The Labour Party has accused the ruling All Progressives Congress of undermining Nigeria’s democracy. The party recently revealed that the APC is currently making desperate attempts to weaken and destabilise opposition parties.
Speaking at the African Democratic Congress Global Award and Dinner Night, the acting National Chairman of the Labour Party, Senator Nenadi Usman, alleged that the APC is regularly deploying state institutions to harass opposition voices to consolidate power.
According to her, the APC is consistently weaponizing national institutions and state resources to suppress the opposition, and the purpose of such practice is to clear the road for the party’s reelection in 2027.
Usman maintained that from infiltration and co-optation to outright judicial manipulation and intimidation, the APC has shown complete desperation to retain power for many more years.
“Since the emergence of the APC as the ruling party, there has been a deliberate and relentless campaign to undermine the opposition. Tactics range from infiltration and co-optation to judicial manipulation and intimidation through state institutions.
The ruling party has become adept not just at consolidating power, but at weakening every form of challenge to it. This is not democracy; this is domination masked as governance.
Without a strong and functional opposition, we cannot claim to be practising democracy — only a shadow of it.
But let me also be brutally honest. While external interference from the APC has played a role, it is not the only culprit. The opposition has too often been complicit in its weakening. No amount of external sabotage can succeed if there is no internal decay.
It requires action and concrete solutions.
It does this country no good to operate a system where one party dominates unchecked.
Even the APC, if it is wise, should understand that democracy dies not with a bang but with the silence of dissent. Once the people are left with no real alternative, the legitimacy of the entire system is at risk,” she said.
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However, the National Secretary of the APC, Senator Ajibola Basiru, dismissed Usman’s claim, describing the alliance of the opposition figures as an association of internally displaced persons.
“They can’t work together. The so-called planned coalition is the figment of the imagination of some individuals who thought that they were big. What coalition are you talking about?
It’s just an association of internally displaced politicians,” he added.
