A civil society group,The Handshake Movement THM, has cautioned those jostling for the Presidential ticket of the opposition Coalition platform the African Democratic Congress, ADC, against allowing their personal ambitions to fracture, and unsettle the only platform available to the suffering people of Nigeria to express themselves.
According to the advocacy group, in the face of the near death situation of the Peoples Democratic party, PDP, Labour Party LP , and other opposition parties, it will amount to a grave political misadventure for the presidential hopefuls to deny the overwhelming, but suffering majority of Nigerians the opportunity of having a viable alternative ahead of the 2027 polls.
Referring specifically to the former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi, the Presidential candidate of the Labour Party, LP in the 2023 elections, and the immediate past Minister of Transportation Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi, the THM in a statement issued at the weekend, by its National Secretary, Chinedu Okpalanma, urged the aspirants to submit themselves to the rules and regulations governing the party, in the pursuit of their ambition.
The THM warned that the general dispositions of the various presidential aspirants,holds much for the unity of the ADC, as well as its ability to serve as a credible alternative to the ruling, All Progressive Congress, APC.
According to the group, overwhelming majority of Nigerians having been deeply frustrated by the growing excruciating economic hardships and insecurity in the country, have come to perceive the ADC as the only surviving opposition platform available to them.
Rotimi Amaechi
However, the civil society group, expressed fears that unbridled and inordinate personal political ambitions of the leading presidential aspirants, could distabilize the party,and erode its capacity and readiness to serve as a veritable alternative for Nigerians.
“Personal ambition must never be allowed to fracture the very platform that millions of Nigerians now see as a possible vehicle for national rescue”, the group stated
Furthermore, the THM underscored the urgent need for the progenitors, leaders and major stakeholders of the ADC to work in concert to strengthen the party ,and sustain public trust and confidence, particularly at this trying moment in the life of the people.
The group called for discipline, transparency and sincerity of purpose on the part of the leadership of the party, in its search for political flag bearers.
Particularly, the THM emphasized the importance of eschewing sectarian, ethnic and religious sentiments in the process of selecting candidates for the 2027 elections.
Besides, the group insisted on the conduct of credible, fair, and transparent primaries, with the process building and cementing trust and confidence, rather than creating unnecessary friction and fracture.
According to the advocacy organization, the emphasis should be on the selection of candidates with capacity and national appeal, rather than appeal to ethnic and religious considerations.
A Reverend Father, Nathaniel Asuwaye and ten others have been kidnapped in a violent operation that left three people dead in Kaduna state.
The latest incident, occurred in the early hours of Saturday, as suspected terrorists stormed the Karku community in Kauru Local Government Area.
The attackers, described by local sources as “heavily armed bandits,” reportedly descended on the community at approximately 3:20 a.m. , targeting the parish house of Holy Trinity Catholic Church .
The silence of the night was shattered by sustained gunfire as the invaders overwhelmed local vigilantes and residents.
Three individuals—identified by community leaders as Jacob Dan’azumi, Maitala Kaura, and Alhaji Kusari were killed.
Some reports suggested the casualties included security operatives who attempted to repel the assault, though official police confirmation on the identities of the deceased remains pending.
The abduction of Fr. Asuwaye, the Parish Priest of Holy Trinity, marks yet another dark chapter for the Catholic Diocese of Kafanchan.
In a statement released shortly after the incident, the Diocese expressed “profound sadness” over the targeted attack, calling on the faithful to commence a period of intense prayer for the safe return of the priest and the ten other parishioners snatched alongside him.
This latest incident follows a harrowing pattern of attacks on the clergy in Kaduna State, including the high-profile kidnappings of Fr. Bobbo Paschal in late 2025 and the tragic murder of Fr. Sylvester Okechukwu exactly one year ago.
The Kaduna State Police Command has reportedly deployed a special tactical team to the Kauru axis.
A spokesperson for the command confirmed that a manhunt is underway, with security forces “combing the bushes” to track the kidnappers’ escape route toward the neighboring forest reserves.
