The Atiku Family Is Eating Adamawa ADC From the Inside – Insider

In a functioning democracy, a political party is a public institution. It belongs to its members, it serves its voters, and it draws its authority from the legitimacy of open contest. What is allegedly happening inside the African Democratic Congress in Adamawa State is something else entirely. It is a family takeover, executed quietly, methodically, and, according to party insiders, with the full backing of one of Nigeria’s most recognisable political names.

Fresh and deeply troubling allegations have emerged from within the ADC’s national structure, pointing to Alhaji Mustapha Atiku Abubakar, a son of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, as the architect of a “harmonised” executive list designed not to reconcile the party’s warring factions but to tilt Adamawa’s 2027 gubernatorial primary decisively in favour of Senator Aishatu Ahmed Dahiru, better known as Binani. The list was reportedly presented to the elder Atiku as an authentic party consensus. According to a highly placed source within the ADC national office, it was neither.

“Mustapha personally designed and drafted the harmonised executive list for Adamawa State,” the source told The Gazette News. He is further accused of delivering the endorsement letter that bore Atiku’s signature recognising the Binani-led faction as the legitimate executive committee and of circulating what insiders describe as a “settlement agreement” letter, pressuring party members to sign under duress.

Mustapha categorically denied every allegation when contacted. “I’m not a politician, and I can’t be. I’m only a card-carrying member for the ADC because of my father,” he told TG News. “Count me out of all these allegations. I know nothing about them, please.” He identified himself as the Human Resources Manager at the American University of Nigeria in Yola, an institution his father founded, and described his political role as non-existent.

The denials may be sincere. But they do not address the question that is now consuming ADC members across Adamawa: why does a party that belongs to hundreds of thousands of Nigerians appear to be making its most consequential decisions inside a single family’s living room?

Five Seats, One Surname

Step back from the Mustapha allegations for a moment and look at the full picture of what the Abubakar family is doing with the ADC ahead of 2027. It is, on its face, breathtaking.

Atiku Abubakar himself intends to contest the presidency under the ADC platform. That ambition is established and public. What is less often stated plainly is what surrounds it.

Adamu Atiku, the eldest son and a former Commissioner for Works and Energy Development in Governor Fintiri’s administration, is eyeing the Adamawa South senatorial seat; Mohammed Atiku Abubakar, a businessman, is working toward the House of Representatives seat for the Jada, Ganye, Mayo-Belwa, and Toungo federal constituency; the ADC state chairman confirmed both brothers are in the party and will receive “all necessary support and cooperation”.

A third son, Aliyu, is reportedly targeting Yola North, Yola South, and Girei, according to party insiders. Mustapha, whatever his actual role, is described as embedded in the party’s organisational decisions through his proximity to his father.

And then there is Abba.

Abba Atiku Abubakar, another son, caused a national scandal last year when he publicly endorsed President Bola Tinubu for a second term while his father was actively running against Tinubu. The family cannot even agree on which candidate to support in a presidential race that their father is a central player in. Yet the expectation, apparently, is that Nigerians should trust this family to govern.

Insiders described the situation as “deeply damaging”, alleging that Atiku has stopped funding the party directly, instead channelling resources through his children, sparking fears that the party structure is being effectively privatised. “What we are seeing is dangerous,” one source warned. “It now looks like the party in Adamawa is being run as a family affair.”

A family affair. That phrase deserves to sit in this story without being rushed past. The ADC is, in theory, a national political party registered with the Independent National Electoral Commission, accountable to its members and to Nigerian electoral law. What party insiders are describing is an organisation whose funding, executive structure, gubernatorial ticket decisions, and legislative candidate selections are all flowing through the calculations and conflicts of one extended family based primarily in Yola.

The Councillorship Operation and the Loyalty Pledge

The most operationally alarming allegation in this story involves not the gubernatorial primary but something more granular and, in its implications, more disturbing.

According to the ADC insider who spoke to The Gazette News, Mustapha is accused of purchasing nomination forms for all 226 councillorship aspirants across Adamawa State’s local government areas. The reported purpose is straightforward and troubling; having paid for the forms, he allegedly required the aspirants to sign loyalty agreements pledging allegiance to him personally as a condition of proceeding. Some aspirants, the source says, refused to attend screening exercises after being confronted with those pledges.

If accurate, this is not politics. This is the construction of a captive political class. It is the purchase of 226 entry-level political careers in exchange for personal loyalty to a man who claims publicly to have no political ambitions whatsoever.

The alleged strategic goal is to block formidable gubernatorial aspirants, including Modibbo Hamman Tukur, Senator Muhammadu Jibrilla Bindow, Ambassador Omar Suleiman, and Senator Ishaku Abbo, from gaining traction in the party’s primary, clearing the path for Binani to secure the ADC ticket. The insider’s assessment of Binani’s general election prospects, even if she wins the primary, was unsparing. “Her likelihood of winning the governorship is slim, akin to the proverbial camel passing through the eye of a needle,” the source said, warning that the manoeuvre risks gifting the opposition a straightforward path to victory.

Further compounding the crisis are reports of a potential “family balloting” to determine which of two sons will secure the party’s ticket for the contested Jada, Ganye, Toungo, and Mayo-Belwa federal constituency seats after both Adamu and Mohammed indicated interest in the same position, splitting the party into rival camps and polarising members against each other.

A family ballot. To decide on a public party ticket. The sentence requires no further editorial commentary.

Party officials are struggling to manage the situation, with decision-making slowed and the party’s structure at the state level weakened; a chieftain of the party previously seen at high-level strategy meetings with Atiku is said to have distanced himself from the former vice president, and a major pillar described as Abdulaziz Nyako is reportedly weighing a return to the APC to avoid being entangled in the escalating internal conflict.

Nigerian politics has never been short of dynasties. But there is a particular kind of audacity in what the Abubakar family appears to be constructing in Adamawa ADC, and it deserves to be called plainly for what it is.

A man who has run for president six times, who wraps every campaign in the language of democracy, accountability, and good governance, is allegedly presiding over a family operation that is purchasing party loyalty at the councillorship level, engineering executive lists through a son who claims to have no political role, splitting the party into rival camps by deploying two other sons against each other for the same seat, and watching a fourth son publicly endorse his presidential opponent.

Atiku Abubakar’s credibility as a reformer, a democrat, and an alternative to the current administration depends entirely on the argument that he represents something different from the dynastic, patronage-driven politics he has spent decades criticising. That argument is significantly harder to make when your own party in your home state looks less like a democratic institution and more like a family-owned enterprise, where the nomination forms are paid for by your son, the executive list is drafted by your son, and the settlement agreements are circulated by your son.

Whether Atiku Abubakar will rein in his children before the damage becomes irreversible remains the central political question in Adamawa right now. What is already certain is this: a party that was supposed to offer Nigerians a credible alternative in 2027 is currently being consumed not by its opponents, but by the family of the man who wants to lead it.

The eye of a needle, the source said. In Adamawa’s ADC, they are already stuck halfway through.