Otunba Segun Showunmi, convener of the Alternative Movement and chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), says the coalition of opposition leaders who recently adopted the African Democratic Congress (ADC) will not succeed.
Speaking on Thursday at a southwest town hall meeting of the Alternative Movement in Abeokuta, Ogun state, Showunmi described the coalition as “a gathering of commotion, confusion, corruption, and mismanagement”.
On Wednesday, key opposition leaders, including former vice-president Atiku Abubakar, former senate president David Mark, and ex-governor of Osun state Rauf Aregbesola, adopted the ADC as a common platform to unseat President Bola Tinubu in 2027.
Mark was named interim national chairman of the ADC while Aregbesola emerged as interim secretary.
Reacting, Showunmi said Nigerians need a change in attitude toward the electoral process, not “a coalition of old leaders who cannot be trusted with their destinies”.
His words: “It’s the right of politicians to do whatever they want to do, but it’s the duty of citizens to look at them and say, you have done this kind of trick one time too many.
“That party, the ADC, has been in existence for some time. Some of our people have been there and they even have contested issues around their chairmanship.”
He accused the defectors of attempting to hijack the party and ignore its existing structure.
He said: “If you go there quietly like decent people so that you don’t carry the same character you had in your party to destroy it into a new forum, people would have respected you.
“But what are you doing? You’re huffing and puffing as if the party did not have members before. Who will follow such people?
“When people ask me what I have to say about the coalition or whatever they call it, I say the merry-go-round of the musical chair they’ve been doing all these years did not work for them and will not work now.”
Showunmi, who served as spokesperson of the Atiku Presidential Campaign Council in 2019, said Nigerians still have time to decide on Tinubu’s re-election but warned against handing power to those in the coalition.
“In the meantime, we may not know who can fit in, but we know these ones cannot do anything. It will be a waste of everybody’s time even if they try it,” he said.
He noted that the Alternative Movement was established to address issues such as voter apathy, vote-buying, and national disunity, and to provide credible leadership options.