“We are working tirelessly to ensure the victims are rescued unhurt,” the police statement read, though the captors have yet to establish contact or make a formal ransom demand.
As news of the raid spread, the Karku community has been plunged into mourning.
Residents described a state of “total helplessness,” with many calling on the Federal Government to declare a state of emergency on the rising cases of priest abductions, which many see as a deliberate attempt to demoralize the community and its spiritual leadership.
The Police Service Commission (PSC) has noted with grave concern a publication by Sahara Reporters alleging that senior officers paid ₦5 million each to secure promotion to the rank of Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP). The Commission categorically denies these unfounded allegations in their entirety and describes the report as a reckless attempt to tarnish the image of both the Commission and the Nigeria Police Force.
Contrary to the narrative peddled by the online publication, the promotion of the senior officers from Chief Superintendent of Police (CSP) to ACP followed due process and established guidelines of the Commission. The Police Service Commission, as the statutory body responsible for the appointment, promotion, and discipline of police officers (except the Inspector-General of Police), conducts its affairs with the highest level of transparency and adherence to the Public Service Rules and best practices.
The reference in the report to the immediate past Inspector-General of Police is mischievous and calculated to lend false credence to a baseless story. The role of the IGP in the promotion process is to forward recommendations based on vacancy and performance, but the final approval rests solely with the Commission as a body. To suggest that the Commission operates a “pay-to-play” system is an insult to the integrity of the Board Members who oversee these exercises.
We challenge Sahara Reporters to provide verifiable evidence to support their claim of bribery rather than relying on hearsay from “insider sources.” The documents referenced, including the internal police wireless message, only confirm that promotions were approved – which is a routine administrative function. They do not substantiate the malicious allegation of financial transactions.
The Police Service Commission invites the public to disregard this misleading report. We remain committed to merit-based promotions and oversight of the NPF. Any officer or member of the public with credible evidence of misconduct is encouraged to petition the Commission directly, rather than feed sensationalist media narratives.
We are considering legal action against Sahara Reporters for defamation and damage to the reputation of the Commission.
*Torty Njoku Kalu*
*Head, Protocol and Public Affairs,*PSC Headquarters, Abuja 8 March 2026*
Some of the leaders of the All Progressives Congress (APC), in Ondo state attacked by suspected thugs during a stakeholders meeting in Akure have taken their case to the Inspector General of Police (IGP).
Already, Force Criminal Investigation Department (FCID) in Abuja has taken up the case leading to the arrest of a prime suspect, simply known as Eniba, a member of the state branch of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW).
Those attacked by the suspected political thugs include a former State Chairman of APC, Engr. Ade Adetimehin, Otito Atikase, a commissioner of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) and others leaders.
Adetimehin was allegedly slapped, dragged on the floor, and humiliated in viral social media images.
The political thugs also disrupted the stakeholders’ meeting, injuring several members and forcing party leaders to flee the scene.
Eyewitnesses recounted that the assailants, armed with broken bottles, planks, machetes, stones, and other dangerous objects, stormed the party’s secretariat while deliberations were ongoing.
The arrest followed investigation by the Force Intelligence Department (FCID) in Abuja into the February 16, 2026 incident, where political thugs reportedly attacked party leaders during the pre-congress stakeholders’ meeting.
According to report, Eniba has allegedly confessed during preliminary questioning that the group involved in the attack were mobilised and paid to disrupt the meeting.
Confirming the development, Barrister Babatunde Akintade, counsel to Atikase, described the arrest as a breakthrough in the investigation.
Akintade explained that the arrest was carried out following a directive from the Deputy Inspector-General of Police in charge of the FCID, who ordered an immediate probe into the attack.
He commended the police for the swift action and assured that his client is cooperating fully with investigators.
On Wednesday, February 18, 2026, Atikase, an APC chieftain and NDDC board member, raised alarm about the attackers storming the meeting with a clear mission to eliminate him.
Adetimehin and Atikase accused the state government of sponsoring the attack on the leaders, saying the attack was premeditated and politically motivated.
