|
Listen to article
|
The leader of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) in Jigawa State, Aminu Ibrahim Ringim, has officially defected to the African Democratic Congress (ADC), describing the move as part of efforts to strengthen the opposition ahead of the 2027 general elections.
Ringim announced his defection on Saturday during his ADC membership registration held in Ringim Local Government Area, his hometown, where a large crowd gathered to witness the event.
Addressing the mammoth gathering, he said he left the NNPP to join forces with like-minded politicians in order to rescue the country from challenges such as insecurity, inflation, hunger, and unemployment.
According to him, Nigerians must unite to confront what he described as the hardship and humiliation being experienced under the present administration.
He urged his supporters and other residents to register with the ADC, saying a stronger opposition platform would be needed to unseat the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2027 elections.
Ringim also dismissed claims that the ADC coalition would collapse after its primaries, noting that similar doubts were previously expressed about opposition figures coming together.
According to him, “They said Obi, Kwankwaso and Atiku will not be together, and now they are together. Now they are saying after the party primaries, ADC will not survive.
“They also said in Jigawa we will not be together, and now we are together. They are rumouring that after the primary election, ADC will be no more.
“It is our agreement that we will put our state and country first, work for it, and make sure we change the government for the betterment of the state and the country.”
He added that ADC leaders in Jigawa State and across the country had agreed to remain united and support whoever emerges as the party’s candidate after the primary elections.
He said leaders and supporters of the party in Jigawa had resolved to work together for the progress of the state and the country.
The former NNPP chieftain further stated that over 15 million Nigerians had so far registered with the ADC, while the party was targeting an additional 30 million registrations nationwide ahead of the elections.
He urged Nigerians to join the movement and register with the party for a brighter future for the country.
Ringim contested as a gubernatorial candidate in 2015 and, in 2023, as the NNPP gubernatorial candidate.
Abia State Governor Alex Otti stood before one of Nigeria’s most distinguished gathering of minds Thursday and said the quiet part loudly: the country’s economic crisis is not a mystery to be solved but a consequence to be owned, and the citizens who have disengaged from the political process bear more responsibility for that consequence than they are comfortable admitting.
Delivering the 2026 annual lecture of The Niche at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs in Lagos, Otti built his argument around a single statistic that he said should alarm every Nigerian who claims to love the country. Voter turnout across the last five general elections has fallen from 57 percent in 2011 to less than 30 percent in 2023. “So what that means is that just about three of us out of 10 decide who governs us,” he said. A nation of over 200 million people, its leadership determined by a fraction of its adults, and then the same adults wondering why the leadership is what it is.
“As stakeholders in the Nigerian project, we ought to be worried,” he said. “The majority of our compatriots are increasingly shying away from participation in the political arena.”
Read also: Abia Won’t Get Paid For Fixing Federal Roads – Gov Alex Otti
The connection Otti drew between electoral disengagement and economic decline was not rhetorical. It was causal, and he stated it as such. When citizens withdraw from the political process, accountability disappears. When accountability disappears, leaders operate without consequence. When leaders operate without consequence, institutions decay, investment retreats and poverty deepens. The chain is not complicated, and Otti did not dress it up. “It is impossible to separate incompetent political leadership from the manifestations of economic decline, such as widespread unemployment and reduced investment,” he said.
He went further, targeting the specific culture of vote-buying and electoral transactionalism that has become normalised in Nigerian political cycles. When election season is treated as an opportunity to extract cash and benefits from candidates, the candidates who win arrive in office with a recovery mentality rather than a service mentality. “It becomes inevitable that the primary pursuit of those who win elections will not be to serve the community, but to recoup what has been invested,” he said. The bazaar metaphor was deliberate — the idea that democracy has been turned into a market where the commodity being traded is the future, and Nigerians are selling it cheap.
Otti was careful not to offer easy comfort. He rejected the cynics who insist the situation is hopeless, but he was equally dismissive of the optimists who speak of imminent turnaround. “I refuse to submit to the position of cynics who insist that our situation is entirely hopeless because it is not. Given that, I would also not take the overly optimistic view that the turnaround is imminent because that could be misleading.” Sixty years of poor political choices, he said plainly, cannot be reversed in a single administration or a single election cycle. “If you have behaved badly for over 60 years, then it will take you time to correct yourself.”
