2027: ADC raises alarm over alleged appropriation of state institutions to favour Tinubu

By Lateef Ibrahim

The African Democratic Congress (ADC) has accused the Tinubu administration of appropriating state institutions to advance the President Bola Tinubu’s 2027 political agenda.
The ADC specifically said that reports of INEC contracting a long-standing political henchman of the President for election logistics, as well as the appearance of Lagos State Commissioner of Police at the launch of the pro-Tinubu City Boy Movement, demonstrate a cynical disregard for public sensitivity.
These, the party declared, was a dangerous pattern, whereby partisan actors are being positioned to handle sensitive election materials while a head of state institutions that are required to be neutral are brazenly co-opted into partisan politics.
In a statement issued on Thursday, by the ADC National Publicity, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, the party warned that the developments raise serious questions about the neutrality of Nigeria’s electoral and security institutions ahead of the 2027 elections and demanded immediate explanations from both INEC and the Nigeria Police Force.
The statement by Abdullahi reads, “The African Democratic Congress (ADC) is compelled to raise the alarm over a dangerous development that is becoming impossible to ignore under the Tinubu administration: there are no longer any discernible boundaries between the Nigerian state and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
“Political actors are openly infiltrating state institutions, while head of security units who should statutorily maintain neutrality are shamelessly turning into political cheer leaders of the ruling party and the President.
“While this has increasingly gone worse as the 2027 election approaches, perhaps nothing illustrates the absurdity more clearly than a serving Commissioner of Police appearing at the launch of the so-called “City Boy Movement” and reports that a faction of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), led by a well-known henchman of President Tinubu is being engaged by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to transport election personnel and sensitive materials.
“INEC’s credibility depends not only on conducting free and fair elections, but on inspiring confidence among all political stakeholders.
“Any logistics arrangement that potentially undermines the integrity of the electoral process because of the involvement of partisan individuals in handling sensitive materials would certainly cast a long shadow of doubts on whether the process has been manipulated.
‘On the basis of this reported engagement alone, it is pertinent to suspect that something sinister is afoot. Especially, when only a few days ago, the President declared before visiting religious leaders that “all is fair in war.”