African Democratic Congress (ADC) has said Nigeria was not invited to White House trade talks because of President Bola Tinubu’s economic failure, stressing that under the All Progressives Congress (APC) leadership, the country has gone from leading the continent to being left out entirely.
ADC made the assertion in a statement by its Interim National Publicity Secretary, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi.
That was as the party’s Interim National Chairman, Senator David Mark, assured that under his leadership, ADC would be “absolutely transparent”.
Similarly, former Director General of All Progressives Congress Governors’ Forum, and one of the arrowheads of the ADC coalition, Mallam Salihu Lukman, said the structure of the party would not be handed over to any of its members contesting the presidential ticket in 2027.
But the federal government dismissed the individuals behind the coalition against the re-election of Tinubu as elements averse to the sustained focus on the economic progress the country was recording.
APC also said there was no reason for Tinubu or the ruling party to expend valuable time and energy trying to sow confusion within ADC that was already mortally wounded by confusion delivered by its invaders.
The United States government planned to host the presidents of Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania, and Senegal for high-level commercial talks at the White House on Wednesday, without extending the invitation to Nigeria.
In a statement by ADC’s Interim National Publicity Secretary, the party emphasisedthat Nigeria’s exclusion from such high-level economic dialogue was a damning international indictment of the Tinubu administration and its sustained economic mismanagement, weak and incoherent diplomacy, and inability to project Nigeria’s strategic importance on the global stage.
According to ADC, “For years, African thought leaders have argued that it was about time that the Western world started to engage with African countries as trade partners rather than as hapless recipients of aid. Finally, an American President has emerged who is cutting aid and promoting trade. But Nigeria is not invited to the table.
“According to the Americans, the three-day meeting, which starts on Wednesday, is convened to explore commercial opportunities that could benefit both American companies and African partners. They said they have invited countries, who have demonstrated ‘the ability, and willingness, to help itself.
“What this means in plain language is that under President Tinubu, Nigeria is no longer taken seriously. Although we are Africa’s largest economy, with the largest consumer market and Africa’s most influential diaspora, the United States chose to bypass us in favour of nations whose combined GDP is only a fraction of ours.
“With this snub, what the Americans are telling us is that size means nothing without leadership and a demonstrable commitment to efficiency, to transparency and to accountability.”
The statement added, “Only a few years ago, it would have been unthinkable that such meeting would hold without Nigeria. This only shows how low this administration has brought our country in the estimation of the world.
“To add insult onto injury, Nigeria is now being threatened by President Trump with a 10 per cent tariff because of our association with BRICS, which started in January 2025. The ADC is not opposed to BRICS, but we are opposed to Nigeria punching below its weight by playing in the small league.
“Were Nigeria able to provide the leadership that other African countries expect of us, and which we have competently provided in recent past, we would have been invited to that meeting on Wednesday in Washington, and Nigeria would have used the opportunity to push the Africa Union (AU) position on global trade, especially given that our daughter, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, sits at the head of the World Trade Organisation (WTO)
“But under this APC administration, Nigeria is no longer respected even as a regional leader in ECOWAS, as the regional body has shrunk in size and significance under President Tinubu’s leadership.
“Under this APC administration, once the acknowledged leader of the continent, Nigeria has become an afterthought, reduced to playing with back-water countries like St. Lucia, a country with less than 1% of our GDP and a population less than that of a rural local government in Nigeria.
“Yet, our president was able to spend an entire week in that country, for reasons that the government is still struggling to explain. The truth is that APC has not only stalled our economic progress, it has stripped us of the opportunity to sit at the table where real decisions, and real investments that could create jobs boost growth and improve our economy, are being made.
“This is what happens when the government at the centre prioritises politics over performance, and propaganda over progress. As a nation that has led before, and can lead again, we must reject the future the APC seeks to impose on us—one where we are ignored, sidelined, and treated as insignificant. Nigerians must demand better, because Nigeria is too big, too important, and too proud to be left out.”
ADC also accused APC of deceiving Nigerians by using the names of non-ADC members to file a suit against the party and its interim leadership.
The party alleged that the names, which APC used to file their suit were neither in ADC physically nor digital registers in Kogi or Nasarawa State.
ADC state, “It smacks of desperation that a party elected in charge of the lives of no fewer than 200 million people can engage in shopping for the names of its citizens in pursuit of Machiavellian politics.”
