ADC and New Framework
Salihu Moh. Lukman
ADC and New Framework of Electoral Campaign
Salihu Moh. Lukman
Kaduna
Since the beginning of initiatives to form a coalition of opposition political leaders, there have been legitimate public demands about what is theideological orientation of those forming the coalition? Many have argued that leaders of the opposition are not different from APC leaders. The reality that most of them were at some point also members of APC was further used to contest the legitimacy of the assertion that the coalition initiative will rescue Nigeria from the current downward slide, which has eroded living conditions of citizens to a level far below what anyone could ever imagined.
Many leaders and apologists of the APC tried desperately to dismiss the coalition initiative. Many wanted to push the initiative into making some policy declarative statements. Issues of subsidy removal, exchange rate management, rising unemployment, inflationary pressure, etc. were certainly challenges requiring clear responses. Notwithstanding, coalition leaders remained focused and choose to facilitate negotiations to produce agreements among leaders. This is the main reason why on July 29, 2025, Sen. David Mark, while assuming office as the new ADC National Chairman announced the plan to setup a 50-member policy committee.
Eventually, the committee was constituted and inaugurated on February 2, 2026, with Chief John Odigie-Oyegun and Prof. Pat Utomi as Chairman and Deputy Chairman respectively. A month later, on March 2, 2026, the committee submitted its reportwith two documents attached – Manifesto and Policy Principles. The ADC National Convention of April 14, 2026 considered and adopted both the ADC Manifesto and the Policy Principles. The thrusts of both the ADC Manifesto and Policy Principles werefounded on three pillars – First, ‘that every policy, from economic reform to security to social protection, must be measured by its impact on citizens.’ Second, ‘that Nigeria’s challenges are structural and require coordinated, institutional solutions, not ad hoc interventions.’ And third, ‘that reform is necessary, but it must be sequenced, supported, and humane, ensuring that Nigerians are not pushed further into hardship in the process.’
With focus on twelve sections, the ADC Manifesto is founded on the principles that ‘the Nigerian state must be reconstructed to serve the Nigerian citizen.’ The twelve sections are i) agriculture; ii) economy;ii) energy; iv) environment; v) mineral resources; vi) foreign policy; vii) governance and rule of law; viii) health; ix) human capital and social protection; x) productivity and industrialisation; xi) infrastructure and transport; and xii) security.
While the Manifesto is specific in terms of outlining what ADC governments at all levels will do, the policy principles is more detailed containing diagnosis of where we are in each section and prescribing key policy initiatives of ADC governments to tackle challenges. For instance, a major diagnostic of the agricultural sector is that the sector is ‘operating under severe structural stress: rising production costs, falling farm-gate prices, insecurity in food producing areas, weak technology adoption, and climate pressure. A key consequence is growing reliance on imports to fill domestic gaps.’ To address the challenges identified, the Manifesto commits ADC to ‘make food security a national security priority’ based on which the Policy Principles outlined thirty-four recommendationscovering smallholder-centred food security and price stability, all-season agriculture through irrigation and water asset optimisation, agricultural mechanisation and productivity benchmarking, zero-based and performance based budgeting, agricultural transformation for food security and growth, etc.
On governance, the Manifesto commits ADC to ‘put citizens at the centre of governance’ based on which the policy principles outlined twenty-eight recommendations to address challenges covering rule of law and a zero-impunity state, independent electoral management free from executive control, performance audits and value-for-money governance, subsidiarity and fiscal responsibility, living wage, tripartite labour governance and productivity alignment, etc.
In the area of education, the Manifesto commits ADC to ‘declare state of emergency on education’, based on which the Policy Principles outlined sixteen recommendations to address challenges covering people-centred development, universal access to quality education, system-wide education reform, national workforce development strategy, a right based social protection, disability inclusion, integrated poverty reduction strategy, decentralised social protection delivery, etc.