However, the Ondo State Government denied the allegations, dismissing claims that Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa sponsored thugs to disrupt the meeting.
The Commissioner for Information and Orientation, Idowu Ajanaku, in a statement, described the allegations as malicious, unfounded, and a calculated attempt to tarnish the governor’s administration.
I barely know Daniel Bwala. He came to the forefront of national media attention in 2022 because of his impassioned opposition to the choice of Kashim Shettima as Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s running mate. But beyond his public break from the APC, he came across to me as a voluble, ignorant and opportunistic careerist, not because of his stance on Tinubu’s choice of a Muslim running mate, but because of what struck me as his facileness and self-seeking obsessions.
His dramatic volte-face from being a virulent Tinubu critic to a fawning, vicious Tinubu battering ram has proven that my hunch about him was accurate.
Yet, I felt sorry watching him eaten alive by Mehdi Hassan on Al Jazeera on Friday, March 6. He willingly participated in the detonation of what remained of his credibility before the world. In the process, he did incalculable reputational damage to the Tinubu government he is paid to protect.
What viewers saw on Mehdi Hasan’s Head to Head was the spectacle of a presidential spokesman arriving unarmed to a firefight he should have anticipated, then trying to fight back with nervous laughter, evasions, amnesia and the old Nigerian official fallback of whataboutery.
His evasiveness and prevarications were so unnervingly apparent that Hasan was compelled to say, “At the weekend, you put out a video to music of you and your team researching and prepping for this show and…now every time I ask you say you are not aware of that….what were you researching in that video…?”
The most striking thing about Bwala’s performance was not that he was challenged hard. Anyone who agrees to sit opposite Mehdi Hasan knows the interview will not be a tea party. The disgrace was that Bwala looked startled by facts he should have mastered before stepping into the studio.
On insecurity, on corruption, on Tinubu’s own words and even on his own prior statements, he oscillated between denial, deflection and the sort of desperate verbal stalling that makes a government look smaller than its critics claim it is.
The problem was not that Daniel Bwala appeared lazy or obviously unprepared. In fact, he looked prepared, even thoroughly rehearsed and robotic. He had the posture, the confidence and the choreographed mannerisms of a man who believed he had done his homework. But his carefully planned performances collapsed pitifully when they collided with Hasan’s hard, cold, indisputable facts.
Political wordplay can sometimes survive on friendly platforms or on Nigeria’s tame media spaces where assertion is mistaken for argument. It cannot survive a fact-driven, scorched-earthed, bare-knuckle, no-holds-barred interrogation. Facts are facts. And Mehdi Hasan is a man of facts. He has the rare gift of making heavy, devastating facts sound almost light in conversation.
That quality made Bwala’s evasions even more painful to watch.
The exchange over “context” illustrated this perfectly. When confronted with evidence that insecurity had worsened under the current administration, Bwala retreated to the mantra that “context matters.” Yet the context he invoked was little more than semantic fog and intentional, self-impressed verbal obfuscation.
Hasan, by contrast, used numbers and reports that any government spokesman worth the title should already know. The moment became absurd when Bwala insisted that the context of worsening statistics was that things were not getting worse. The dialogue is worth reproducing:
Hasan: You are failing. Amnesty International says you are failing at security. The numbers don’t lie.
Bwala: It’s unfortunate and as a government working day and night that situation. I don’t agree to [sic] the fact that it’s getting worse.
Hasan: How can it not get worse if more people die in one year than the previous year?
Bwala: Context matters.
Hasan: What’s the context?
Bwala: The context is not getting worse.
Hasan: What!
Bwala: Yes.
Hasan: The context is not getting worse?
Bwala: The context is that it is not getting worse, because you, you see this is a water [sic], right?
Forget, for now, Bwala’s inexcusably horrible grammar, especially for a lawyer, his tortured logic and his buffoonish articulation. That was some cringeworthy self-own.
The numbers he tried to wave away are not inventions of hostile foreigners with an anti-Nigerian agenda. Nigeria’s own National Human Rights Commission reported that at least 2,266 people were killed by bandits or insurgents in the first half of 2025 alone.