National Legal Support Group for ADC expressed its readiness to represent the party in the courts over the matter filed against it and its interim officers.
Making the revelation in Abuja on Tuesday, leader of the group, Barrister Mohammed Sheriff, said no fewer than 97 Lawyers had indicated their preparedness to stand for ADC.
Mark: ADC Has No Preferred Presidential Candidate
Interim National Chairman of ADC, Senator David Mark, said under his leadership, the party would be “absolutely transparent”.
Reacting to speculations on the choice of its presidential candidate, Mark said, “The ADC has no preferred or favourite presidential aspirant but has set out to first put out a platform that would be attractive and acceptable to majority of Nigerians.
“We are doing this because we do not want this great ship called Nigeria to sink because if we do not rise up, and now, they will sink all of us.” Mark stated this while addressing the stakeholders of the Kogi State chapter of ADC at a meeting in Abuja.
He stated that all the members of the party were “equal stakeholders. Equal joiners, equal owners”.
Mark stated, “I don’t own this party more than any of our members and I urge all members to prepare to show Nigerians that ADC is a different party. A different party that is ready to properly run democracy in our country. All Nigerians must come together and take ownership of the ADC.”
He urged members to put their differences aside and work as a team, adding, “We must bond together to build the party before we can talk of ambitions.”
The former senate president charged members of All Progressives Congress (APC) to stop attacking individuals but concentrate on their policy failures, which ADC had raised.
He said, “If they admitted that insecurity is bad and they promised Nigerians that they would improve on it but have made it worse, would Nigerians continue to support them? The answer is No. Let us continue to work to rebuild our nation and bring out her best in the overall interest of the future generations.”
Lukman: Coalition Won’t Hand Party over to Atiku, Obi, Amaechi, Others
Former Director-General of APC Governors’ Forum, and one of the leaders of ADC, Mallam Salihu Lukman, revealed that the ADC structure would not be handed over to any member of the party contesting the presidential ticket in 2027.
Prominent among those believed to be aspiring for the presidential ticket of ADC are former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, former Governor Peter Obi, and former Governor Chibuike Ameachi.
Speaking on a television programme, Jigsaw, Tuesday, in Abuja, Lukman said the plan was to build the structures of the party in such a way that the party would be strong enough and could regulate the conduct of everybody, not just aspiring candidates, but even elected representatives when they win office and assume positions.
According to him, “The coalition didn’t go into this arrangement (ADC) with our eyes closed, desperate to have a political party. We took our time. We didn’t negotiate with just one individual, we negotiated with the whole leadership.
“What we are telling everybody in the coalition is that the structures of the party will not be handed over to aspiring candidates.
“We have to build the structures of the party in such a way that the party is strong enough and can regulate the conduct of everybody, not just aspiring candidates, but even elected representatives when they win office and assume positions.”
On how the coalition cleared all the legal crisis before the unveiling, he said, “I can tell you that we opened a negotiation with a wide range of parties. And we went through processes including conducting legal due diligence on the status of both the leadership and if there are any pending litigation that were there. And in the process, we were able to also check with INEC and get all the substantive issues.
“I can tell you, some of the issues being raised in the public about some of the litigation. There are issues which, even by INEC record, if you go there, you’ll find out that they have been resolved long ago. At a point, we even had to sit down with all the members, in fact more than once, all the members of the National Working Committee of ADC.
“So I want to make it very clear and if you check with INEC, you’ll find out that even the Dumebi Kachukuhu, who came out to make noise, by the record, of INEC, based on the certified true copies of proceedings of organs, legitimate organs of the ADC, Dumebi Kachukwu and some others, I think about 15 of them, have been expelled from the party. I can’t remember exactly when. So, we didn’t go into this blindly.
“And we were very clear that we were in a very safe ground. And proceeding further, we are not supplanting the leadership of ADC. We have accepted to work with them as partners, they are stakeholders.
“And I’m sure in not too distant time from now, the interim leadership of the party led by Senator David Mark, and Aregbesola will release possible guidelines to guide the position at the state level, and how the whole reorganisation of the structures of the party will proceed.
“So, I want to make it very clear, we are not approaching this activity based on the conventional process of just going to hijack a structure and begin organise it in such a way we produce candidate and this led me to the critical point and I think we have to continue to talk to ourselves as members of the coalition we came this far largely because we have appealed to all our leaders to please suspend expression of their ambition until we are able to build structures.”