Similarly, the Manifesto commits the ADC to ‘prioritise preventive healthcare’ based on which the policy principles outlined twenty-one recommendations to address challenges covering health as national productivity and security policy, primary healthcare centre (PHC) as the foundation of universal health coverage, universal coverage through insurance expansion and risk pooling, PHC under one roof with clear accountability, workforce retention as a national emergency priority, national disease surveillance and emergency response readiness, health equity for vulnerable population, etc.
To address the security challenges facing the country, the Manifesto commits ADC to ‘operate a security framework across four coordinated levels’ – local-level intelligence, state-level prevention and deterrence, national-level coordination and enforcement, and regional-level collaboration. To achieve that the Policy Principles outline nine recommendations covering statutory intelligence coordination as backbone of national security,federal subsidiary and decentralised policing under national standards, police professionalisation, demilitarisation, and rights-based enforcement, independent oversight and internal accountability across security agencies, adequate manpower, modern training, and professional renewal, technology-enabled border governance and territorial control, etc.
On the economy, the policy thrust is ‘to achieve sustained economic growth with high job creation, moving Nigeria away from an economic model dominated by consumption fuelled by rent extraction from a challenged oil-dependent structure, towards a production-driven economy built on the factor endowments of the country’s geopolitical zones.’ With a focus on ‘unlocking regional productive capacity through structured value chains linked to each zone’s comparative advantages’ the commitment of the ADC is to ‘prioritise development of regional value chains that integrate agriculture, manufacturing, logistics, technology, and services, ensuring that raw materials produced in each region are processed and transformed domestically before export.’
Acknowledging that ‘Nigeria’s economy faces deep structural pressures that threaten long-term stability and prosperity’, the manifesto made nine policy commitments aimed at ensuring that‘macroeconomic stability must protect people, not just markets; gradual and sequenced reforms with social cushioning; coordinated fiscal and monetary policy for full employment; exchange rate stability through managed flexibility; debt sustainability as a social and economic imperative; social protection as a core component of economic reforms; survival income must not be taxed; progressive taxation and fair contribution; and tax simplification and harmonisation.’
Specifically, the ADC manifesto commits its elected representatives to ensure that ‘economic stabilisation must protect purchasing power, support job creation, reduce hardship and expand opportunity.’ In clear terms, ADC ‘reject shock-therapy reform with commitment to implement economic reforms‘gradually, with clear sequencing, social impact assessment, and robust protection for vulnerable populations.’ In the are of social protection, ADC commits itself to ‘integrate social protection directly into macroeconomic reform. Cash transfers, targeted subsidies, and stabilisation mechanisms will be treated as essential parts of economic policy during periods of adjustments.’
In all the twelve areas, the new ADC Manifesto adopted on April 14, 2026 made clear commitments based on which the Policy Principles outlined detailed implementation recommendations. Part of the consideration towards popularising both the Manifesto and the Policy Principle is to unveil thetwo documents – Manifesto and Policy Principles –to members of the party and the general public. This is being delayed because the party leadership has to prioritise sorting out legal challenges. If not for those legal challenges, aspiring ADC candidates for 2027 elections would have received copies of both the ADC Manifesto and Policy Principles together with their nomination forms. And perhaps, the screening process would have largely been centred around testing the capacity of aspirants to develop corresponding initiatives to handle the responsibilities attached to offices they are aspiring.
Be that as it may, the leadership of the party will unveil both the Manifesto and the Policy Principles and will take necessary steps to organise induction or orientation programmes for candidates of the party to ensure that they are committed to implement promises being made based on outlined recommendations. Given that manifestos of political parties in Nigeria are reduced to archival materials, the need for ADC to undertake induction or orientation of its candidates for 2027 to ensure that they are committed to implement promises based on outlined recommendations is necessary. To a large extent, such induction or orientation programme would be a critical determinant towards building the confidence of Nigerians on the party and its candidates.
