•Peter Obi
The Nenadi Usman-led faction of the Labour Party (LP) in Rivers State has officially collapsed its structure into the African Democratic Congress (ADC), with a vow to queue behind LP presidential candidate in 2023, Peter Obi.
This was as former governor of Ekiti State, Ayo Fayose, warned that ADC may become irrelevant if it fails to present Obi as its presidential candidate for the 2027 general election, reports The Guardian.
Meanwhile, ADC chieftain and former associate of President Bola Tinubu, Dele Momodu, has revealed strategies that could be deployed to unseat Tinubu in 2027.
But the National Publicity Secretary of ADC, Bolaji Abdullahi, accused the All Progressives Congress (APC) of engineering crises in the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) and LP, to pave the way to its victory in 2027.
Chairman of Rivers LP, Gogo Wellington, at a briefing, yesterday, urged all members of the party and the Obidient Movement in Rivers to channel all their support to their 2023 presidential candidate.
Obi, a member of the coalition of opposition leaders plotting to unseat Tinubu in 2027, recently defected to ADC, the party adopted by the coalition.
Wellington urged LP supporters in the 23 local councils of Rivers to Obi in ADC.
Fayose, in an interview on Arise Television, described Obi as the only political figure capable of giving the ADC national relevance.
According to him, other personalities within the party lack the electoral appeal required to make a meaningful impact at the polls. “Peter Obi is the life in ADC,” Fayose said. “I didn’t say there are no other human beings in ADC. I’m saying others are largely spent forces.”
He argued that Obi’s political influence “goes beyond party structures”, noting that his popularity was clearly demonstrated during the 2023 general election when LP, previously regarded as fringe, won many seats in the National Assembly on the back of Obi’s candidacy.
The former Ekiti governor maintained that Obi would attract significant support regardless of the platform he contests on, even suggesting that a little-known party could gain relevance solely by fielding the former Anambra governor.
He added that sidelining Obi would significantly weaken the party’s standing ahead of the polls.
In an interview on Arise Television yesterday, Momodu said: “Tinubu is defeatable if the opposition gets its mathematics right.” According to him, the ADC’s ongoing constitutional review and coalition-building efforts were part of a deliberate reset aimed at avoiding the failures that had plagued previous opposition movements.
When there is a coalition, it is assumed that it is a coalition of co-joiners. Everyone at this stage is equal. What the party seeks is to be different from other parties.
“Discipline, unity and strategic candidate selection can unseat the APC in 2027,” he said.
ABDULLAHI claimed that APC’s aim was to ensure that no other political party survives ahead of the 2027 presidential election.
Featuring on AIT’s ‘Focus Nigeria’, Abdullahi said: “The crises in LP, PDP and all these parties were engineered. These crises were engineered because the ruling party knows that in a free and fair contest, there is no way it will win the election. Their best option is to give people no alternative going into the 2027 election. Today, PDP is no longer what it used to be.”
The ADC spokesman also declared that what the APC did to PDP, NNPP and LP would not be allowed to happen in ADC.
