The African Democratic Congress does not need a coalition to defeat President Bola Tinubu in the 2027 presidential election, the party’s National Publicity Secretary, Bolaji Abdullahi, has said.
Abdullahi made the assertion on Friday during an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today.
He said the party was confident that its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, could defeat Tinubu without relying on a coalition of opposition parties.
“We are going to win. We don’t need a coalition to win this election. The African Democratic Congress does not need a coalition to win this election,” Abdullahi said.
He added that while a broad-based coalition could make the party’s task easier, it was not necessary for victory.
“If we are able to build the kind of coalition that we started to build, maybe to make our job easier, but we don’t need that coalition. We don’t necessarily need the coalition to win the election,” he said.
Asked whether Atiku could defeat Tinubu single-handedly, Abdullahi said, “I believe so, and that’s our thinking, and that’s what we are working on.”
He said the ADC expected to draw support from voters across the country, “from Abia to Zamfara”, arguing that some Nigerians would change their voting preferences based on their experience under the Tinubu administration.
“The experience of Nigerians in the last three years has pushed people to the extent that they are saying that anybody but President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.”
The comments come against the backdrop of an ambitious but ultimately incomplete opposition realignment that began in 2025.
Opposition heavyweights, including Atiku, Peter Obi, Nasir El-Rufai, Rotimi Amaechi, David Mark and Rauf Aregbesola, among others, came together and adopted the relatively low-profile ADC as a joint platform to present a united challenge to Tinubu and the APC in 2027.
The coalition was formally unveiled with Mark as interim national chairman and Aregbesola as national secretary.
However, the project did not pan out as expected, with internal disagreements leading to fractures that saw Obi and former Kano Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso later exit the ADC and join the Nigeria Democratic Congress, where both are running for presidency.
Speaking, Abdullahi said the ADC was also open to continued discussions with opposition parties, but said the conversations were not primarily focused on producing a single presidential candidate.
“We are still having conversations among ourselves, opposition political parties, and there are different areas,” he said.
According to him, one area of possible cooperation is election monitoring and protecting votes.
“The conversation is not about how do we produce a single presidential candidate. The conversations predominantly are about how… what areas of cooperation is possible,” he said.
“For example, if we are able to develop a common protocol for election monitoring and for policing our votes, that is major.”
He also said the party had challenged the government to a debate on its proposal to restore fuel subsidy, saying Nigerians deserved to hear arguments on the issue.
“We have said we will bring subsidy back,” Abdullahi said, adding that the ADC was willing to debate the issue with the All Progressives Congress (APC).
“I’m not an economist. You have your economists. We have our economists. We have our presidential candidate, and as a matter of fact, I’m the spokesperson of the ADC. Bring the spokesperson of the APC. Let us debate this subsidy issue because that is what Nigerians want to hear.”