Daniel Bwalya
Conflict monitoring groups have recorded even higher totals for the full year. Amnesty International has repeatedly warned that violence has intensified since Tinubu assumed office. In other words, Hasan’s central point was merely a summary of documented reality.
This is what made Bwala’s performance so damaging. He was not merely disputing interpretations. He was disputing arithmetic. When a spokesman tells the world that things are not getting worse while credible datasets show that they are, he is insulting the intelligence of everyone listening, especially Nigerians who bury the dead, pay ransoms, withdraw their children from schools and avoid highways after dark.
But the interview’s most morally satisfying feature was Hasan’s methodical dismantling of Bwala’s denials about his own past words. Bwala tried the trite and tired Nigerian political trick of pretending that statements made in opposition exist in a separate moral universe from statements made in office. Hasan did not let him get away with it.
Bwala denied on air having said Tinubu and his camp created a militia and threatened him. Yet those remarks were widely reported during the 2023 campaign. He also denied saying that bullion vans seen at Tinubu’s Bourdillon residence were ostensibly for vote buying, despite the fact that the comments were carried by multiple Nigerian outlets at the time. So, when Bwala asked who said such things, the answer was brutally simple. Daniel Bwala said them.
The same pattern appeared on corruption. Tinubu did in fact proclaim at a public event that Nigeria had “no more corruption,” a line that was widely reported and widely mocked and that provoked Omoyele Sowore to call Tinubu a “criminal” for which he is being tried now. Bwala’s attempt to rescue the statement by retroactively inventing a narrower meaning was not the contextual clarification he wanted it to be. It was out-and-out mendacity.
On the appointment of Abubakar Bagudu as minister of budget and economic planning, Bwala again reached for evasion.
Yet the record is clear that Bagudu returned about $163 million linked to the Abacha loot investigations in a settlement with authorities. Whether or not one calls that a conviction, the public controversy around his appointment cannot honestly be dismissed as drunken rumour.
Then there is the overarching irony that electrified the interview. Bwala was confronted with the fossil record of his own mouth. Before joining Tinubu’s camp, he publicly attacked the same man over allegations of corruption, the drug forfeiture case in the United States and the bullion van episode. What Hasan exposed was the speed with which partisan appetite can digest prior conviction and call the indigestion growth.
Bwala’s performance mattered for a reason larger than one man’s embarrassment. It showed in concentrated form the disease afflicting Nigerian political communication.
Too many spokesmen believe their job is not to illuminate but to survive the segment. So, they deny what is documented, nervously laugh when cornered, compare Nigeria with unrelated countries, abuse the word “context” and hope that shamelessness can do the work preparation cannot.
Daniel Bwala went to London to defend the government. Instead, he displayed its worst habits: contempt for evidence, indifference to contradiction and the assumption that public memory is so short that a man can disown his own recorded words without consequence.
Mehdi Hasan did not disgrace him. Bwala did that himself. Hasan merely kept the receipts.
The Rivers State Police Command on Saturday, March 7, 2026 informed that it has commenced moves to unravel the actual circumstances surrounding the reported attack on the African Democratic Congress office in the State, as well as on the motorcade of Rotimi Amaechi ,a former Governor of the State.
The Source reports that suspected hired political thugs had, on Friday, March 6, 2026, set ablaze the ADC office in Ubima Amaechi’s home town in Ikwerre Local Government Area of the State.
The burning of the party’s office was preceded by an overnight siege on the town by scores of armed hoodlums who shot indiscriminately on Thursday night, sending residents scampering for safety.
They were said to have mounted an illegal roadblock after burning the party office on Friday morning, stopping and searching vehicles suspected to be either carrying ADC supporters or materials.
Similarly, the armed thugs attacked Amaechi’s convoy on his way home to observe the e-registeration membership exercise of the ADC.
The immediate past Minister of Transportation has since condemned the act, describing it as a great threat to democratic participation and political freedom.
