As political parties in Nigeria are preparing for their national convention ahead of the 2027 general elections, a former presidential aspirant of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) said his party “inherited a non-existent” country in 2015.
After 16 years in power, the PDP was ousted by the APC in 2015, in an election that former President Goodluck Jonathan lost to late Muhammadu Buhari of the APC.
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Speaking on AIT’s Focus Nigeria on Nigeria, Adamu Garba, who was an APC aspirant in the 2023 presidential election, said his party inherited a “non-existent country” in 2015.
“The entire instruments of power were destroyed. We have four instruments of power, which we refer to as DIME: diplomacy, intelligence, military, and economy. Almost all of them had scattered, and that is why we had several non-state actors rising to take chunks of our land,” he said, referring to Boko Haram, banditry, and the outlawed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), whose leader, Nnamdi Kanu, is being prosecuted for alleged terrorism by the federal government.
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Road to 2027
At its National Executive Council meeting on Thursday, the APC announced its new national chairperson, following the resignation of former chairperson Umar Ganduje, who cited health grounds.
On the same day, the PDP held its long-delayed National Executive Council meeting where it set a date for its national convention.
The ruling APC and the major opposition party, the PDP, are aiming to put their houses in order in readiness for the 2027 election.
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The African Democratic Congress (ADC) is bringing in new members and strengthening the coalition to challenge Mr Tinubu’s re-election bid in 2027. One of its leaders, Rotimi Amaechi, has begun building the party’s structure in his home state, Rivers.
Mr Amaechi told supporters in Port Harcourt last Wednesday to go to their wards for membership registration. He urged them to be ready to stop election rigging, which he said his state is “notorious for.”
Amid the efforts by the PDP and the ADC to consolidate ahead of the 2027 election, Mr Garba said the two parties have no chance in the next election.
“ADC is trying to organise itself as a coalition, not necessarily a party,” he said, describing the party as a “special purpose vehicle” designed to win power and not to be a political party.
“The only party that is truly democratic and ready for 2027 is the APC,” he added.
He took a swipe at the PDP, saying that the party destroyed itself by violating its internal democratic process, and that the APC is the biggest beneficiary of the PDP’s “self-destruction”.
“PDP is gone. To the best of my knowledge, PDP has lost public confidence, and I don’t want to categorise them as anything at all in the coming 2027 election.”
‘APC inherited a non-existent country in 2015’
Despite repeated attacks on security agents by bandits in the northern part of the country, Mr Garba, in the interview, commended the APC-led federal government, saying bandits and Boko Haram have been ‘destroyed.’
“As I am talking to you today, Boko Haram controls nothing. Even the bandits that were surging during former President Muhammadu Buhari’s first term, currently the national security adviser, is able to root them out and destroy them,” he said.
He was told that data from the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics (NBS) does not support his claims, that the economy was doing better under the PDP than currently, and that under the PDP-led federal government in 2014, the country’s GDP was $574 billion, but now it is almost half at $244 billion.
Also under the PDP, in the second quarter of 2014, the country’s daily oil production capacity was 2.2 million barrels per day, but currently, it hovers between 1.7 million and 1.8 million barrels per day.
Mr Garba dismissed the figures, saying the PDP was muscling phantom numbers. “They were muscling phantom numbers that cannot be substantiated,” he said.
“APC decided to come and say that we have to be sincere with ourselves. That balloon that looks very mighty but empty, we want to punch it and let it drain so that we know who we truly are,” he said, when told the figures are data from the NBS.
“And we did. And we discovered that the country is practically craterous. So, there is a need to re-engineer the economy. President Buhari tried his best, but couldn’t consolidate on the economic front; he just focused on the security front and has done his best in that regard.
“President Bola Tinubu said no. I would want to do that thing that everybody is afraid of. I want to clean this subsidy; I also want to float the naira so that we know the true value,” he said.
The PDP spokesperson, Debo Ologunagba, did not respond to a call and text message for comments.
PREMIUM TIMES could not reach ADC spokesperson, Bolaji Abdullahi, for comments at the time of filing this report as his phone line was switched off.
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