Sokoto was still echoing when the verdict landed
Barely a day after thousands poured into the streets to welcome Atiku Abubakar and launch the ADC campaign, a Federal High Court ruled against Senator David Mark’s leadership of the party. For the presidential candidate, the coincidence was too neat to be accidental.
“The timing of this judgment is no coincidence,” he said through spokesman Phrank Shaibu. In his telling, the ruling is a calculated move to hollow out the ADC and trip up his candidacy just as the campaign finds its stride.
The target, he suggested, is his base. But he says the ruling party has misread him. “My roots are in Northern Nigeria, but my candidacy belongs to all Nigerians.” Hunger, he argued, does not stop at regional lines.
Then came the legal counterpunch. Atiku pointed to an earlier case, Suit No. FHC/ABJ/CS/1637/2025, in which Justice Musa Liman of the same court threw out a challenge to the Mark-led leadership. The court had found problems with jurisdiction, standing and the failure to exhaust internal party remedies, and ruled for the defendants on the substance.
So why, he asked, was the fight reopened? To him, it is an attempt to sidestep a judgment still standing. The Court of Appeal, he said, will hear it next.
Meanwhile, the campaign keeps moving. Sokoto was “only the beginning,” he said. The train is already in Kebbi, with the rest of the country to follow.
To his supporters, his instruction was simple: stay calm, stay peaceful, stay on message. Take “Affordable Life” from house to house and door to door, and do not let one ruling slow the momentum.
His last words were a challenge to his opponents: “There is no shaking.”
