Nigeria, Jan. 4 -- Politics in Kaduna has always had a way of announcing change before it fully arrives. Sometimes it does so through protest votes, sometimes through quiet defections, and at other times through the slow but unmistakable exhaustion of an old order. As the countdown to 2027 begins - still distant enough for denials, yet close enough for serious calculations - the signs are growing clearer that Kaduna's opposition politics is undergoing a profound reconfiguration. At the centre of this shift stands the African Democratic Congress (ADC), a party that has moved from the margins of national politics to occupy a fast-expanding space once firmly held by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

For decades, the PDP was the default re...