ADC: A coalition without direction, purpose, or political future, by Abdulhakeem Alawuje

The African Democratic Congress (ADC) has clearly demonstrated that it is a political gathering going nowhere. This reality is now an open secret, one that has triggered panic, suspicion, and deep internal unrest within opposition camps.

ADC members appear eager to move, yet they lack a destination, a compass, and a shared vision.

What exists within the party is not unity, but a forced marriage of incompatible interests—groups fundamentally opposed to one another, pretending to be allies.

Such an arrangement can never produce peace, stability, or progress.

The ADC is not a political family; it is a collection of unsettled rivals competing against themselves.

None of its leading figures enjoys genuine political harmony or ideological compatibility with the others.

Recent developments within the ADC further expose this confusion. Some leaders, having politically “lost their father,” are scrambling to step into his shoes and even lay claim to what they once rejected—forgetting that tradition, morality, and law forbid a child from inheriting his father’s wife. Even more absurd is the fact that former enemies of that same political “father” are now struggling to take over the same position and benefits they openly opposed while he was alive.

This contradiction defines the ADC.

The party lacks clarity on its real target.

Is it President Bola Ahmed Tinubu as an individual, or the All Progressives Congress (APC) as a political institution? This confusion has weakened its messaging, strategy, and credibility.

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu remains one of the most courageous, resilient, and strategic democratic figures in Nigeria’s political history. The APC, on the other hand, stands today as the most organized, prepared, and formidable political party in the country.

Even if the APC were to pause its strategic efforts—which it will not—it would still take the ADC and other opposition groupings at least a decade to catch up, if that is even possible.

President Tinubu himself has grown beyond conventional political definitions.

He has become a political institution—complex, calculated, and difficult to decode, even by some who pretend to be his allies.

This is why the opposition remains confused: unable to decide whether they are fighting a man or a movement.

The ADC is best described as a forced coalition of political disabilities—a combination of the deaf, the blind, the mute, and the crippled.

Each faction is afflicted by its own limitations.

When the mute collapses, the deaf cannot hear the call for help; the blind cannot see the solution; and the cripple cannot deliver the remedy. The question then becomes: who rescues whom?

In the interest of national unity, stability, and progress, it would have been wiser—and more patriotic—for these incompatible elements to allow President Tinubu to complete his constitutional second term.

The year 2031 is closer than many imagine. By then, the achievements of President Tinubu may have firmly positioned the APC as Nigeria’s dominant political force for generations.

This is the reality the opposition fears—and the confusion within ADC is proof of it.