By Adesina Soyooye
Dr Kingsley Moghalu has resigned his membership from the African Development Congress, ADC. And the former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, did not resign quietly.
Moghalu raised a storm, and dismissed the Party under which he wanted to run and occupy the office of Nigeria’s President as “obscenely corrupt.”
Moghalu resigned following his shock defeat in the ADC Presidential Primary by Dumebi Kachikwu. Kachikwu, a younger brother of the former Minister for State, Petroleum, Ibe Kachikwu scored a total of 978 votes to Moghalu’s 589 votes.
In his resignation letter to the National Chairman of the Party, chief Ralph Nwosu, said: “I have resigned because the process and conduct of the party’s presidential primary on June 8, 2022, at Abeokuta revealed a fundamental clash of values between me and your leadership of the party.”
Moghalu’s resignation takes immediate effect.
His strongly-worded resignation letter reads:
“Dear Mr. Nwosu, I am writing to hand in my resignation from my membership of the African Democratic Congress, effective immediately.
“I have resigned because the process and conduct of the party’s presidential primary on June 8, 2022 at Abeokuta revealed a fundamental clash of values between me and your leadership of the party.
“Despite the circular you issued a few days to the primary committing the party to providing transportation and accommodation for delegates to, and in Abeokuta, and which as we agreed would provide a level playing field for all the Presidential aspirants, the party under your leadership failed to do so.
“Some aspirants, including myself, made donations to the ADC party account as requested by the party for this purpose. This failure, which appeared intentional, created room for massive abuses of the electoral process including delegate capture and financial inducement of delegates.
“This is only one of numerous inconsistencies and the absence of transparency and predictability in the management of the party that I had progressively complained about.
“As you are well aware, I have consistently resisted pressures to join the APC or the PDP precisely to avoid “cash-and-carry” politics. For me to remain a member of the ADC, therefore, after what thousands of party members participated in at Abeokuta, would be to endorse political corruption of a most obscene order.
“I joined the ADC in October 2021 with the best of intentions. Since then, I have put my entire team to work on growing and improving the party, including raising the party’s visibility on all media platforms, recruiting more than 10,000 new members to the party, and providing new offices for various state chapters of the party at my expense.
“It is deeply regrettable that other inducements appear to have played more important roles in determining the outcome of the primary than loyalty to the party.”
When Moghalu addressed the delegates before voting started, he had boasted that he would defeat both Atiku Abubakar and Bola Tinubu, candidates of the PDP and APC respectively, in the 2023 Presidential election.
Surprisingly, he was defeated at his own Party’s Primary by Kachikwu, the founder of Roots Television.
Moghalu was the Presidential candidate of the Young Peoples Party, YPP, in the 2019 Presidential election. He made no impact in that election. He quit YPP in October 2019, and joined ADC in 2021.
