By Temitope Ajayi
What was widely touted as a potential seismic shift in Nigeria’s political terrain turned out to be a mere political puff off smoke.
For weeks, a band of aggrieved and wandering politicians had been climbing every available rooftop, megaphone in hand, vowing to dethrone President Bola Tinubu come 2027. Not because the man is doing a terrible job on the saddle. Not because the economy has worsened or security has completely collapsed. No. Just because they missed out on the appurtenances of power and cannot seem to function without the title “Your Excellency.”
Two years into his presidency, Bola Tinubu is tackling Nigeria’s multi-headed problems like a man cutting down a mountainous terrain with a pickaxe, painfully slow, yes, but certainly purposeful. Yet, the self-styled redeemers, who gathered under the banner of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) in Abuja on Wednesday, chief among them Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi, have not proposed a single fresh idea.
Their only strategy appears to be crying louder than the bereaved, recycling worn-out clichés, and weaponising poverty they themselves helped fertilise over the past 25 years. This is not a political rebirth. It is more like a poorly-scripted sequel that is ill-fated. These opposition actors, having deflated their original parties and lost the plot as credible voices, are merely using the ADC as a special purpose vehicle for power-hunting. It is a political Uber for those stranded without relevance.
Nigerians have seen this movie before. In 2018, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, after penning a series of acidic letters to President Muhammadu Buhari, rallied his own coalition of the wounded under the same ADC flag. That effort collapsed faster than a soufflé in a thunderstorm. If history is any guide, the new ADC revival is another expedition in political self-harm.
The truth is the ADC gathering is never a policy-driven renaissance. It is more like a reunion of political exes with bruised egos. Jealousy, personal bitterness, inflated ambition, and expired influence are the glue binding this coalition. They are not out to rescue anyone; they only want to rescue themselves from political oblivion.
