When political structures lose logic: A case study of Adamawa state transition ctee of ADC
By Umar Ardo, Ph.D
The recently released list of the *Adamawa State Transition Committee* of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) raises serious questions about political logic, institutional propriety and internal order within the party. A simple look at the composition of the committee shows a clear breach of both hierarchy and procedural sense.
2. At the head of the committee is Barr. (Hon.) Sadiq Ibrahim Dasin, a former Member of the House of Representatives, a comparatively low-ranking political figure, appointed to chair a body that includes within its membership some of Nigeria’s most senior political leaders – former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, former Governor Bindawo Jibrilla, former ADC Gubernatorial Candidate Senator AbdulAzeez Nyako and former Senators Aishatu Dahiru Binani, Ahmad Hassan Barata and Ishaku Abbo.
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3. In every political structure, the principle of hierarchy demands that leadership align with experience, stature and responsibility. Administrative and organizational conventions dictate that leadership of such a committee must devolve upward, not downward. But what the ADC did in Adamawa State defies logic and protocol for a person of minor political standing to chair a committee populated by personalities who have occupied higher offices in the land. The optics are awkward, the hierarchy inverted and the process rendered ridiculous.
4. Worse still, this is a state-level committee which, in proper order, ought to report to a higher zonal committee – the North East Zonal Committee! Yet the Vice Chairman (North East), Engr. Babachir David Lawal, who heads that zonal organ, himself curiously sits as an ordinary member of the state committee. This creates an illogical overlap of reporting lines – a situation where a superior organ and its head are simultaneously subordinate participants in a lower-tier committee. By all standards, this is absurd; one cannot have a superior figure in a zonal hierarchy placed within a lower state structure that should, by right, be answerable to him!
5. To compound matters, Babachir Lawal was also the one who inaugurated this very committee of which he is a member. The question then arises: can one lawfully inaugurate a committee in which one sits as a member? Beyond its procedural impropriety, such a scenario blurs and undermines the line between authority and accountability. It makes nonsense of organizational order and integrity, and reduces political coordination to personal discretion.
6. This confusion is symptomatic of a larger problem in our politics where positions are distributed not by logic or principle but by impulse and expedience. It was precisely in anticipation of such contradictions that I, from the onset, opposed the idea of fusing our political movement into the African Democratic Congress. And when the leaders went ahead regardless, I declined to join. Instead, I proceeded to initiate the registration of a new political party, the All Democratic Alliance (ADA) – a platform being built deliberately on the foundation of ideology, principles, order, clarity, integrity, merit, discipline and sacrifice.
7. For political organizations to command respect and credibility, they must embody internal logic, uphold institutional hierarchy and operate within transparent and constitutional procedures. Anything short of that leads not to progress but to confusion and collapse. The Adamawa Transition Committee, unfortunately, exemplifies this institutional disorder.
