A faction of the African Democratic Congress on Sunday presented Mr. Dumebi Kachikwu as its sole presidential candidate for the 2027 general election as the businessman and politician unveiled an ambitious reform agenda focused on what he termed a “Nigerian Patriot Act” that would compel public office holders to use the same public services available to ordinary Nigerians.
He made this statement at a special convention held on Sunday night in Abuja amidst an ongoing leadership realignment within the party.
If elected president in 2027, Kachikwu said his first engagement with the National Assembly would be the presentation of the proposed legislation aimed at ending what he referred to as the disconnect between Nigeria’s political elite and the masses.
The proposed bill would also bar public servants and their families from accessing private or foreign schools and hospitals and ban them from using private generators and boreholes that average citizens cannot access, he said.
“We cannot have different rules for different criminals. “In the end, you do the crime, you do the time,” Kachikwu said in his acceptance speech.
“If I’m privileged to lead this country, I think my first executive interface with the National Assembly will be to present a bill that I’ve called the Nigerian Patriot Act,” he said.
A bill of fairness and equality. It is a bill that says we’re all in this together.” This is a bill that the privileges which they cannot give to a common man they are not going to use themselves.”
The ADC presidential candidate said every person aspiring for public office must be made to depend on the same health care, education and public utilities used by the ordinary Nigerians.
“If you want to be in the public service, you’ve got to use the same services that the masses use. “There will be no private schools for our families, no foreign schools for our families, no private hospitals for us and our families, no foreign hospitals for us and our families, no generators in our homes, no boreholes in our homes,” he said.
Kachikwu used the occasion to attack the nation’s political establishment, accusing successive leaders of deepening division, poverty and insecurity, but failing to build an inclusive national identity.
He said Nigeria must throw away ethnic and regional politics for merit-based leadership and national unity.
“We are not the Republic of Nigeria, the Hausa/Fulani. We are not the Ndigbo Republic of Nigeria, we are not the Oduduwa Republic of Nigeria. “We are the Federal Republic of Nigeria,” he told them.
“We will no longer speak in terms of Hausa, Ibo and Yoruba or North and South but in terms of one indivisible Nigeria,” he added.
The ADC candidate also rejected zoning politics, saying leaders should be picked on competence, not ethnicity or religion.
“We will zone out all those who are for zoning and bring in a Nigeria that will value merit, character and knowhow above primordial sentiments,” he added.
Kachikwu promised sweeping reforms in the economy and technology, including construction of technology parks in all senatorial districts, broadband expansion nationwide and the transformation of farming into large scale agribusiness.
He said that the economic recovery of Nigeria would depend largely on digital innovation and investment in human capital.
“My government will be making broadband available and affordable for all because that’s the only leverage our kids have to compete in this new world,” he said.
“We will establish technology parks in all the senatorial districts in Nigeria, which will serve as incubation centres for digital jobs, research and development.”
He also criticised what he called wasteful borrowings by successive governments, warning against piling up sovereign debts on projects that have no economic value.
“We can’t borrow money to build bridges and highways to nowhere when the internet is the superhighway of the future,” he said.
Kachikwu also vowed to deal with terrorists, kidnappers and criminal gangs with “overwhelming force”, and promised to arm willing citizens to defend communities, while going after sponsors of violent groups.
“We will meet them head-on and defeat them. ‘This war will be fought on our terms,’ he said.
We will arm everyone willing and able to rid our nation of these foreign invaders. We will take the fight to their camps as we arrest and prosecute their sponsors.”
He also pledged to restore the dignity of human life and address the issues of ritual killings, kidnapping and internet fraud through economic empowerment and tougher law enforcement.
The presidential aspirant also equally lambasted the government of President Bola Tinubu, accusing it of “weaponizing poverty and hunger,” while chiding opposition parties for failing to offer practical alternatives.
“The Nigerian people have to know what we will do differently from President Tinubu,” he said. They are sick of an opposition that is inept, incompetent and plays politics with our collective sorrows.
“This election should be a battle of ideas, not campaigns of calumny.
Kachikwu said his faction deliberately chose not to be part of what he called “the coalition of the old fighting the old,” saying Nigeria needed new ideas and not old political battles.
There was also a major shake-up of leadership in the ADC faction at the convention as a new structure was announced with Muhammad Bashir Abdulkadir emerging as national chairman.
The faction said it had dissolved a rival National Working Committee, which was allegedly aligned to former Senate President David Mark and former Osun State governor Rauf Aregbesola.
Speaking at the event, Abdulkadir described the convention as a watershed in the party’s survival, accusing unnamed interests of trying to hijack the ADC for personal political battles.
“This is not a private organization. It is a political party with rules and no one is bigger than the constitution,” he said.
Chairman of the faction’s state chairmen Kingsley Temitope Oga described the gathering as a defining “survival moment” for the party, stating that months of internal disputes had tested the ADC’s cohesion.
“Today we can proudly say ADC has survived, grown and come stronger,” Oga said.
But even as the convention was promising national unity, there were said to be moments of discord and interruptions, highlighting the ongoing divisions within the opposition party as it prepares for the 2027 elections.