Addressing hundreds of party supporters after concluding his membership registration ,the ADC presidential hopeful called on security agencies to move swiftly to unmask the perpetrators of the dastardly attack.
While confirming the unfortunate incident on Saturday, the Rivers State Police Command spokesperson, Grace Irenge-Koko, assured that efforts are underway by operatives to track down the masterminds of the attack.
This is as she noted that a thorough investigation has been launched to ascertain the causes and circumstances surrounding the incident.
“We received a report of a fire outbreak at the ADC Secretariat in Ubima, Ikwerre Local Government Area, allegedly caused by some miscreants.
” A detachment was deployed to the scene ,and it was confirmed to be a party office.
“No life was lost, but properties were damaged. Investigation is ongoing”, the police spokesperson stated.
She informed that no arrests have so far been made.
“Al Jazeera did not tell me they were going to challenge my past”
Daniel Bwala, a Lawyer and one of President Bola Tinubu’s Spokesmen has reacted to the backlash which followed his interview on Al Jazeera with its hard hitting Mehdi Hassan.
Bwala, who appeared on Hassan’s Head To Head interview programme performed below standard, denying much of the negative things he had earlier said of President Tinubu before he made s turnaround even when Hassan was reeling them out in details with dates, so much so that his interviewer was making a ridicule of him, almost.
But in a statement he released on Saturday, Bwala admitted that defending President Bola Tinubu is a difficult job, but one he is very committed to.
Bwala: “In the last 24 hours, social media has exploded over my interview with Mehdi Hassan, albeit with varied opinions. Let me set the record straight.
“When I signed on to the privileged job granted to me by Mr. President, I was well aware of its implications. Selling ice cream, looking fine, and seeking the praises of men were never part of it. Some of the fiercest critics of my interview can not even stand local TV anchors. But the task of promoting and defending the President and his administration is what I do with ease and joy. I am prepared to appear before any interviewer, anywhere in the world, any day and at any time, to defend this government and its policies.
“I have never, and will never, subscribe to ducking or dodging interviews on matters that concern promoting and defending the administration I was appointed to serve. It is the least of what is required of me.
“Head to Head contacted me requesting an interview, stating that they wanted to challenge our government on security, the economy, and corruption. Nowhere in our almost six months of communication did they mention that they were going to challenge my past. If that had been their plan, ethically and professionally, they were supposed to inform me so I could prepare my response. But that’s okay, ethically, that is on them, not on me.
“I refused to swallow the pill of Mehdi’s ‘opposition research-style journalism,’ and even today, if you carefully compare what he read as quotes from organisations and groups, you will see that many were inaccurate and some were outright fake news. But I will leave that for another day.
“As for what I said about President Tinubu in the past, I am glad those were things I said when I was in the opposition saddle with such zeal. It is all politics. Half of Donald Trump’s cabinet is made up of people who once spoke against him, and quite a number of people in our own cabinet also spoke against President Tinubu in the past. Those things do not bother him if you care to know.
“The majority of the naysayers are members of the opposition and their sympathisers. It does not bother me one bit. Their temporary excitement over the interview has not lasted and will not last, because it does not take away their obvious problem of lack of vision, mission in conducting and managing a political party; yet they seek to manage Nigeria. Clearly they have no path to victory and no alternative policies or program for the Nigerian people. And if they say they do, they can as well go to head to head and be interrogated on that; as the saying in Hausa goes ‘Ga fili Ga doki’
“I conclude by thanking the many Nigerians and non-Nigerians who sent in their commendations over my brave defence of our government in an interview where the anchor would hardly let you answer a question unless it suited his narrative.
“I still have admiration and respect for Mehdi Hassan as arguably the best debater on the planet. I look forward to part two of the Head to Head interview, and I am glad that by then questions about my past will no longer be news so that we can focus on our administration’s policies, programs and what we have achieved so far.”
Daniel Bwala, Special Adviser to President on Media and Policy Communication, has reacted to criticisms which greeted his interview with Mehdi Hassan, insisting that “the task of promoting and defending the President and his administration is what I do with ease and joy.”
