Nigeria’s latest political party opens branch in Ghana

Dr Oscar Ugoh

The latest major political party in Nigeria, the African Democratic Congress (ADC) has opened a branch in Accra, Ghana.

The new party is expected to be a key player in Nigeria’s politics, being founded and led by two of the country’s most popular stalwarts of the political opposition – Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi – each of whom were the presidential candidates of the Peoples Democratic Congress (PDP) and the Labour Party respectively at the most recent national elections which saw Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress, APC, albeit in controversial circumstances.

The Ghana branch of the new ADC party has been opened by Dr Oscar Ugoh, a lawyer and security and conflict resolution expert who has had a successful, nearly 30-year long entrepreneurial career in Ghana as a businessman and the publisher of well reputed periodical publications including Business Wek newspaper and the Corporate Guardian magazine, the latter holding the enviable status of being the oldest dedicated business, finance, investment and political economy magazine in Ghana, published since 2001.

Instructively Dr Ugoh, was until very recently the Chairman of PDP in Ghana, before moving over to lead the recently established ADC in Ghana.

This marks the latest defection from the internally crisis-riddled PDP, which formed Nigeria’s Federal Government from the beginning of that country’s 3rd Republic in 1999 to 2015, when the APC won power from it. Most of the elected state Governors of states run by the PDP under Nigeria’s federal system of government have since defected to the ruling APC since the 2023 elections which saw Bola Tinubu succeed Mohammudu Buhari as the second consecutive APC president.

However the formation of the ADC now gives erstwhile PDP bigwigs, party supporters and Nigeria’s electorate as a whole, another credible alternative to the ruling APC.

“We are trying to avert what could become a political monopoly by the ruling APC that would be inimical to the fortunes the vast majority of Nigerians," Dr Ugoh has explained. "A PDP without effective political competition would be free to create its own self-serving agenda, as different from an agenda that pleases and supports the well- being of the populace. Even with political competition from the PDP, the APC’s responsiveness to the needs of the electorate has been so poor that it had to rely on electoral shenanigans to stay in power at the most recent elections, and with the PDP now withering, without the establishment of the ADC as a third force, the APC would be free to do as it pleases.”

Dr Ugoh expects the new party to quickly assert itself and gain the confidence, trust and support of Nigerians, propelling it past the PDP as the second force in the country’s politics. But is just the first step; according to Dr Ugoh, the party expects to leverage on nation wide support to win power at both the state and the federal levels in Nigeria shortly.