The OK Movement says it will not surrender its national-to-ward structure to the NDC after Seriake Dickson criticised its campaign council
The Obi-Kwankwaso Movement, known as the OK Movement, said on Wednesday, 23 September 2026, that it would not collapse or hand its organisation to the Nigeria Democratic Congress before the 2027 election.
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Director-General John Ughulu said the movement would keep its national, state, local government and ward structures. No party or outside group, he said, would be allowed to absorb them.
The statement answered Senator Seriake Dickson, the NDC national leader, who spoke on Tuesday in Abuja at the unveiling of former Secretary to the Government of the Federation Babachir Lawal.
Dickson said support groups should help a party, not rival it. He called the OK Movement’s decision to set up a presidential campaign council “unheard of” and “nonsensical.” Multiple support groups were normal, he said, but they had to stay in their place.
Ughulu said he accepted part of that argument and rejected the rest. If the Obidient network and the Kwankwasiyya are treated as support movements, he said, the OK Movement still had to be defined on its own terms. “The OK Movement is not a support group created as an appendage of any political party or another movement. It is independently organised, managed and structured through its own established movement mechanisms.”
He said the movement draws members from several parties who back NDC presidential candidate Peter Obi and running mate Senator Rabiu Kwankwaso.
Politics, he argued, had moved on from the older model Dickson described. Setting up a campaign and mobilisation arm for those candidates was therefore not “nonsensical.”
“The OK Movement remains an independent organisation. Its existence and internal administration are not subject to the internal management of the NDC. The OK Movement will not be collapsed, merged or subsumed into the NDC or any other organisation. Cooperation and political alignment do not extinguish the independent identity of the Movement.”
Ughulu added that the movement did not claim to stand above the NDC or to take over the party’s constitutional powers.
He also said the movement knew of no party rule that barred it from building its own campaign machinery for the candidates.
Any attempt to strip members of a voice, seize structures or rewrite the movement’s identity would be resisted by lawful means. “We did not build the OK Movement overnight.”
The row began when the NDC distanced itself from a 59-member Presidential Campaign Council announced by the movement.
National Chairman Senator Moses Cleopas said the party had not authorised anyone to set up or announce a campaign council in the NDC’s name. Only the National Working Committee, he said, could approve such a body.
OK Movement National Secretary Saadatu Sani then demanded an apology, repeating that the movement is an independent organisation with its own officers and processes.
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The dispute now sits at the centre of the Obi-Kwankwaso 2027 effort: whether a large volunteer machine can work with a new party without becoming part of it.
