Some members of the African Democratic Congress who followed former presidential candidate Peter Obi out of the party are already returning and seeking re-admission, ADC chieftain Kenneth Okonkwo has revealed, describing the wave of defections from the party as a temporary trend that will soon fade without any lasting damage to the party’s structure or its coalition ahead of the 2027 general election.
Kenneth Okonkwo, who spoke on Arise News, on Wednesday May 6, 2026 from 10:20, said the much-publicised exodus from the ADC, which followed the exit of Peter Obi and former Kano governor Rabiu Kwankwaso, had been overstated by political commentators and analysts who he said failed to appreciate the internal dynamics at play within the opposition space. He described the defections as a passing wave that would settle in due course.
He pointed to events in Enugu State as evidence that the NDC, which has received some of the defectors from ADC, was itself struggling to manage its own internal affairs. According to Okonkwo, when the NDC attempted to conduct a congress in Enugu State, a group of its own members who were unhappy with attempts by others to hijack the process moved in and disrupted the exercise entirely.
In his words, Kenneth Okonkwo said, “Some people who even wanted to follow him are already coming back. I can tell you in Enugu State for instance that some people who went to follow them, the NDC in their own congress that they wanted to conduct in Enugu State, their talks among themselves who felt that they wanted to hijack their NDC and to leave them alone went and scattered them. So some of them are already running back trying to plead with ADC to accommodate them. What you are seeing is a fad. It will just do, you know, a wave. It will just do and it will die out,” he said.
Okonkwo further argued that the legislators and political figures who had defected from ADC were largely driven not by genuine belief in Peter Obi’s ability to win the presidency, but by a calculation that his name could help them secure their own local electoral victories…Read_More…