The African Democratic Congress has said that the exit of Peter Obi and Rabiu Kwankwaso is a huge relief.

“Personally, I’m not happy that Peter Obi and Kwankwaso left ADC, because I have my sentiments. But in a way, it’s a bit of a relief. Now we can do what we really need to do without being under the pressure cooker that they were trying to put us in. 

“Is this a setback? The answer is yes. Is it a fatal blow? The answer is no,” said Bolaji Abdullahi, ADC’s spokesperson, in an interview with ARISE TV on Monday.

Mr Abdullahi berated Mr Obi for being ignorant of the ADC’s manifesto.

“We set up a manifesto committee to develop a manifesto on what we want to do differently. You may invite Peter Obi and ask him what ADC’s position is on fuel subsidy? What is ADC’s framework on security? He doesn’t know because he has never been interested,” the ADC spokesman claimed. “They are just waiting for the ticket to be handed over to them.”

He added, “If you want to contest an election and believe you want to change the country, you should know what your party stands for.” According to Mr Abdullahi, the ADC’s plan is to adopt a consensus presidential candiate but Mr Obi wanted to run the show.

“We are going to settle for consensus, because like you rightly said, there was no possibility of us doing direct primary. The electoral act itself,” he said. “I think the kind of party that Peter Obi needed was the party he’s in now. A party that belongs to one man that he can say, ‘I guarantee you the ticket before you come in’.”

On Sunday, Mr Obi announced his defection from the ADC, which he joined last December. 

In his resignation letter, Mr Obi said, “My decision to leave the ADC is not because our highly respected chairman, Senator David Mark, treated me badly, nor because my leader and elder brother, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, or any other respected leaders did anything personally wrong to me. I will continue to respect them.

“However, the same Nigerian state and its agents that created unnecessary crises and hostility within the Labour Party that forced me to leave now appear to be finding their way into the ADC, with endless court cases, internal battles, suspicion, and division, instead of focusing on deeper national problems and playing politics built more on control and exclusion than on service and nation-building.”