The Presidency has debunked claims that it had offered an oil bloc to leaders of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) as an inducement to dissuade them from cementing their alliance with the Coalition for Nigeria Movement (CNM) and other pressure groups seeking to wrest power from the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2019 polls.
The CNM, a political pressure group floated by a former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, recently fused into the ADC in preparation for the forthcoming general elections. There have also been speculations that the ADC had become the “beautiful political bride” in the current dispensation as some aggrieved elements within the APC were reportedly heading for the relatively new party.
However, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu, has dismissed the allegation as untrue. Shehu, who was reluctant to respond to our inquiries on the issue, said the leaders of the ADC were in a better position to tell the world who exactly made the offer. In response to a text message, Shehu wrote: “And you believe him? He is in the best position to say who.” National Chairman of ADC, Chief Ralph Nwosu, was on Saturday quoted to had told journalists that the rising profile of his party had brought enormous pressures upon him.
According to Nwosu, some persons linked to the government in power recently approached him, offering an oil bloc if he could mortgage the party and frustrate those plotting to use the platform to fight the APC. In an interview with journalists at the weekend, Nwosu explained that he had been under pressure to ‘kill’ the party since its adoption by the CNM, adding that some powerful forces had offered him oil well and huge sums of money in hard currency to frustrate efforts in making ADC an alternative to the ruling APC.
He also accused the APC of “stealing” the party’s slogan and manifesto through the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC). Nwosu, who disclosed that he visited President Muhammadu Buhari after registering the party in 2006, alleged that the then candidate of the CPC rejected the ideals of the party, only to surreptitiously copy the ‘change’ slogan and the manifesto. New Telegraph made frantic efforts to extract a response from the APC on these allegations but the National Publicity Secretary of the party, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, neither picked calls made to his mobile phone nor replied to the text message sent to the same phone.
