BY TONY EZIMAKOR
The African Democratic Congress (ADC) on Wednesday declared that President Bola Tinubu will be removed through the ballot and not bullets, contrary to insinuation that the party is plotting a government overthrow.
Bayo Onanuga, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Senior Special Adviser on Communication and Strategy, had in a remark to a tweet on his X (formerly Twitter) handle, claimed that the opposition coalition is hatching an overthrow of Tinubu’s government.
However, ADC’s Interim National Publicity Secretary, Bolaji Abdullahi, in a stern reaction accused Tinubu of laying the foundation for a clampdown on opposition leaders. Abdullahi, who described the remark as “reckless and unsubstantiated,” said the coalition will deploy every constitutional means to oust the APC administration from Aso Villa.
In a statement he signed, Abdullahi said Onanuga’s comment shows that Tinubu’s administration is out to intimidate and repress opposition political leaders in Nigeria.1 He noted that ADC would explore democratic means to ensure Tinubu’s removal from office and not by overthrowing him.
The statement reads in part: “ADC condemned the tweet made by an aide of President Bola Tinubu, Onanuga, which alleges that the opposition is planning to overthrow the Tinubu government before 2027. If anything, it potentially lays the grounds for systematic clampdown on opposition leaders.
“The ADC is not interested in truncating democracy; we are solely committed to saving the nation from the irredeemable incompetence of this government. We are not soldiers; we are politicians. We don’t have bullets; we only have the ballots. When the time comes, we will only present our solutions and an alternative vision of the future to the Nigerian people and leave them to make their choice.”