Babachir Lawal’s Perennial Journey from One Party to Another

Babachir Lawal has now belonged to six political parties since 2002, and the pattern behind his movements is more revealing than any single defection. On Tuesday, September 22, he joined the Nigeria Democratic Congress, three months after quitting the African Democratic Congress.

His NDC entry places him on the same platform as Peter Obi and Rabiu Kwankwaso, the party’s presidential and running mate ticket for 2027. In May, Lawal had publicly questioned Obi’s commitment to the ADC, arguing Obi joined the coalition late.

Lawal left the ADC in June, alleging its presidential primary had been rigged in favour of Atiku Abubakar, a claim the party disputed. Before that, he had passed through the Labour Party during the 2023 election cycle, campaigning for Obi under a different banner entirely. It was much the same formula in his early years.

The man entered politics through the ANPP in 2002, coordinating Muhammadu Buhari’s Adamawa campaign structure, then followed Buhari into the Congress for Progressive Change in 2010. When the APC merger happened in 2013, Lawal sat on the committee that fused the parties. That loyalty carried him to the position of Secretary to the Government of the Federation in 2015, a post he lost in 2017 amid controversy over the Presidential Initiative for the North East, which he has always described as a political setup.

He stayed in the APC until late 2022, when he broke with the party over its Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket. At the NDC, National Leader Seriake Dickson handed him responsibility for the party’s North-East campaign structure.

That role trades on decades of regional networks built across five previous parties. Whether the NDC becomes a lasting address or another waypoint depends less on rhetoric about national salvation than on how the 2027 primaries unfold within a party still assembling its own balance of power.