Noting that one of the big disappointments of Nigerians with the APC is how after winning the 2015 elections, the party abandoned its manifesto and almost all the electoral promises made in 2015, it is important that the ADC demonstrate strong commitment to implement promises being made. One of the shortcomings of the APC was that the tasks of running governments returned to business-as-usual at all levels since the emergence of APC as the ruling party in 2015, with most elected and appointed APC leaders left to exercise discretionary initiatives with hardly any bearing on commitment made in the APC manifesto. The Renewed Hope initiative of President Bola Tinubu is one of those discretionary initiatives. Majority of elected and appointed APC leaders since 2015 never study provisions of the APC manifesto. The few that may have gone through the manifesto hardly use the commitments and recommendations contained in the APC manifesto as guide towards managing the responsibilities of the offices they are elected or appointed to.
Therefore, notwithstanding all the legal and political distractions, ADC leadership is committed to introducing new framework of political campaigns for 2027. The new framework as a matter of necessity is about developing stronger commitment by elected and appointed ADC leaders to manage responsibilities based on commitments enshrined in the ADC Manifesto and Policy Principles. This new framework is about putting in place measurable initiatives based on which ADC governments at all levels can be assessed and evaluated, which should be led by the party’s Presidential candidate. Given that there is enough time between the emergence of candidates and the 2027 general elections, the party leadership will put in place engagement framework for all its candidates to produce corresponding commitment towards implementing recommendations to deliver on campaign promises. Invariably, both the national leadership and the presidential candidate of the party will drive the process of producing the new initiative.
If ADC is to succeed in producing the new framework of collective leadership, how the party is able to develop this new framework based on strategic initiative to undertake induction and orientation of ADC candidates for 2027 elections is important. The overarching objective of the ADC induction or orientation programme should prepare ADC candidates at all levels to produce the envisioned strategic shifts from politics as rhetoric to governance as delivery, from state capture to citizen centred institutions, from centralised dysfunction to structured decentralisation, from consumption vulnerability to productive capability, from reactive crisis management to prevention and resilience, and from elite-only policy making to grounded consultations and legitimacy.’
One of the commitments outlined in the ADC Policy Principles is entrenchment of ‘manifesto compliance as a governance norm.’ This is an issue that requires the leadership of the party such that all ADC elected and appointed officials must be subordinated to the party. Party leaders must have the requisite capacity to oversight elected and appointed ADC officials.This cannot be achieved by mere declarations. Painstaking initiatives would be required to enable party leaders develop the needed capacity to oversight both elected and appointed officials. At the same time, party candidates must develop the right orientation and culture to use the manifesto as governance norm.
Nigerians are anxiously looking forward to a situation whereby politicians can be held accountable to electoral promises they made ahead of elections. This is an area that should distinguished the ADC from the APC and other parties in the country. The decisions of Nigerians to vote for the ADC in the 2027 elections would be earned based on the emergence of the new framework that commits candidates of the party to deliver on electoral promises made. This point was emphatically made by the ADC National Chairman, Sen. David Mark when he emphatically stated at the National Summit of Opposition Political Parties in Ibadan on April 25, 2025 that ‘the very survival and restoration of our country, is greater than every single one of us. It involves sacrifice by every member in the opposition.’
The new framework to guide delivery of promises being made must prepare ADC leaders and candidates ahead of the 2027 elections to be ready to make needed sacrifices to achieve envisioned objectives outlined in both the ADC manifesto and the Policy Principles. It is the emergence of transparent initiatives to commit ADC leaders and candidates to implement recommendations that will make Nigerians to develop strong belief in the capacity of the party to deliver on its promises.
The new framework for electoral campaign will produce a qualitative shift that ensures that ADC candidates for the 2027 elections at all levels are committed to implement provisions of the partymanifesto and the Policy Principles. Integral to the new framework is the corresponding development of institutional capacity by the party to oversight elected and appointed ADC representatives in government at all levels. Ability of the party to oversight elected and appointed representatives is what is required to ensure party supremacy and hold governments produced accountable to the party.
This is what ADC and the coalition of opposition political leaders represent. This is what the commitment to rescue Nigeria represent and is what will be fully unfolded once candidates of the party for the 2027 elections emerged. Invariably, this is what will endear the ADC and its candidates to Nigerians and is what will produce the electoral victory for the party. With elected and appointed representatives committed to implement the ADC manifesto, Nigeria shall rise and shine!