The defection of Obi, who enjoys an immeasurable amount of support and goodwill from millions of Nigerians will give the ADC an aura of invincibility. Obi’s decampment is vital for democracy.
After months of speculation, hearsay and conjecture regarding his next move, particularly his future with the Labour Party and if he would join the African Democratic Party (ADC) or not, former Anambra State governor on Wednesday officially announced his defection to the ADC in a widely publicised event in Enugu. The event was attended by influential politicians and bigwigs of the party. The defection of Obi to ADC put to rest months of suspense and uncertainty about his next decision especially as it regards the 2027 election.
The dumping of Labour Party by Peter Obi did not come as a surprise to many, having become more or less a passenger in the party owing to a protracted leadership dispute that all his effort to resolve yielded no positive result because the forces that wanted the party to remain divided and crisis-ridden are more than those who wanted a peaceful, stable, cohesive and working party, and also distancing himself from it publicly to the extent that he started campaigning for candidates of other parties, it was only a matter of time before he drew the curtain on his time at the party and left it for good.
However, what troubles many, especially his teeming supporters, is what the move to ADC portends for him and his presidential ambition as many see the party as nothing more than a contraption cobbled together to actualise the presidential aspiration of one man — Atiku Abubakar. But beyond what Obi stands to gain and if the defection to ADC is a logical and sensible one, one thing his joining the ADC has done is to significantly reinvigorate the opposition, strengthen our democracy and effectively halt the nation’s troubling slide into a one-party state.
The ADC already boasts of many influential and formidable political actors which positions it as a viable opposition to APC, the defection of Obi, who enjoys an immeasurable amount of support and goodwill from millions of Nigerians — with his staunch supporters fondly called Obidients cutting across different demographics, social status, ethnicity and religion — will give the ADC an aura of invincibility. Obi’s decampment is vital for democracy.
The opposition has been bullied and browbeaten. Opposition parties’ bigwigs, governors, and lawmakers, both at the state and federal levels, have been blackmailed and arm-twisted into joining the APC. The remaining and existing opposition parties have, through all forms of abhorrent and despicable tactics, become an appendage of the ruling APC. Undermined. The parties have been weakened by defections and crippled from the inside by compromised members who orchestrate crises and manufacture litigation to keep the party perennially destabilised.
The coalition is what is needed to counterbalance and check the vicious and ruthless power consolidation antics of the ruling party and the despicable plot by the president and his lapdogs to plunge the nation into the abyss of a one-party state. The coalition is important because a united opposition will be exceedingly difficult for the rapacious ruling APC to decimate as it will be easy to form a resistance that makes it hard to pick apart and take out opposition leaders.
There is some truth in the fact that the coalition may be bereft of any compelling ideas, lofty visions and grand initiatives that are needed to pull the country out of the current quagmire it is currently in, that the coalition may be a gathering of the old war horses and those who are deeply entrenched in the same system that brought misfortune, calamity and shame upon the country and turn it to a laughing stock on the global stage, that the coalition, at least majority of the bigwigs and political heavyweight in it, may be fixated on power grabbing instead of engendering transformative agenda. Even with these many shortcomings and defects of the coalition, it has become indispensable to our polity.
If democracy is to survive in Nigeria, it must be imbued with a strong and thriving multiparty system that provides safe alternatives for disillusioned citizens, impoverished masses and disenchanted actors. A situation where every politician who is worth his onions in the country defects to the APC and grovels at the feet of President Tinubu is not healthy for our democracy and portends serious danger for it.
Furthermore, one can only hope the coalition does not allow personal ambitions and shortsightedness undermine their unity. One can only hope greed and avarice do not get in the way of team spirit and national interest. The coalition still has a long way to go and a lot of pieces will have to fall in place for it to stand a chance of winning the 2027 presidential election. If the opposition stays united in the coalition, then they stand a chance. We can only hope and pray it has come to stay.
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