In a statement issued by Dele Alake, the Special Adviser Communications to President-elect Bola Tinubu, he declared that the internal conflicts within the main opposition party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), were a significant advantage for the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the recently concluded presidential elections.
Alake, who previously served as the Special Adviser, Strategic Communications in the APC Presidential Campaign Council, noted that the departure of Peter Obi and Rabiu Kwankwaso from the PDP had dealt a blow to the presidential ambition of the former Vice-president and PDP presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar.
Following their exit, Obi and Kwankwaso went on to contest as Presidential candidates of the Labour Party and New Nigeria People’s Party, respectively.
According to Alake, the absence of Obi and Kwankwaso within the PDP resulted in a decimation of Atiku’s support base in some states in the North, South-east, and South-south.
He argued that if the PDP had contested the election with Obi and Kwankwaso in its fold, winning the election would have been an uphill task for the APC.
However, by contesting on three separate platforms against the ruling party, victory for the APC was “logically and empirically inevitable.”
In his piece titled “Chimamanda: Nigeria’s positively growing democracy,” Alake also addressed Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s claim that the general election lacked credibility due to a lack of transparency in the process.
In her piece, “Nigeria’s hollow democracy,” published in the foreign magazine “The Atlantic,” Adichie alleged that the LP was denied victory because the election results were not transmitted through the INEC Results Viewing Portal (iReV).
However, Alake disputed Adichie’s argument, stating that the LP candidate, Peter Obi, could not have won because his platform lacked the national appeal needed to win a presidential contest.
Alake further noted that Obi had only won in two out of six states in the North-Central and did not have up to 25% of the votes cast in either the North-West or North-East.
He argued that victory in two out of the six geopolitical zones could not give any candidate victory in a presidential election in Nigeria.
Alake also accused Adichie of being an “unrepentant Igbo jingoist masquerading as an objective intellectual and patriotic Nigerian,” claiming that her support for Obi was driven by “purely primordial reasons.”
Alake emphasized that Nigeria’s democracy was positively growing, citing incremental and noticeable improvements in the country’s elections since 2011, including 2015, 2019, and 2023 elections.
He argued that Nigeria had had 24 years of uninterrupted civil rule, which was a significant achievement considering the detrimental impact of military interventions on the country’s political development.
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