Senator Ishaku Abbo tears open the ADC crisis in a dramatic Easter live broadcast, accusing INEC of bias, naming Bidi Lawan as the cause of Adamawa’s parallel party structures, and demanding President Tinubu stop suppressing opposition. Senator Ishaku Abbo did not come to church on Easter Sunday, to say the least. He came to court.
In a fiery live broadcast that has since rattled political circles from Yola to Abuja, the senator representing Adamawa North threw caution to the wind and named names, exposed alleged backroom deals, and delivered a stinging rebuke to President Bola Tinubu and the Independent National Electoral Commission in the same breath. The address felt less like a press statement and more like a declaration of war for Abbo, a man who has survived three election cycles, two court cases, and more political betrayals than most politicians endure in a lifetime.
Abbo’s Easter address revealed a fundamental truth about the ADC’s unravelling. According to the senator, when the party’s former National Working Committee led by Chief Ralphs Okey Nwosu handed over to the incoming leadership under Senator David Mark, a binding agreement was reached to distribute key party positions among legacy stakeholders.
Under that agreement, Nafiu Bala, the former deputy national chairman of the ADC and the most senior party figure from the North East, was specifically promised the position of National Vice Chairman, North East. Abbo argued that the position was not a favour. It was a negotiated settlement for surrendering control of the party.
“He was a deputy national chairman, and with those credentials, they rejected the position of finance secretary they were offering him,” Abbo told his audience. “He said he is no longer interested in that position. That is the beginning of this fight.”
The position went instead to Babachir D. Lawan. And the reason given to Nafiu Bala, according to Abbo, was as dismissive as it was politically tone-deaf. He was told he was too young to lead in a zone that had produced a former Vice President and a former Secretary to the Government of the Federation.
“How will they allow a young man to become the National Vice Chairman in a zone that produced the former Vice President and the former SGF?” Abbo quoted party insiders as saying. He described the treatment of Nafiu Bala as undignified, saying he was spoken to “just like chasing him, get out of here.”
What followed, Abbo alleged, was not just a legal dispute. It was a coordinated suppression campaign with state muscle behind it.
He claimed that DSS operatives and police officers were assigned to follow Nafiu Bala, a development he described as proof of government fingerprints on the ADC crisis. “If it is not the government that is giving him, who will now allocate DSS to Nafiu Bala to follow him?” he asked. “That means government is involved. Quote me.”
He went further, accusing INEC of acting on political instructions when it delisted the ADC leadership mid-dispute, effectively freezing the party out of the electoral system. He singled out the INEC chairman by name, saying he was disappointed by comments the commission’s boss made in a television interview.
“You are a professor. You are a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, and you are blabbing,” Abbo said. “Don’t be worse than Morris. Don’t go into the hall of shame as the same man as Esau. You are selling Nigeria for a pot of porridge.”
He then turned directly to President Tinubu, invoking the president’s own democratic credentials as a form of rebuke. “You fought for democracy. You are a member of NADECO. You fought military regimes,” Abbo said. “Stop arresting opposition politicians. It is not good for your history.”
Abbo confirmed that Adamawa State ADC now operates with parallel structures at every level, with two chairmen at the state, local government, and ward levels, two secretaries, and two registration officers in each ward. He blamed Bidi Lawan directly for attempting to remove Shewi Ohana as acting state chairman and installing a transition committee in his place.
He closed with a direct appeal to Nafiu Bala to withdraw the court cases and “be a hero of democracy” and a broader warning that Nigerians are watching how the APC handles political opposition ahead of 2027.
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