The Director General of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) Global Campaign Council, Abdul-Azeez Suleiman, has dismissed reported formation of a parallel structure for the ADC by what he called, a bankrupt rebel group led by suspended presidential candidate of the party, Dumebi Kachikwu, as diversionary and futile exercise.
Tracing the roots of the conflict in a statement issued in Kaduna, Kaduna State, on Tuesday, the Campaign DG said, like many political parties across the country, ADC’s history is replete with disputes and isolated incidents over leadership but the fact that it has for this long survived and prospered, is a testimony to how far it has come in accommodating individual and group differences.
He, however, said, “But there is today a growing membership population in the ADC that comes with a growing demand from internal and powerful external forces linked to a grand design to destabilize the party and bring it to its knees by dividing it along artificial lines.”
According to Suleiman, “The party leadership watched and studied these events carefully and with considerable restraint and maturity, to the point of condoning and accommodating several unreasonable and unacceptable actions that have been perpetrated against the ADC collectively, and the National Working Committee in particular.
“Of late however, matters reached a point whereby silence has become complicity and inaction no longer an option, compelling the party leadership, out of decent patriotism and love of the party, to take the bold and necessary step to check such unconstitutional conducts by suspending the party’s presidential candidate, Dumebi Kachikwu.
“This action is in the realization that the ultimate aims of these forces of reaction are to halt the growth in the popularity of the ADC and spread beyond its traditional boundaries and to reverse the populist tendencies of the new initiatives put in place by the leadership of the party under Chief Ralph Nwosu.
“They are also symptoms of the disquiet in the party that set in since the emergence of Kachikwu as presidential candidate and exacerbated by political opportunism and corruption, ushering in greater instability to occasion thereby, a change of leadership by whatever means and tactics to pave way for the ultimate mortgage of the party to certain dubious political interests.
“The persistent disturbances caused especially by the Kachikwu group represent a much wider conspiracy to divide the ADC and bring it down on its knees by internal balkanization, thereby gradually paving the way for its complete takeover by powerful external forces.
“The rebel group’s strategies are also aimed at diminishing the viability of the party and rendering it incapable of standing on its own two feet and competing favourably with other parties in the coming general elections in the country.
“Finally, it is important to caution these enemies of the party both outside and outside who are working strenuously to ensure that the ADC remains divided, weak, confused and bewildered by myriads of challenges and problems, to note that their actions will not go unnoticed.
“And for the avoidance of doubt, in the unfolding political chess game, the duly constituted ADC NEC and NWC shall continue to anticipate and checkmate the maneuvers of this and similar rebel groups in all possible and likely scenarios, and move to obtain ascendency over the forces of retrogressive reaction,” Suleiman assured.
