Former governor of Rivers State, Rotimi Amaechi, has alleged that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is frustrating the efforts of opposition political parties to form a formidable force against the ruling All Progressives Congress in the 2027 general elections.
Amaechi, a former Minister of Transport and a member of the opposition coalition on the platform of the African Democratic Party, stated this on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Thursday.
“Every member of the opposition who belongs to the coalition is a member of the ADC. Are we stopping at that? The answer is no. I head a committee with the mandate of the coalition to pursue the registration of the ADA (All Democratic Alliance).
“Now, if INEC had registered ADA, we would probably not have bothered about going to the ADC. The political space is closed for the benefit of the APC. I come to say that the INEC chairman is not ashamed,” he said.
Amaechi alleged that the leadership was deliberately delaying the registration of opposition political parties.
“In fact, what is holding the ADA for now is that we have yet to bring the address of our offices and the officers of the party that will submit in the next meeting. I don’t want to call the other parties that had gone ahead with the registration, and INEC just ignored it completely.
“Some of them, their rents have expired. So, the chairman of INEC is deliberately doing that so that there will be nobody fighting the APC. And they’re not even ashamed that after (Maurice) Iwu, they organised the worst election; I would be ashamed,” he added.
The former governor, however, said that the ADC would mobilise Nigerians to vote and stop people from rigging elections.
“And with the way things are going, what ADC will do — and I said that all of us would do that — is to mobilise Nigerians to rise, to vote, and to stop these people from rigging, including the INEC, because those who constitute this rigging machine are not up to 10, in fact, two per cent of the population, the rest 98 per cent must get up and stop them, because if not, you’ll start crying again,” he said.
There had been growing talks about the emergence of a coalition aimed at defeating President Bola Tinubu and the APC in the 2025 general elections.
On Tuesday, the opposition coalition adopted the ADC as the platform to unseat the ruling APC in the 2027 general elections.
The party appointed a former Senate President, David Mark, who resigned his membership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), as its interim national chairman, with a former governor of Osun State, Rauf Aregbesola, as the interim national secretary.
The coalition also includes opposition leaders like the 2023 presidential candidate of the PDP, Atiku Abubakar; his Labour Party counterpart, Peter Obi; and a former Kaduna State governor, Nasir el-Rufai.
While speaking at the unveiling of the ADC, Mark called on Nigerians to join the coalition of opposition parties, saying the movement was set to rescue the country from collapse and rebuild its democracy.
He said, “Let it be known to all that this coalition of national political opposition groups goes beyond gaining political power. It is a concerted effort to rebuild the crumbling pillars of Nigeria’s democracy.
“The mission is clear: Rescue Nigeria. Rebuild Nigeria. Return power to the people.”
However, Tinubu, while speaking at a one-day presidential state visit to Nasarawa State on June 25, described those at the forefront of forming a coalition to unseat him ahead of the 2027 presidential election as persons who had been internally displaced politically.
The ruling APC also said that a coalition against Tinubu would fail.
