The rift between former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Babachir Lawal, and the Adamawa State governorship candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), Senator Aishatu Dahiru Ahmed Binani, has continued to deepen.
Pundits say this exposes a wider struggle over the control and direction of the opposition party in the North-East ahead of the 2027 elections.
The dispute followed Lawal’s appointment by the NDC national leadership to play a leadership role in the North-East and North-Central zones shortly after joining the party.
Six NDC governorship candidates in the North-East subsequently rejected the appointment, saying they were not consulted and would not recognise Lawal as the party’s leader in the region.
The development has placed the NDC’s national leadership on one side and some of its state-level political actors on the other, raising questions about how the relatively new opposition platform will reconcile national political realignment with politicians who say they have invested in building its structures at the grassroots.
Lawal’s entry into the NDC itself followed his resignation from the African Democratic Congress (ADC) in June. He had accused the ADC of manipulating its presidential primary in favour of former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, a claim disputed by the party. He joined the NDC in September and declared support for the Peter Obi-Rabiu Kwankwaso presidential ticket.
Receiving him into the NDC, the party’s National Leader, Senator Seriake Dickson, described Lawal as a political mobiliser and said he would play a leadership role in the North-East and help provide guidance to candidates and campaigns in the region.
But the appointment immediately exposed a fault line within the party.
The six governorship candidates from Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Taraba and Yobe said the national leadership should have consulted them and other stakeholders before appointing Lawal. They maintained that their position was ‘collective, firm and final’ and that they would not recognise him as North-East leader.
Lawal responded forcefully alleging that the protest was being organised by a ‘female pretender to the governorship candidacy of Adamawa State.’
He also said two of the candidates whose names appeared on the protest statement had contacted him to distance themselves from it.
‘Professor Mohammed Sani Yahaya and Dr Babayo Ardo of Taraba and Gombe States respectively, have reached out to me to dissociate themselves from this press release and even implied that their names and signatures on the document were inserted without their authority and knowledge,’ Lawal said.
Lawal also insisted that he did not lobby for the position, saying the appointment was made by the national leadership.
He went further to allege that some of those opposed to him were working against the NDC presidential ticket, Peter Obi, from within the party.
‘I know that my joining the NDC at this stage poses a major threat to those working for Atiku from within the NDC as subversives of the Peter/Kwankwaso ticket,’ Lawal alleged.
Lawal claimed that during a visit to the state between August 25 and September 10, he saw little evidence of NDC activity across the state.
The Binani campaign organisation however rejected the allegations, accusing Lawal of trying to undermine politicians who built the NDC structure before his arrival.
In its response, the organisation described his statement as ‘highly erratic, abusive, and self-serving’ and rejected the attempt to portray Binani and the other governorship candidates as agents of outside political interests.
‘The attempt by BD to brand Senator Aisha (Binani) and the other five gubernatorial candidates as ‘moles’ for external interests is a cheap, desperate, and outdated blackmail tactic,’ the organisation said.
The Binani camp also challenged Lawal’s claim that there was little NDC activity in Adamawa, pointing to his own allegation that Binani had funded nomination and expression-of-interest forms for several legislative candidates in the state.
A political analyst in Adamawa, Dr Mahdi Abba, however, took a more critical view of Lawal’s political relevance.
Abba said the rejection of Lawal by politicians within the NDC should serve as a warning to the party ahead of the 2027 elections.
For the NDC, the Babachir-Binani confrontation is becoming a test of how the party manages powerful personalities, existing candidates and competing political interests under one platform.
Whether the national leadership can resolve the disagreement without deepening divisions in the North-East may determine whether Lawal’s entry becomes an asset for the party’s regional organisation or another source of internal friction as the 2027 elections approach.