Key Points

• A third ADC faction loyal to 2023 presidential candidate Dumebi Kachikwu named Kingsley Temitope as interim national chairman and endorsed INEC’s de-recognition of the David Mark-led group.
• The Mark camp dismissed the new faction as opportunistic, while its deputy publicity secretary accused the group of being “bought over” by outside interests.
• Aare Ona Kakanfo Iba Gani Adams warned that Nigeria risks sliding toward a one-party dictatorship if court injunctions continue to be used to destabilize opposition parties.

The African Democratic Congress is fracturing in real time. A third faction of the party surfaced in Abuja Tuesday, aligned with its 2023 presidential candidate Dumebi Kachikwu, and moved quickly to name its own interim national chairman while throwing its weight behind the electoral commission’s decision to de-recognize the David Mark-led leadership.

New faction, new chairman

The group, composed of state chairmen from 25 states, named Kingsley Temitope of Kogi State as its interim national chairman at a briefing in Abuja.

It also appointed Odion Kennedy of Edo State as secretary, Muhammad Khala Jidda of Borno State as deputy chairman and Obinna Don Norman of Abia State as its publicity secretary, among others.

The faction said it convened a National Executive Committee meeting at Kachikwu’s Abuja office, where it produced a communique distancing itself from both the Mark-led executive and Nafiu Bala Gombe, a separate factional leader it said did not emerge through any credible process.

“We hereby disassociate ourselves from David Mark and his exco and all the actions taken by him which are not binding on us,” Norman said, reading from the communique.

“We also distance ourselves from the Nafiu Bala Gombe group and all the actions purportedly taken by him.”

The group accused former national chairman Ralph Nwosu of attempting to hand the party to non-members, and said Mark and his executive were never properly qualified to lead the ADC, having allegedly not held membership for the two years required under the party’s constitution.

A rescue mission, they say

Norman framed the faction’s emergence in urgent terms, describing it as an intervention to keep the ADC alive ahead of the 2027 elections.

“We are on a rescue mission to save the ADC from being denied the opportunity to take part in the next general election,” he said.

“As soon as the legal tussle is cleared and the party returns to normalcy, NEC will stand down and allow the new exco to do its job.”

He pushed back against suggestions that the group was operating as a proxy of the ruling All Progressives Congress. “I have never met or seen the President,” Norman said.

The Mark camp fires back

Bolaji Abdullahi, national publicity secretary of the Mark-led executive, was unmoved. He dismissed the faction’s claims and questioned how many of the ADC’s 37 state chairmen actually attended the meeting.

“They are being opportunistic,” Abdullahi told reporters. “In the end, it doesn’t matter whether they have now constituted themselves as INEC’s supporters club. In the end, it is the court that will decide.”

Queen Okiyi, the camp’s deputy publicity secretary, went further, alleging the breakaway chairmen had been financially compromised. “They’ve been bought over,” she said.

“They are state chairmen whose conduct has been questioned, and who believe they can hold the party to ransom by going wherever they are paid.”

Lagos APC: Heavens won’t fall

The Lagos State chapter of the APC weighed in with barely concealed satisfaction. In a statement by spokesman Seye Oladejo, the chapter said democracy would survive even if the ADC and the Peoples Democratic Party did not appear on the 2027 ballot.

“Compliance is not optional. Any political party that fails to meet stipulated requirements must bear the full consequences of its own actions,” the statement read.

A warning from the Aare Ona Kakanfo

Iba Gani Adams, the Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yoruba land, struck a more cautionary note at the Grand Finale of the 2026 Eledumare Festival in Lagos.

He warned that repeated court injunctions targeting opposition parties were pushing Nigeria toward one-party rule, and called on Chief Justice Kudirat Kekere-Ekun to scrutinize such rulings.

“A democracy without opposition is becoming a dictatorship,” Adams said. He urged politicians to stop using courts as weapons against rivals, invoking the annulment of the 1993 presidential election as a precedent for what unchecked judicial manipulation could produce.

“We must not create room for crises to happen in this country,” he said.