The Nigeria Democratic Congress on Sunday named a 155-member National Campaign Council for the 2027 general elections, with party leader Seriake Dickson as chairman and presidential candidate Peter Obi as co-chairman. Vice-presidential candidate Rabiu Kwankwaso was named co-vice-chairman, while National Chairman Cleopas Zuwoghe serves as vice-chairman. Ibrahim Abdulkarim, an ICT strategist, was appointed director-general, and National Secretary Ikenna Enekweizu serves as council secretary.
The list includes former Secretary to the Government of the Federation Babachir Lawal as chairman of the National Campaign Advisory Council, former Deputy Senate President Ovie Omo-Agege, former presidential candidate Pat Utomi and former Congress for Progressive Change national secretary Buba Galadima. The council was scheduled for inauguration in Abuja on Monday, two days after it was announced.
The Obi-Kwankwaso Movement, the independent political vehicle that has mobilised support for the two candidates, responded with sharp criticism. Its director-general, John Ughulu, questioned why the council was being constituted with less than three months to the presidential election, fixed for January 16, 2027. Campaigns formally opened on August 19, 2026, meaning the NDC has been in the campaign window for more than two months without a unveiled council.
“What exactly have they been doing all this time? Where is the structure? Where is the strategy? Where is the machinery required to prosecute a serious national election?” Ughulu asked in a statement in Abuja. He said 90 per cent of the people on the NDC list would still come to the OK Movement seeking the grassroots network they had failed to build themselves.
The dispute is not new. The NDC and the OK Movement have been at odds since September over the movement’s refusal to collapse its national, state, local government and ward structures into the party. Dickson had described the movement’s decision to establish its own campaign council as “unheard of” and “nonsensical,” arguing that support groups should complement parties rather than compete with them. Ughulu rejected that framing, insisting the OK Movement is not an appendage of any party and will not surrender its structures.
Neither Ughulu nor the movement’s state, local government and ward coordinators appear on the NDC’s 155-member list, a detail that suggests the two sides have not reconciled their organisational differences. The NDC has presented the council as a step towards a “people-centred and issue-based campaign,” but the absence of the movement’s field structures raises questions about how the party intends to reach voters at the ward level.
The NDC’s own legal history adds another layer of uncertainty. The party was registered in February 2026 by court order after INEC had declined to pre-qualify it in the normal registration exercise. A Federal High Court in Lokoja later set aside that judgment in June 2026, and the Court of Appeal restored the registration in September by a split decision. The party is on the ballot, but its institutional foundation has been contested at every stage.
The numbers involved in the 2027 election are substantial. The presidential and National Assembly elections are scheduled for January 16, 2027, with governorship and state assembly polls on February 6. Under the Electoral Act 2026, presidential candidates may spend up to ₦10 billion, double the ceiling in the repealed 2022 law. A campaign council of 155 members, drawn largely from the party’s national leadership and state representatives, is a conventional structure, but it is not a substitute for the ward-level machinery that Ughulu says the OK Movement already possesses.
The immediate question is whether the NDC can convert its list into a functioning campaign in the eight weeks remaining before the presidential vote. The council’s leadership is heavy with former governors, senators and party officials, but the OK Movement’s coordinators are the ones who have been organising at the grassroots. If the two sides do not find a working arrangement, the NDC may enter the election with a national council in Abuja and a parallel structure in the states that answers to a different chain of command.
Dickson has argued that support groups should not create parallel structures. Ughulu has argued that the OK Movement is not a support group and will not be absorbed. Both positions are now on the record, and the ballot will test which one delivers.