The African Democratic Congress (ADC) has thrown open its 2027 presidential ticket to every interested aspirant.
The party’s interim national chairman, Senator David Mark, who disclosed this, also assured Nigerians that under his leadership, the party would be “absolutely transparent.”
Regarding the party’s presidential ticket, the party clarified the posturing by two key coalition members, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and former Labour Party presidential candidate Peter Obi.
In a recent interview, Obi declared his intention to contest the presidency, saying he had not held any conversation with anyone to be a vice presidential candidate in 2027.
Atiku, for his part, recently hinted at his 2027 ambition while receiving a delegation of Gombe stakeholders at his Abuja residence last weekend.
While loyalists of both leaders, who ran a joint ticket in 2019, have been pushing their principals’ candidacy, especially on social media, former Transportation Minister Chibuike Amaechi has also declared his intention to take another shot at the presidency in 2027 under the ADC banner. He contested and lost the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential ticket to Bola Ahmed Tinubu in 2023.
Former ADC presidential candidate, Dumebi Kachikwu, had alleged that the party, under the new leadership, intended to give its presidential ticket to to Atiku.
His claim was made against the contentious debate over whether power at the centre should remain in the South or rotate to the North.
This debate was one of the key factors in the 2023 presidential election won by President Bola Tinubu of the APC, which zoned its ticket to the south after President Muhammadu Buhari, from the North, had an eight-year tenure.
No preferred aspirant
But addressing the brewing contention, Mark, a former Senate president, said, “The ADC has no preferred or favourite presidential aspirant but has set out first to put out a platform that would be attractive and acceptable to the majority of Nigerians.”
He said the party leaders are in the coalition because they do not want Nigeria to sink.
Mark, who stated this while addressing the stakeholders of the Kogi State chapter of the ADC at a meeting in Abuja, clarified that all the members of the party were “equal stakeholders, equal joiners, equal owners.”
“I don’t own this party more than any of our members, and I urge all members to prepare to show Nigerians that ADC is a different party; a different party is ready to run democracy in our country properly. All Nigerians must come together and take ownership of the ADC,” he added.
The former Senate president urged members to put their differences aside and work as a team, adding,
“We must bond to build the party before we can talk of ambitions.”
He also advised members of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to stop attacking individuals and concentrate on addressing their policy failures, which the ADC has raised.
“If they admitted that insecurity is bad and promised Nigerians that they would improve it, but have made it worse, would Nigerians continue to support them? The answer is no.
“Let us continue to work to rebuild our nation and bring out her best in the overall interest of the future generations,” he said.
ADC accuses APC of sponsoring anti-leadership suit
Also yesterday, the ADC accused the APC of deceiving Nigerians by using the names of non-ADC members to file a suit against the party and its interim leadership.
The party alleged that the names the APC used to file the suit were neither in the ADC physical nor digital registers in Kogi or Nasarawa State.
“It smacks of desperation that a party elected in charge of the lives of no fewer than 200 million people can shop for the names of its citizens in pursuit of Machiavellian politics,” it said.
97 Lawyers to Defend ADC in Court
Meanwhile, the National Legal Support Group for ADC has expressed its readiness to represent ADC in court regarding the matter filed against the party and its interim officers.
Yesterday in Abuja, the group’s leader, Barrister Mohammed Sheriff, said 97 Lawyers had indicated their preparedness to defend the party in court.
Three ADC members had filed a lawsuit seeking the removal of Mark and Rauf Aregbesola as national chairman and national secretary, respectively.
….Tinubu’s Economic Failure Behind Nigeria’s Exclusion from White House Trade Talks
In a related development, ADC has expressed concern over the United States government’s decision to host the presidents of Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania, and Senegal to high-level commercial talks at the White House on Wednesday without inviting Nigeria.
ADC’s interim national publicity secretary, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, said Nigeria’s exclusion from this high-level economic dialogue is a damning indictment of the Tinubu administration and its sustained economic mismanagement, weak and incoherent diplomacy, and inability to project Nigeria’s strategic importance on the global stage.
In a statement yesterday in Abuja, Abdullahi said the exclusion means that under President Tinubu, Nigeria is no longer taken seriously.
“Although we are Africa’s largest economy, with the largest consumer market and Africa’s most influential diaspora, the United States chose to bypass us in favour of nations whose combined GDP is only a fraction of ours.
“With this snob, what the Americans are telling us is that size means nothing without leadership and a demonstrable commitment to efficiency, to transparency and accountability.
Only a few years ago, it would have been unthinkable that such a meeting would have been held without Nigeria.”
According to him, the US snub shows how this administration has lowered the country’s international standing.
He added that the matter worsened by President Trump’s threat of a 10 per cent tariff on Nigeria’s imports—because of its association with BRICS—which started in January 2025,
“The ADC is not opposed to BRICS, but we are opposed to Nigeria punching below its weight by playing in the minor league.
“Were Nigeria able to provide the leadership that other African countries expect of us, and which we had competently provided in recent past, we would have been invited to that meeting on Wednesday in Washington, and Nigeria would have used the opportunity to push the Africa Union (AU) position on global trade, especially given that our daughter, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, sits at the head of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
‘APC Has Lowered Nigeria’s Int’l Standing’
ADC further chided the Tinubu-led APC administration for lowering Nigeria’s regional and global appeal.
It said: “But under this APC administration, Nigeria is no longer respected even as a regional leader in ECOWAS, as the regional body has shrunk in size and significance under President Tinubu’s leadership.
“Under this APC administration, once the acknowledged leader of the continent, Nigeria has become an afterthought, reduced to playing with backwater countries like St. Lucia, with less than 1 per cent of our GDP and a population less than a rural local government in Nigeria.
“Yet, our president was able to spend an entire week in that country for reasons that the government is still struggling to explain.”
The ADC further accused the APC of stalling the country’s economic progress and stripping it of the opportunity to sit at the table where real decisions and real investments that could create jobs, boost growth, and improve our economy are being made.
“This happens when the central government prioritises politics over performance, and propaganda over progress.
“As a nation that has led before, and can lead again, we must reject the future the APC seeks to impose on us—one where we are ignored, sidelined, and treated as insignificant. “Nigerians must demand better because Nigeria is too big, too important, and too proud to be left out,” he said.
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