How ADC’s Handling of Its Primary Elections Threatens to Undo Its Greatest Political Asset
By Abubakar I. Hamisu
There is a peculiar cruelty in self-inflicted wounds. The African Democratic Congress entered the 2026 political season as perhaps the most consequential opposition force Nigeria has seen in years. Buoyed by the defection of high-profile figures, widespread disillusionment with the ruling establishment, and a genuine public appetite for an alternative, the party had accumulated a reservoir of goodwill that most Nigerian political parties can only dream of. Then came the primaries.
What unfolded in Kaduna State on 25th May 2026 — and in the disputed conduct surrounding it — offers a sobering case study in how a political party can, in a single act of institutional recklessness, begin to squander the very things that made it credible. The ADC must reckon with this honestly, because the consequences of continued evasion are not merely uncomfortable — they are potentially catastrophic.
1. The Weight of Expectations
To appreciate the gravity of what is at stake, one must first understand what the ADC represented to millions of Nigerians before these primaries. Here was a party that loudly and repeatedly distinguished itself from the culture of impunity that has long characterised Nigerian party politics. Its guidelines for the conduct of primaries — detailed, comprehensive, and impressively structured — reflected an institutional seriousness rarely seen. Its rhetoric promised transparency where there had been opacity, fairness where there had been manipulation, and internal democracy where there had been imposition. Nigerians, understandably exhausted by the status quo, believed it.
That belief is now under acute stress. And the stress was entirely preventable.
2. What Went Wrong in Kaduna
The documented record is damning. A formal petition filed by Prof. Muhammad Sani Bello, a cleared governorship aspirant, alleges the deployment of armed thugs at voting centres, systematic compromise of accreditation procedures, multiple voting by the same individuals, deliberate delays that disenfranchised legitimate party members, and partisan conduct by electoral officials. These are not vague grievances — they are specific, numbered allegations supported by agents’ reports, documentary evidence, and video recordings.
More significantly, none of this was unforeseeable. Malam Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai, the Kaduna State ADC leader, wrote an urgent letter to the party’s national leadership five days before the election, specifically warning that the composition of the Electoral Committee was compromised, that it included individuals aligned with particular interests, and that proceeding on that basis would produce rejection, division, and avoidable conflict. He recommended a restructured committee with equal representation of all aspirants and a neutral chairman. The party leadership ignored him.
This is not a mere procedural lapse. It is an institutional failure of the highest order — the failure to heed a timely, well-reasoned, written warning from a senior leader. When the predicted crisis materialised, the party had no defence of ignorance to fall back on.
3. The Structural Contradictions
Beyond the specific allegations, the post-primary period has revealed structural contradictions that compound the problem. The ADC’s own Guidelines, issued under document reference ADC/NWC/PE/001/2026, prescribe a five-member Governorship Election Appeal Committee. The committee actually constituted for Kaduna State has only three members. This means the very body now tasked with adjudicating the petition may itself be improperly constituted under the party’s rules — a fact that could render any decision it makes susceptible to further challenge.
The Guidelines also specify that the Appeal Committee chairman must be a legal practitioner. Whether this requirement was met is a matter that deserves scrutiny. And critically, the Electoral Committee whose conduct is under challenge, and the Appeal Committee now hearing the challenge, were both appointed by the same National Working Committee whose judgment El-Rufai had already called into question. The structural independence that credible adjudication requires is, at minimum, compromised in appearance, even if not in fact.
These are not technicalities. In a party whose entire brand proposition rests on institutional integrity, such contradictions between prescribed standards and actual practice are deeply corrosive.
4. The Broader Danger: Goodwill Is Not Infinite
Political goodwill operates on a logic similar to financial credit — it takes considerable time and consistent behaviour to build, and can be destroyed with alarming speed. The ADC’s current wave of support is real, but it is also fragile, because it is largely aspirational. People have not yet seen the ADC govern; they have invested hope in what it promises to be. That makes its conduct of internal processes not less important but more so, because right now, how the party treats its own members and aspirants is the only tangible evidence voters have of how it will treat citizens if it wins power.
A party that deploys thugs at its own primaries, that ignores the warnings of its own leaders, that constitutes committees in violation of its own guidelines, and that then routes complaints through an Appeal Committee of questionable constitution — that party is not offering voters an alternative to what they already know. It is offering them a more eloquently packaged version of the same thing.
