming election as number one. When I come back, you will see. I assure you,” Obi said. He also urged opposition leaders to come together as a family under the leadership of David Mark, the Acting National Chairman of the party, to rescue Nigeria.

The struggle for the number one ADC ticket, hitherto seen by a group as an exclusive preserve of Atiku, has further accentuated the fault lines in its fold. A school of thought had suggested an Atiku and Obi ticket, with the latter as running mate. Supporters of the aspirants have been pushing for their respective choices in tones that are considered hard and dangerous to the party’s interest.

Within days of Obi’s fraternisation with the ADC, Prof. Pat Utomi, a respected political economist, set the ball rolling. “I can tell you that Peter Obi will contest for the presidency. The day he becomes somebody’s vice president, I walk away from his corner.”

Also speaking, Aisha Yesufu, an activist and notable supporter of Obi, flatly rejected a second fiddle role for him. In a viral video shortly after Obi’s defection, she said, “Let me go back to the Mr Peter Obi conversation where people are like, ‘you should run as vice president.’ Me, and I’m giving you people my word now, if Peter Obi is running with anyone as the vice president, as the running mate to that person, I will work against that ticket.

“In my little capacity, I will work against that ticket. Even if I don’t support any other person, I will work against that ticket.”

Another Obi loyalist, Yunusa Tanko Yakasai, was more diplomatic about his insistence on yielding the ADC ticket for his boss. He suggested that Obi could be the consensus candidate of all party members, including Atiku. He conceded the former Vice President’s right to seek the party ticket but hoped that he could bypass it in support of another person.

“He has the right (to contest), but he also has the right to anoint somebody. He can. It is within his fundamental human rights as a father who wants to win. Winning does not mean I have to be the one. Winning can be me taking you and saying go and win for us, I know you are capable. It is possible,” Yakasai added.

The suggestion not to contest did not sit well with the Atikulates. The former Vice President rejected the proposal, describing it as undemocratic. “Any call, overt or covert, for Atiku to ‘step aside’ is a gift to authoritarian ambition and a betrayal of the Nigerian people,” his media aide, Paul Ibe, said in a statement.

He accused the APC leadership of fuelling division in the opposition parties and shrinking the democratic space. “Let it be stated plainly: the ADC is on a national rescue mission,” the statement said, stressing that the party is committed to “an open, transparent, and competitive process” for selecting its flag bearer.

He also warned against external interference, saying, “APC proxies and external meddlers have no standing to intimidate, blackmail, or sabotage this democratic resolve.”

Dousing the tension

Stakeholders in the party have called on foot soldiers of the various aspirants to moderate their utterances. Atiku led by example. In a post on his verified X handle on Tuesday, 20 January, he warned his supporters and those of Obi to desist from using provocative remarks, noting that such would put the ruling party at an advantage. He emphasised that supporters of all opposition leaders were stronger together.

“Anyone who insults Obi or Atiku does not mean well for the leaders, the coalition ADC, and Nigeria and Nigerians. The only people who benefit from such a civil war are the APC urban bandits who want to maintain the satanic status quo. We are better together,” Abubakar cautioned.

Similarly, the National Publicity Secretary of the party, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, decried the manner some fans are promoting their preferred aspirants with insulting words, urging them to desist.

Listen to him: “Those supporting this divisiveness by supporters of any of the aspirants should stop what they are doing because they are clearly working to the advantage of the APC and President Bola Tinubu. Saying it is either this candidate or nothing is not helpful because getting the ticket alone means nothing. What is important is winning the election, and we cannot carry this divisiveness and expect to win.

“We believe that all our aspirants are eminently qualified, and vilifying anybody or any region is not helpful and will make it more difficult. We are going to ignore people creating exceptionality, and we are going to focus on what we are doing because we want to win this election.

“Those shouting ‘Peter Obi or nothing’ are equally not helping him. They are preaching division, and they are not selling him. They are not providing the room for people to support him from other places. They should stop making other people take hard stances because everyone needs to be on board for us to win this election.”

Atiku and Obi have come a long way. They both ran on the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, joint ticket in the 2019 presidential election. They had an impressive outing, winning 17 states plus the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, and more than 41 per cent of the popular votes. They, however, lost to the then incumbent President, Muhammadu Buhari, and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo of the APC, who won 18 states and about 54 per cent of the popular ballots.

In spite of the record, their union did not survive the next election cycle. A separation of ways came in 2023 when Obi dumped the PDP for the LP, while Atiku maintained his candidacy in the PDP. The election, which was won by Tinubu, was fiercely contested, leaving Atiku and Obi with bloody noses in the second and third positions, respectively.

Their current renewed romance and crusade followed the disintegration of the badly fractured PDP house and the factionalisation of the LP. Opposition politicians, citing insecurity and widespread hardship, chose to set aside their differences in a coalition focused on ending the APC’s hold on power.

How far can they go?