Nigeria's ADC Grows Stronger As Kwankwaso Joins
The opposition coalition has a bandwagon effect but still relatively few officeholders.
In late March, former Kano State Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso joined Nigeria’s newest major opposition party, the African Democratic Congress (ADC). The ADC was founded in 2005, but only became prominent in 2025 when several opposition heavyweights decamped from their respective parties to join the ADC and transform it into a vehicle for challenging Nigerian President Bola Tinubu in the 2027 elections. Kwankwaso’s adherence to the ADC raises speculation about the prospect of a Peter Obi/Rabiu Kwankwaso ticket in 2027 - in other words, the third- and fourth-place finishers of the 2023 elections could join forces.
In 2023, Tinubu ran and won as the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC). The APC itself formed as a mega-coalition of opposition parties in 2013, challenging the then-dominant People’s Democratic Party (PDP). The APC brought together many of the leading politicians from the southwest and the north, including - at the time - Kwankwaso, one of five PDP governors who joined the APC at a pivotal moment. The APC then went to to win the presidential elections of 2015 and 2019 with Muhammadu Buhari, a former military ruler turned perennial opposition candidate, as its standard bearer. After Buhari finished his two terms, Tinubu - the foremost architect of the APC coalition, and a former governor of Lagos State - led the APC to victory in 2023.
Yet whereas Buhari’s triumph in 2015 and his re-election in 2019 were both formidable, Tinubu’s win in 2023 was feeble. In 2015, Buhari won 21 of 36 states, and nearly 54% of the national vote; in 2019 was similar, he carried 19 states, and over 55% of the national vote. In contrast, Tinubu in 2023 took only 12 states, and less than 37% of the vote. The 2023 election was particularly hard fought, featuring not just two but three serious candidates: Tinubu for the APC, former Vice President and frequent presidential aspirant Atiku Abubakar for the PDP, and former Governor Peter Obi for the Labour Party. Abubakar (or Atiku, as he is often called for shorthand in Nigerian politics) took 29%, and Obi received 25%. Kwankwaso, representing the New Nigeria People’s Party, finished a distant but still significant fourth, with over 6% of the vote.
As president, meanwhile, Tinubu has not only inherited the severe economic and security crises that confronted Buhari, he has seen those crises intensify. Heading into 2027, which is now not that far off, he wields the advantages of the presidency but has a serious problem of unpopularity.
One would think the APC’s struggles would be the PDP’s gain. But as a recent essay at the Bellwether argued, the PDP floundered amid the transition from hegemonic ruling party to opposition party. The PDP’s lack of coherence, an asset when it was a big tent party controlling the presidency, made the party friable when it was out of power and had no powerful central leader:
The party became beholden to the interests of those who controlled any of the states in which it still commanded influence. But it also meant that these governors could easily sacrifice group success on the expedient altar of their personal ambitions. It meant that while they were content to let Atiku run for president in 2019, there were concerns over actions he took that were ‘independent’, such as picking Obi as his running mate. By the time preparations for 2023 came, it was impossible to attend to the ambitions and interests of all the governors who were term-limited.
The PDP’s dysfunction, Obi’s strong showing (and galvanizing effect on activists) in 2023, and the widespread pattern of party switching and realignment in Nigerian politics have all fed into the ADC’s transformation from fringe party into opposition center of gravity. As with the PDP, the ADC confronts the problem of too many people wanting to be president, and how to keep the disappointed aspirants within the fold once a choice is made.
The Obi/Kwankwaso ticket could be a path to an ADC victory, however, especially if Atiku adheres to his promise to support the eventual nominee. Kwankwaso’s presence on the ticket could, significantly, change the electoral math within the north, where Obi performed poorly in 2023 and where Tinubu is currently struggling. As Ebenezer Obadare writes at the Council on Foreign Relations, Tinubu has a serious northern problem:
No matter how one spins it, there is no question that today Tinubu is distinctly less popular across northern Nigeria than he was this time three years ago. His problems with the region, where he exceeded expectations at the polls despite fears that going for a Kanuri running mate [this is Kashim Shettima, former Governor of Borno State] would hurt his chances, stem from two issues.
The first is persistent northern lament that key appointments in Tinubu’s administration have been skewed in favor of the president’s Yoruba ethnic group…
Second: chronic insecurity in northern Nigeria is a potential banana skin. Given the seriousness of the situation and the Nigerian military’s well-documented struggles against various jihadist groups, Tinubu can be forgiven for accepting the U.S. offer of assistance. That said, the military alliance between Abuja and Washington has not gone down well with many northern leaders, including leading Muslim clerics who have accused the United States of having a “hidden agenda.”
It is not that Kwankwaso automatically carries the north for the ADC - far from it. Even in his home state of Kano, politics offers one of many microcosms of Nigerian politics as a whole: mentors falling out with mentees, old rivals joining forces, etc. Yet the ADC is attracting some prominent northern politicians, such as former Sokoto State Governor Aminu Tambuwal, and there appears to be a growing bandwagon effect, one well timed to give the party momentum heading into 2027.
At the same time, the ADC in 2025-2026 has lacked some of the key advantages that the APC had in 2013-2015. The ADC has, as I mentioned the last time I wrote about the party, an abundance of “formers.” The party has star power in Obi, Atiku, Kwankwaso, Tambuwal, and others, but lacks much control on the ground - an astonishing 31 of 36 states are controlled by Tinubu’s APC currently. On the eve of the 2015 elections, in contrast, the APC - then in opposition - controlled some 14 governorships. That lack of tangible, institutional power could matter a lot in 2027, whether in terms of visceral fights over the conduct and fairness of the elections, in terms of mobilizing voters, and/or in terms of attracting more politicians to the ADC’s banner. If Obi is the ADC’s candidate, meanwhile, he will likely retain much of the aura that made him so electric in 2023 - younger than the president by far, fluent in the language of reform and change, credible in the eyes of many upwardly mobile Nigerians. He can also play the “I told you so” card. Yet Obi could also face some disillusionment; a path to the presidency that involves securing the buy-in of very familiar faces who have been fixtures of Nigerian politics for a quarter century makes sense in terms of electoral math, but is potentially hard to sell as a form of political change.