Social media critics had accused Bwala of retracting some of his past criticisms of President Tinubu while in opposition.
Bwala wrote that “In the last 24 hours, social media has exploded over my interview with Mehdi Hassan, albeit with varied opinions. Let me set the record straight.
“When I signed on to the privileged job granted to me by Mr. President, I was well aware of its implications. Selling ice cream, looking fine, and seeking the praises of men were never part of it.
“Some of the fiercest critics of my interview can not even stand local TV anchors. But the task of promoting and defending the President and his administration is what I do with ease and joy.
“I am prepared to appear before any interviewer, anywhere in the world, any day and at any time, to defend this government and its policies.
“I have never, and will never, subscribe to ducking or dodging interviews on matters that concern promoting and defending the administration I was appointed to serve. It is the least of what is required of me.
“Head to Head contacted me requesting an interview, stating that they wanted to challenge our government on security, the economy, and corruption.
“Nowhere in our almost six months of communication did they mention that they were going to challenge my past. If that had been their plan, ethically and professionally, they were supposed to inform me so I could prepare my response. But that’s okay, ethically, that is on them, not on me.
“I refused to swallow the pill of Mehdi’s ‘opposition research-style journalism,’ and even today, if you carefully compare what he read as quotes from organisations and groups, you will see that many were inaccurate and some were outright fake news. But I will leave that for another day.
“As for what I said about President Tinubu in the past, I am glad those were things I said when I was in the opposition saddle with such zeal.
“It is all politics. Half of Donald Trump’s cabinet is made up of people who once spoke against him, and quite a number of people in our own cabinet also spoke against President Tinubu in the past. Those things do not bother him if you care to know.
“The majority of the naysayers are members of the opposition and their sympathisers. It does not bother me one bit.
“Their temporary excitement over the interview has not lasted and will not last, because it does not take away their obvious problem of lack of vision, mission in conducting and managing a political party; yet they seek to manage Nigeria.
“Clearly they have no path to victory and no alternative policies or program for the Nigerian people. And if they say they do, they can as well go to head to head and be interrogated on that; as the saying in Hausa goes “Ga fili Ga doki”
“I conclude by thanking the many Nigerians and non-Nigerians who sent in their commendations over my brave defence of our government in an interview where the anchor would hardly let you answer a question unless it suited his narrative.
“I still have admiration and respect for Mehdi Hassan as arguably the best debater on the planet. I look forward to part two of the Head to Head interview, and I am glad that by then questions about my past will no longer be news so that we can focus on our administration’s policies, programs and what we have achieved so far.”
Expectations and speculations suggesting that Peter Obi ,may be returning to the Labour Party, LP, have been finally put to rest for now.
Obi, who left the LP, the platform on which he contested the 2023 general elections on December 31, 2025 to join forces with the opposition Coalition, the African Democratic Congress, ADC, on Saturday, March 7, 2026, concluded his online membership registration.
Going by the provisions of the controversial amended 2026 Electoral Act, having observed the e-registeration exercise on the platform of ADC ,the former Anambra State Governor will not be making another switch after the conduct of party primaries scheduled between April and May 2026 except after the polls property
The Source reports that Obi, one of the leading progenitors and founding figures of the new-look ADC, early last year, received his party card at the occasion of the formal commencement of the Anambra’ State ADC e-registeration and mobilization exercise on Saturday.
Addressing party leaders, members and supporters, Obi assured that the South East region, apart from being solidly behind his ambition, is working closely with leaders from other geo-political zones to ensure that the next President of Nigeria comes from the South East.
According to him, the entire South East region is working together as a united family to see how the country will be rescued from bad leadership
“On this journey (quest for the presidency) the South East is working as a family. All the notable political leaders are all here in ADC.
“We are are working together as a family and we are discussing with other parts of the country.
“On this mission, we are working to unite every opposition party so you are going to see members of other political parties working with us ,and the aim is to see a Nigeria that works.
” We want Nigeria to be a secure country, not one that is the fifth insecure country in the world, and the number one country where no one wants to be born into”, the former Anambra’ state Governor stated .