If this perception takes hold, and it is already forming, the consequences will be severe. The ADC’s most valuable assets — the defectors from other parties, the civil society goodwill, the international attention, the young voters mobilising for the first time — are all conditional on the party remaining what it claims to be. Many of these stakeholders have alternatives. They can return to where they came from, or simply disengage entirely. A mass exodus triggered by disillusionment is not a dramatic possibility; it is a rational response to evidence.
5. The Kaduna Dimension
Kaduna State deserves particular emphasis because it is not simply one state among many. It is a bellwether. It carries the political profile of El-Rufai, whose national name recognition and credibility were among the factors that drew attention to the ADC in the first place. A perception that his influence was marginalised — or worse, that the primary was conducted in a manner designed to sideline his preferred candidates — goes far beyond Kaduna. It sends a signal nationally about who actually controls the ADC’s machinery and whose interests it truly serves.
Kaduna is also a fiercely contested political environment where the ADC had genuine prospects for 2027. Those prospects depend entirely on the party presenting a united, credible front. Disputed primaries, unresolved grievances, and aspirants who feel wronged do not produce united fronts. They produce parallel campaigns, strategic withdrawals of support, and the kind of internal sabotage that Nigerian political parties know all too well.
6. The Legal Quagmire
If the internal appeals process fails to deliver justice — either because the Appeal Committee is improperly constituted, or because its decisions lack credibility, or because aggrieved parties escalate externally — the ADC risks entering a web of litigation that will dominate its pre-election period. Court injunctions against the use of a candidate’s name, challenges to the validity of the primary itself, and INEC-related complications arising from disputed results could paralyse the party’s 2027 campaign machinery at the state and national level simultaneously. Nigerian political litigation moves slowly enough that cases filed today can remain unresolved on election day — and an unresolved cloud over a governorship candidate is a gift to opponents.
The ADC’s own Guidelines warn against this explicitly, noting that internal disputes that escalate to court will distract from the electoral mission. That warning is now prophetic.
7. What the ADC Must Do
The path forward is not mysterious. The Appeal Committee must act with courage and genuine independence, not as an instrument of ratification for a flawed outcome. If the evidence supports the allegations — and the documented record suggests it substantially does — the committee must say so, clearly and without equivocation. A fresh, properly supervised primary must be ordered.
Beyond Kaduna, the NWC must conduct an honest national audit of how primaries were conducted across other states, and address systemic lapses before they become the subject of additional petitions, legal challenges, and media narratives. The party’s monitoring teams, whose reports must exist, should be scrutinised to understand how these irregularities were either missed or not acted upon.
Most fundamentally, the party must demonstrate — through action, not rhetoric — that its institutional promises are real. Every grievance left unaddressed, every irregular committee decision left standing, every warning from senior leaders left unheeded, chips away at the one thing that no political party can afford to lose and easily regain: the presumption that it is different.
Conclusion
The ADC is at a crossroads that is more consequential than it may yet fully appreciate. The 2027 general elections represent a genuine opportunity to reshape Nigerian politics in ways that matter. But opportunities of this kind are not permanent. They expire. They expire when the public concludes that a party promising change is, in its internal conduct, indistinguishable from what came before.
The clumsy handling of the Kaduna gubernatorial primary is not merely an administrative embarrassment. It is a test of institutional character. Nigerians are watching — not just the outcome of the petition, but how the party responds to the test. The ADC still has time to demonstrate that its guidelines are not decorative documents, that its leaders’ warnings are not ignored letters, and that its members’ votes are not disposable commodities. But that time is not unlimited, and it is running.
Sources & References
This essay is an independent commentary based on the following documents: ADC Guidelines for the Conduct of Primary Elections (April 2026, Ref: ADC/NWC/PE/001/2026); Petition by Prof. Muhammad Sani Bello against the conduct of the Kaduna State Governorship Primary Election (27th May 2026); Urgent Message to ADC National Leadership by Malam Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai (20th May 2026, ICPC Detention Day 94); ADC Process and Procedure Guide to Electoral Committee Members issued by the National Organising Secretary; State Electoral and Appeal Committees for Kaduna State issued by the ADC National Publicity Secretary.
