•Babachir Lawal and Atiku Abubakar
The chairman of African Democratic Congress ADC electoral committee for Adamawa State, Dr Nicholas Msheliza, has turned the tables on former Secretary to the Government of the Federation SGF, Babachir Lawal, accusing him of personally directing the rigging of last month’s presidential primary of the party in his home state.
He also threatened to release documentary evidence to back the claim, reports Vanguard.
This is coming days after Lawal had alleged that former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, rigged his way into becoming the presidential candidate of ADC.
In a strongly-worded statement yesterday, Msheliza, who, also served as the Returning Officer for the Adamawa primaries, said it was Lawal who telephoned him after results were compiled and ordered him to reverse the outcome in Hong Local Government Area, Lawal’s own hometown, to favour his preferred candidate and businessman, Mohammed Hayatu-Deen, over former Vice President Atiku Abubakar.
“When Babachir Lawal got wind of the results, he called and requested that I reverse the results to favour his candidate. I refused to carry out his directive,” Dr. Msheliza stated.
According to him, Atiku won Hong Local Government Area with 11,991 votes, while Hayatu-Deen polled 2,493 and former Minister of Transportation Rotimi Amaechi, 377 votes figures, he said, were the opposite of what Lawal had publicly claimed.
Lawal had, in an interview published by Politics Nigeria on Tuesday, titled “I’ve Eliminated APC and ADC…”, alleged that a Returning Officer manipulated results from a local government to flip 20,000 votes for Hayatu-Deen into a win for Atiku.
He cited that incident as part of his justification for resigning from the ADC on Monday, June 2, 2026, barely a week after the party’s presidential primary held on May 25, 2026, which produced Atiku as the ADC’s candidate for the 2027 general elections.
Msheliza, who identified himself as the very officer Lawal had referenced, said within one hour of his refusal to reverse the results, Lawal unilaterally dissolved the duly constituted electoral committee for Hong Local Government from his Abuja office and assembled a parallel committee, without consulting him as state electoral chairman, which proceeded to conduct what he described as an illegal exercise across Hong, Madagali, Michika and Mubi North local government areas.
“This was the Babachir Lawal committee that went on to illegally carry out his rigging assignment in Hong, Madagali, Michika and Mubi North Local Government Areas without any ward electoral materials given to them,” he said, adding that the original results from Hong had already been entered before Lawal’s parallel committee arrived with what he called “concocted results.”
He challenged Lawal to release the result sheets he had boasted about possessing, saying he would welcome a side-by-side public comparison with the official Adamawa State electoral committee’s results.
He also questioned Lawal’s moral credibility, noting that the former SGF occasionally presented himself as a man of faith.
“With the esteemed office he occupied in the party and a pastor which he sometimes claims to be, I never thought in my wildest imagination that Babachir Lawal could descend so low to the level of distorting facts in order to defend his inability and lack of capacity to deliver,” Dr. Msheliza said.
The Returning Officer warned that a more detailed statement was in the offing, promising “a plethora of unassailable evidence, including unethical interferences to show the rigging processes the self-styled Pastor unleashed on Adamawa State.”
The exchange marks a fresh and explosive escalation in the fallout from Lawal’s exit from the ADC. Atiku’s camp had earlier dismissed Lawal’s allegations as unsubstantiated, while presidential spokesman, Bayo Onanuga, gleefully declared that Lawal had inflicted more damage on Atiku than any criticism from the presidency could have achieved.
Atiku’s camp also accused Lawal of political inconsistency, noting that he had not questioned the emergence of his cousin, Omar Suleiman, as the ADC governorship candidate in Adamawa State through the same primary process he now condemned as fraudulent, arguing that Nigerians were entitled to ask whether the process was only credible when it favoured his family.
Hayatu-Deen, on his part, had since ruled out challenging Atiku’s emergence as ADC presidential candidate, saying he had chosen party unity and the broader objective of building a credible opposition, ahead of the 2027 elections.