FG Blasts Coalition Backers for Bias over Alleged Stagnation of Reforms
The federal government dismissed the power blocs in support of the emerging coalition against the re-election of President Bola Tinubu in 2027 as elements with a predilection against the sustained focus on the economic progress the country was recording. Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, said this on Tiesday in a statement in light of the political discourse ahead of the 2027 election.
He said the Tinubu administration remained undeterred, focused, and committed to building a more prosperous Nigeria for all and would not be drawn into distractions engineered by those who would prefer stagnation over reform.
Idris reaffirmed that Tinubu was committed to the core mandate of his administration, which was delivering meaningful reforms and real economic growth for the Nigerian people, rather than being bogged by distraction of coalition by some political big wigs in the country.
While asserting the right of all Nigerians to freely exercise their constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of association and of speech, the minister stressed that the Tinubuadministration would not be provoked by politicking or political distractions.
Idris said, “The clamour in the media about the emergence of a new political ‘coalition’ is understandable, but Nigerians entrusted President Tinubu with a bold and transformative mandate, anchored in the Renewed Hope agenda.
“In just two years, this vision has already begun yielding tangible results. Crude oil theft has plummeted, investor confidence in the oil and gas sector is rebounding, inflation is easing, the Naira is stabilising, security challenges are being confronted head-on, and millions of Nigerians—households, students, artisans, small business owners—are benefitting from initiatives such as student loans, access to consumer credit, CNG vehicle conversions, and improved government services and infrastructure.”
The minister recalled that Tinubu recently signed into law four ground-breaking tax reform bills, marking one of the most ambitious fiscal overhauls in the country’s history.
He added that the reforms that were set to be implemented from 2026, would significantly boost prosperity for households and businesses nationwide.
Idris said, “Just before then, the President commissioned the single largest mechanisation drive ever undertaken in Nigeria’s history—marking the launch of the Renewed Hope Agricultural Mechanisation Programme.
“This is just one of several high-impact agricultural mechanisation programs being undertaken to guarantee food security.”
APC: Tinubu Won’t Give Valuable Time to Confusion in Mortally Wounded ADC
APC said there was no reason for Tinubu or the ruling party to spend valuable time and energy trying to sow confusion within ADC, a party it said was already mortally wounded by confusion delivered by its invaders.
National Publicity Secretary of APC, Felix Morka, in a statement, said ADC was unsurprisingly trudging the beaten path of lies and deception, like opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Labour Party (LP).
Citing “credible intelligence”, ADC had claimed that state chairmen in the North-east and North-west zones of the country were summoned to a “secret meeting with officials of the federal government”, in a plot to intimidate and coerce the opposition coalition.
But Morka stated, “Beyond the rash of poorly imagined accusations, the statement did not offer substantiation of any kind. Its vague reference to ‘officials of federal government’ only belies the mischievous intent of its makers to whip up sentiments, manipulate public opinion, and distract Nigerians from the patent hopelessness of their political phishing expedition.
“Otherwise, why is it so impossible for ADC to provide Nigerians the details of the alleged secret meeting at which its senior party officers were coerced and intimidated. Rather, the party cites nonsensical credible intelligence as basis for its devious allegations.
“Clearly, there was no such meeting, and certainly, no one could have been coerced or intimidated at a meeting that never was. This could have happened only in the warped imagination of masters of deception and marauding invaders of the ADC.”
APC said, “There is no reason for Mr. President or APC to expend valuable time and energy trying to sow confusion within ADC that is already mortally wounded by confusion delivered by its invaders.
“The ADC needs no help from our great party to unravel as it must from its own internal dissonance, contradictions and discord of self-serving and vainglorious personalities that executed a gestapo-like takeover of the party to the chagrin of bonafide leaders and members of the party.
“The ADC’s statement is just a calculated pre-emptive excuse for its evident ill-fated future of disintegration, like Humpty Dumpty whose great fall could not be put back together again.”
Morka added that the party had placed on public display the incompetence and inability of its leadership to manage its impending internal crisis, in the same way they proved incapable of managing the internal affairs of opposition parties they had plundered serially before ADC.
Chuks Okocha, Olawale Ajimotokan and Adedayo Akinwale
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