By Michael Chibuzo
On 1st April, 2026, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) announced that it will no longer recognise the factions of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) led by former Senate President, David Mark or Nafiu Bala Gombe, following its review of a court of appeal judgement in an appeal filed by the Mark-led ADC faction.
This development triggered a flurry of reactions and debates across the political spectrum and predictably many of the commentaries sought to weave a narrative that the move by INEC was instigated by the ruling All Progressives Congress and President Bola Tinubu. In fact, some in the ADC faction led by Sen. David Mark went as far as accusing President Bola Tinubu of trying to stifle democracy.
Ironically, if there is anyone or group of people in this ADC crisis trying to stifle democracy, it is definitely the Mark-led ADC faction made up of many strange bedfellows but who have a common characteristic of being displaced from power. A careful study of the facts around the ADC crisis reveals almost immediately that the Atiku-led coalition have themselves to blame for many reasons.
First, the Atiku-led group is made up of disgruntled politicians like former Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi, former Osun State Governor, Rauf Aregbesola, former Anambra State Governor, Mr. Peter Obi, former Senate President, David Mark, former Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, former Governor of Sokoto state, Aminu Tambuwal etc who have either been unable to solve crisis in their various parties or they felt excluded from their party.
These individuals decided to form a coalition and promised Nigerians a new way of doing things different from what they accuse the APC of. They labelled themselves as pure democrats with one of them famously stating back in 2023 during his litigation at the election petition tribunal that “the process leading to an outcome is more important than the outcome itself”.
Unfortunately, the very first major collective step they took as a coalition was to CIRCUMVENT DUE PROCESS by replacing two elected principal officers of ADC, the National Chairman and the Secretary, with Sen. David Mark and Rauf Aregbesola respectively. This singular act was the foundation of the crisis rocking the ADC and this is so because the act violated the constitution of the ADC itself in two critical areas, which I will briefly outline below:
1. Article 14 A(2) of the ADC constitution clearly states that in the absence of the National Chairman of the Party, the Deputy National Chairman takes over. Crucially, the National Working Committee members of the ADC are elected to serve a term of four years. During the takeover, David Mark who never participated in any ADC elective Congress was appointed to serve as Interim National Chairman of the ADC, same with Aregbesola as Secretary, which is in clear violation of the ADC constitution.
2. The ADC in its guidelines, which was in force as at time of the takeover by the Atiku-led coalition, stipulated that in order to be eligible to hold any party position, a member must have been a member of the party for at least two (2) years for National and Zonal offices or for at least one (1) year for State, Local Government and Ward positions. Neither Sen. David Mark nor Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola were members of the ADC for up to two years prior to their emergence as ADC National Chairman and Secretary respectively.
So, in the light of the above, it is clear that the Atiku-led coalition tried to play a fast one on the ADC by attempting a hostile takeover of the party akin to a coup. This is a clear definition of stifling democracy. In carrying out this coup, the Atiku-led coalition not only overrode the clear provisions of the ADC constitution, but it went ahead to commit a crime by forging resignation letters of some of the original NWC members they met in ADC who refused to resign to pave way for a clean takeover of the party.
The most prominent of those they forged and foisted a resignation letter on was the Deputy National Chairman of the Party, Nafiu Bala Gombe, who had always maintained that he did not resign and by virtue of that, is the authentic Acting National Chairman of the ADC following the resignation of the former National Chairman, Ralph Nwosu. Apart from Nafiu Bala Gombe, the National Publicity Secretary of the ADC has also consistently said he did not resign from the NWC and that his purported resignation letter was forged. There are least five others who claimed they never resigned.
So, the question Nigerians should be asking the David Mark-led ADC faction should be, why would you in one breathe force somebody to resign, going as far as forging a resignation letter and back dating it and in another breathe accuse external forces of trying to stifle democracy when those you tried to take over their positions Illegally decided to fight back? That is the irony of the whole situation. Unfortunately, many of the coalition supporters and sympathisers are not interested in looking at the fundamental issue at stake here. They want to blame a scape goat and APC or President Bola Tinubu is always the convenient scapegoat for them.
The Coalition Mistake and Possible Ways Forward
The Atiku-led coalition has clearly shown that it lacked the ability to carry out basic due diligence before leaping and also shown how desperate they are as seen by their impatience to follow due process. It has also reinforced the feeling that the leaders of the coalition lack leadership skills for their inability to manage an internal conflict in their new party of refuge after similarly failing to manage conflicts in their previous parties. If they cannot manage a straightforward democratic process within a political party, how do they expect to play by the rules if they manage to take back power?
The unfolding drama has shown that the David Mark-led ADC faction made a series of costly mistakes, which are now threatening to derail their ability to participate in the 2027 general elections if they did not find a peaceful resolution to their internal crisis. INEC is not to blame for their travails neither is APC or President Tinubu to blame. There is a maxim that says, “you do not interrupt your opponent when he is making a mistake’. Atiku and co, despite having a former Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami in their fold made a catastrophic mistake from the beginning and they are paying dearly for it at a very bad time.
