The National Secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Ajibola Basiru, has asserted that the opposition coalition involving former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, former Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai, and Labour Party (LP) 2023 presidential candidate, Peter Obi, is nothing but deception.
Naijaonpoint reports that Basiru, during an interview with Vanguard, accused the opposition leaders of misleading Nigerians by branding their defection as a coalition rather than acknowledging it as a departure from their original parties.
According to the APC chieftain, coalition implies a temporary alliance among distant political parties, but the current arrangement being promoted as a coalition is a mass defection of political figures into the African Democratic Congress (ADC), rather than a true coalition in the political sense.
He said, “What happened during the formation of the APC in 2015 was a true merger of political parties, where the certificates of the merging parties were withdrawn for the creation of a new one. But this so-called coalition is nothing but deception.
“Coalition implies a temporary alliance among distinct political parties to form a government. What we are seeing here is simply frustrated and internally displaced politicians jumping ship into another party. It’s not a coalition, but a ploy to create false impressions among the populace.”
Basiru refuted the claim that the coalition threatens the APC, stressing that the ruling party remains focused on expanding its political base across the country, particularly in regions like the South-South, where support had previously been limited.
He also dismissed any notion of a significant power shift in favour of the ADC, stating that no sitting APC governor is considering defection.
He added, “Just recently, these same opposition figures were accusing President Bola Tinubu and the APC of trying to turn Nigeria into a one-party state. Now that they have defected into the ADC, they claim we are panicking. It only shows their confusion and inconsistency.
“To the glory of God, the APC is gaining more ground, especially in the South-South. We are concentrating on real growth and governance, not getting distracted by political theatrics from displaced opposition members.”