The ADC primary has a frontrunner. It just hasn’t said so yet

Just over two weeks. That is all the time left before the ADC selects its presidential flagbearer on 23 May. Nomination forms went on sale yesterday (6 May). The race, with a cast of familiar names jostling for position, and that many assumed was already settled has not played out as predicted. One candidacy in […]

Just over two weeks. That is all the time left before the ADC selects its presidential flagbearer on 23 May. Nomination forms went on sale yesterday (6 May). The race, with a cast of familiar names jostling for position, and that many assumed was already settled has not played out as predicted. One candidacy in particular has changed its shape, and the party’s internal conversation has shifted dramatically with an unexpected frontrunner emerging.

Mohammed Hayatu-Deen entered this race without the years of presidential positioning or scars of bygone campaigns that define his rivals. What he brought instead was a biography that answers questions the ADC’s leadership is only now asking with real urgency. Who can we put in front of Nigerian voters as proof that this party means what it says? Who arrives without a trail of failed attempts, switched allegiances, and unresolved questions? Who can look a delegation of party elders in the eye and point to forty years of institutions built, jobs created, and organisations left stronger than he found them? Who, should they win, can govern with competence?

The answer those elders are arriving at with increasing consistency is Hayatu-Deen. He has been working the rooms that matters, seeking to build a consensus around his candidacy. His social media reveals he has met leading figures including Oyegun, Ayu, Amaechi, amongst others. Rival aspirants are making similar rounds. But the reception MHD is reportedly receiving is qualitatively different from the courteous attention extended to retreads. The difference between a candidate who is being listened to and one who is being taken seriously is usually invisible from the outside. Insiders can feel it.

That seriousness has begun breaking into public view. ADC Vanguard, a pro-party support group, endorsed Hayatu-Deen in Abuja before hundreds of supporters, following the endorsement of Team Rebuild Nigeria as Hayatu-Deen announced his candidacy. More significantly, when Rabiu Kwankwaso addressed his supporters before departing for the NDC, he named Hayatu-Deen directly as a factor in his calculus. That is a striking piece of intelligence. Opposition figures do not name candidates they do not fear.

The field itself tells part of the story. Atiku Abubakar arrives for his seventh attempt with his prospects waning. His northern coalition that is visibly contracting — his home state has fractured, and the consolidation of northern support his campaign assumes has not materialised. The energy that once surrounded his candidacies, even compared to just four years ago, has run its course. He is not so much a frontrunner as a habit – familiar, persistent, and increasingly difficult to justify on purely electoral grounds, as his record of results show.

Inside the ADC, the Hayatu-Deen campaign has acquired something that no amount of political spending can buy at short notice: credibility with the people who will actually decide this nomination. A 40 year record of creating jobs and restructuring institutions proves he sees the presidency as a national responsibility rather than a personal project. His grassroots support is organised and visible, as seen by the announcement of 36 state co-ordinators. And the party’s most experienced figures – the ones who have seen candidacies rise and fall across decades of Nigerian politics – are treating him differently to the rest of the field. That gap, once it opens, tends to widen.

The ADC was designed to mark a departure from the recycled candidacies, the pre-arranged tickets, and the personal ambitions dressed as national purpose that have defined Nigerian opposition politics for a generation. With less than three weeks left and the primary timetable now public, the party’s leadership faces a choice that is simpler to describe than it is to make. Field the candidate the moment actually requires, or default to the familiar and hope the result is different this time. Mohammed Hayatu-Deen is making the case that it does not have to be. Whether the ADC is listening is the only question that remains.

-Jamila Abdulaziz is a member of the African Democratic Congress. She writes from Abuja.