In an interview with the Sun on Sunday, February 22, 2026, the National Coordinator of the Take Back Nigeria Initiative (TBNI), Abumchukwu Okoye, has delivered a harsh assessment of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s impact on political parties while warning that structural imbalances within the ADC could trigger opposition from powerful figures like Nyesom Wike.
Okoye placed blame squarely on Atiku for the decline of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and predicted similar consequences for his new political home.
“For Atiku Abubakar, we all know him, he destroyed PDP and he will also destroy ADC,” Okoye stated bluntly.
The TBNI coordinator then identified what he described as a fundamental political error in the ADC’s emerging structure. “You can’t bring a presidential candidate from the North and the national chairman from the same North and you expect Nyesom Wike to keep quiet,” Okoye said, pointing to potential zoning conflicts that violate unwritten rules about regional balance in Nigerian political parties.
He concluded with a warning about the challenges of managing Wike’s opposition. “Wike is very hard to contend with when he is right. In the political space if you must handle him you must apply pure political mathematics and it takes a long time to do that,” the TBNI coordinator observed.
The remarks highlight concerns that the ADC’s attempts to build a broad opposition coalition may be undermined by internal contradictions, particularly if leadership positions are concentrated in one region—a configuration that historically triggers conflict within Nigerian political parties and could alienate powerful figures like the FCT Minister who wields significant influence in the South-South region. Read_More…