To buttress the fact that the current crisis was their own making, the takeover of the ADC by Atiku and his colleagues happened on July 2nd, 2025 (eight months ago) and as at that July, 2025 Nafiu Bala Gombe and some of his NWC colleagues have been publicly shouting that they did not resign. In fact on September 2nd, 2025, Nafiu Bala Gombe went to court to get judicial recognition of his claim as the authentic Acting National Chairman of the ADC.
Instead of seeking to quickly see out the case at the Federal High Court to its logical conclusion, the Mark-led ADC faction deployed delay tactics by challenging a mere interlocutory ruling by the trial court at the Court of Appeal. And guess what, the appeal lasted between 18th of September, 2025 to 12th of March 2026 – a whooping six months of time wasting! Surely, it was not APC or President Bola Tinubu that told David Mark and co to waste six months appealing a MERE INTERLOCUTORY PROCESS while neglecting to pursue the main substantive matter pending at the Federal High Court. This was a colossal mistake by the Coalition and they only have themselves to blame and no one else.
If there is any good news, the David Mark-led faction of the ADC should be celebrating today, it is the fact that INEC is trying to wake them up from a hallucination and save them from the fate that has repeatedly befell APC in the past in Zamfara, Bayelsa and Rivers State where APC either lost its hard-earned electoral victory to the runner-up or was prevented from fielding a candidate at the election by the courts due to disobedience to court rulings or costly procedural errors. In other words, the Mark faction should be thanking INEC instead of trying to vilify it.
Now that INEC has woken them up from their slumber, the coalition now has three options available to them:
1. Quickly see out the substantive case pending before the Federal High Court in Abuja and see if the resulting judgement would favour them. If it does not, they can quickly go on Appeal. With the accelerated hearing order made by the Court of Appeal on March 12, the FHC should be able to conclude the matter within two weeks.
2. The second option available to the coalition is to retrace its steps and embrace due process by recognising that it cannot override the ADC constitution which at this point favours the claim of Nafiu Bala Gombe as Acting National Chairman. They need to deploy their leadership and conflict resolution skills by either agreeing to work with Nafiu as the interim Chairman of the ADC to oversee a nationwide Congress and convention that will produce the leaders they desire. They can also get Nafiu and his colleagues to withdraw their case at the Federal High Court for an out-of-court settlement.
3. The third option available to the coalition is to immediately move to another platform that will not present any complications. For example, few days ago the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP), elected Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, one of the early coalition members as its National Chairman and he has offered the coalition the PRP platform in case ADC becomes untenable. In the same vein, Sen. Seriake Dickson of Bayelsa recently floated a new political party called the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and he has offered the platform to the coalition as an alternative if they cannot untie the ADC knot. Following the new INEC timetable, political parties have up till May 30th to conduct primaries. Therefore the coalition has at least until end of April to move to an alternative platform and get their names into the membership register that would be forwarded to INEC in line with the mandatory one-month notice.
Conclusion
In the final analysis, the crisis tearing the African Democratic Congress apart is not the handiwork of external forces, nor is it the product of some grand political conspiracy orchestrated by the APC or President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. It is, instead, the predictable consequence of the David Mark-led faction’s own disregard for due process, impatience, and a reckless attempt to override a constitution they never cared to read. The coalition’s refusal to confront these hard truths has driven them into a legal and political cul-de-sac from which only sober reflection and not propaganda can deliver them.
The Mark-led faction must therefore understand that no amount of protest, media noise, or political blackmail will compel INEC or the judiciary to bend the law in their favour. Nigeria has seen far more dramatic outcomes triggered by procedural missteps, and the heavens did not fall. The APC, despite being the ruling party at the time, was stripped of its hard-won electoral victory in Zamfara State, with the Supreme Court awarding the governorship to the PDP, a party that came a distant second. In Bayelsa State, the APC’s Governor-elect was already preparing for his swearing-in ceremony when the courts nullified his victory over a mere discrepancy in the name of his running mate. And in Rivers State, the APC was not even allowed on the ballot after a judicial decision arising from internal party conflicts. Through all these, Nigeria stood. Democracy stood and was never in “danger”. The world did not end.
So, if the ADC finds itself excluded from the 2027 general elections on account of its own self-inflicted wounds, the sky will not fall either. What the David Mark-led faction must do now is stop the blame game, retrace their steps, and salvage what remains of the party. Their path to redemption lies not in shouting at the wind, but in respecting the law and confronting their misjudgments with the humility and seriousness they deserve. Only then can they hope to rebuild credibility, after all, their leaders agree that the process leading to an outcome is more important than the outcome itself”.