African Democratic Congress presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar has accused the Independent National Electoral Commission of enabling what he calls an effort by President Bola Tinubu’s administration to weaken opposition parties ahead of 2027, after INEC granted candidate nomination portal access to Nafiu Bala Gombe, a rival claimant to the ADC’s national chairmanship.
In a statement from his media office, Atiku argued the commission acted unlawfully by giving Gombe access, insisting Senator David Mark’s leadership remains the party’s recognised executive, following Gombe’s Saturday announcement that he had successfully uploaded ADC candidates to INEC’s portal, a process meant only for parties actually participating in the 2027 election. By granting an access code to Bala Gombe, a pretender laying claim to the chairmanship of the ADC, though the law is not on his side and INEC has since validated the Mark led executive’s chairmanship, the electoral umpire is once again manifesting its partisanship, the statement read, alleging the move echoes previous INEC decisions the party claims have contributed to internal disputes.
The media office insisted Gombe’s purported candidate submission carries no legal weight since he is not the ADC’s recognised chairman, asking rhetorically whether two chairmen of the same political party could both be legitimate and answering flatly that they cannot, and argued that granting access to unrecognised leadership risks triggering avoidable disputes within the opposition as part of what it called a broader strategy to destabilise opposition parties ahead of the next election. What INEC has done is a recipe for crisis and confirms that Prof. Joash Amupitan was appointed to enable the weakening of the opposition parties by creating crisis even where none exists, the statement alleged, citing provisions of the 1999 Constitution and the Electoral Act 2022 requiring that party candidates emerge through duly recognised primaries supervised by INEC, with only one validly nominated candidate submitted per elective office, and concluding that the access granted to Gombe is unconstitutional and unlawful, leaving David Mark’s submissions as the only candidates known to the law.
Gombe’s faction, for its part, announced it has completed uploading its own presidential and National Assembly candidates for 2027 to the INEC portal under his leadership, in what it says is compliance with Section 29(1) of the Electoral Act 2022 and the commission’s guidelines, and formally named Shamsuddeen Modibbo Barkindo as its vice presidential candidate. In a statement, Gombe called the completed submission a significant milestone in the party’s preparations for 2027, describing it as carried out in strict compliance with electoral law and guidelines, and said the party remains committed to presenting credible, competent, people oriented leadership capable of delivering good governance and renewed hope to Nigerians.