This is as he vowed to work in concert with other concerned Nigerians and groups to challenge the recently amended Electoral Act, insisting that the instrument was ostensibly designed to frustrate the opposition camps.
“We have seen all the reviews of the Electoral Act, and INEC has no reason to dictate how parties should elect their candidates .
“Some of us are going to challenge it. They should focus on how to conduct an election. They should not choose to abandon their work as a referee, and then want to teach a coach how to select his players.
Those who claimed to be democrats just yesterday are now the worst dictators. They are talking about governance ,they are talking about snatching power and running with it again as they did in 2023”, Obi asserted .
He called on the people to take the registration exercise seriously to avoid being caught unawares.
“We want to register as many people as possible, because the election of 2027 will be against bad leadership.
“We, in South East, are saying that we want a new Nigeria ,and we are the only people you will find in every part of Nigeria with their own houses and doing legitimate businesses.
“So, we want a Nigeria where we will put Nigerians out of poverty ,and we know we can be secured if we put people out of poverty”, he added.
The exercise is coming on the heels of Obi’s reaffirmation of his readiness to contest the 2027 presidential polls .
At an empowerment programme in Njikoka Local Council of the State on Friday, Obi, one of the chieftains of the ADC that have declared their interest to throw their hats into the ring, vowed that not even alleged orchestrated plots by the powers-that-be, will stop him from contesting the polls.
According to him, the authorities, including the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, have been engaged in several political manoeuvrings just to stop him on his track.
However ,he assured that neither their antics nor the coalescing of over 30 Governors in the All Progressive Congress, APC, will stop him from seeking the mandate of the people for a new Nigeria.
“You all know that I am now in ADC. People have been asking me why I left Labour Party, and I told them that we have been in court in Labour Party over leadership and, we have been securing favourable judgments ,but INEC refused to recognize us.
But Immediately I left on December 31,2025 ,they (INEC) quickly recognized the orders they had been rejecting.
“You see all the things they have been doing including tinkering with the Electoral Act, are being done because they don’t want me to contest the polls.
“But I want to tell them with that their 30 Governors, they should make the election free and fair, and see who wins
” I want to assure today that no matter what they do, I must contest the election”, Obi stated
A political scientist and academic, Prof Jibrin Ibrahim, has preferred panacea to save Nigeria’s democracy.
According to him, saving democracy would “require resisting the deep culture of corruption and criminality, as well as rebuilding a political culture of transparency and accountability.
Prof Ibrahim, who is Director, Centre for Democracy and Development, Abuja pointed out that “During elections, godfathers have been able to determine who gets nominated to contest for elections in political party primaries and who wins the elections subsequently.
“Today, the democratic system has been completely eroded by the sale and purchase of votes during elections.
“Nigeria’s democracy is very weak today as a significant part of the political class are undermining democratic processes as they milk the political system for personal profit.
“The task before the nation is to encourage people with competence and a commitment to the public good to come out and contest and displace criminal elements that are currently entrenched in the system.
“It would not be easy but saving the country requires that this task needs to be done.
“There is no surprise that Nigeria is infamous for the significant role godfathers play in the country’s politics and political economy.
“I still remember when Chris Uba, the onetime acclaimed godfather of Anambra State politics, in a moment of intense self-satisfaction after the 2003 general elections, declared that, ‘I am the greatest godfather in Nigeria because this is the first time an individual outside government single-handed put in position every politician in the State.’
“This effusion of self-satisfaction signalled the eclipse of Emeka Offor, the previous pretender to the throne of godfather in Anambra, who in 1999 had determined the governor of the State and about 60 percent of the members of the state legislature.
“Mr. Uba was able to advance from imposing 60 per cent of the members to 100 per cent, meaning that he determined who became governor, the three senators and members of the federal and state assemblies.
“The fact that Nigerian godfathers have had the effrontery to define themselves as men – yes, they are almost exclusively male – who have the power to substitute themselves for the voting citizenry is deeply disturbing.”
