•Alleged president’s ‘governors-in-charge’ order triggers defection plot, courtroom battles

From Fred Itua,Abuja

What began as a presidential attempt to install order within the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is now threatening to unravel the party’s 2027 electoral prospects in ways that even the President’s closest allies are beginning to acknowledge in whispers.

Across the country, lawmakers, party chieftains and powerful political figures are already drawing up battle plans.

It was supposed to be a masterstroke of party management. When President Bola Ahmed Tinubu was reported to have declared that APC governors are the supreme leaders of the party in their states and that they alone will determine who receives the party’s tickets to various offices, he was, by his own calculation, solving a problem.

He was allegedly streamlining authority, cutting through the cacophony of competing voices, and creating a clear chain of command that would deliver the party into 2027 as a disciplined, unified force.

Instead, that directive may go down as the single most destabilising internal policy decision of his presidency. Across Nigeria’s 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, the fallout is already underway. Members of the National Assembly who have served the party loyally, some for multiple terms, are learning that their political futures now rest entirely in the hands of governors who may owe them nothing, or who actively see them as rivals.

“Nobody hands over his destiny to another man,” one senior House of Representatives member told our correspondent, speaking on condition of anonymity. “If the governor wants to give my seat to his son or his errand boy, does Tinubu expect me to fold my arms and go home? I will find another way. And many of us will find that way together.”

The scale of what is being planned, according to multiple sources within the party, could dwarf anything Nigeria has seen in recent electoral cycles.

Feedbacks from multiple, independent sources within the APC’s National Working Committee (NWC), the National Assembly complex in Abuja, and several state capitals, paint a disturbing picture.

Senior members of the House of Representatives and the Senate, many of them first or second-term legislators with strong local bases, have been holding quiet, off-the-record consultations for weeks. The common thread: what to do if their governors refuse to support their return to Abuja.

It was gathered that at least three significant political movements are already in advanced discussions. The first involves a cluster of APC lawmakers from the South West, the President’s own political heartland, which believes that some governors in the region are preparing to impose loyalists on constituencies where sitting legislators have served competently.

These lawmakers are already in contact with the leadership of the other second tier political parties and, remarkably, elements within the Peoples Democratic Party, exploring the terms under which they could cross the aisle without losing their legislative seats under the constitution’s anti-defection provisions.

In the North West and North-Central, regions where the APC’s 2027 prospects are already complicated by security concerns and economic discontent, sitting senators and House members are openly telling party leaders that they have built structures independent of governors, and that if it comes to a contest, their structures will survive any governor’s displeasure.

Several of them have already made contact with the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP), which are positioning aggressively to absorb disaffected APC members ahead of the 2027 primaries.

The third, it was gathered, involves a bloc of APC lawmakers in states where governors either recently defected to APC or are themselves embattled. In these states, sitting National Assembly members who were in the APC long before the current governors crossed the carpet feel an acute sense of injustice.

One party source with knowledge of these consultations put it bluntly: “We are looking at a minimum of 40 to 50 House members who are seriously considering their options. If even half of them leave before or during the primaries, the APC will be contesting 2027 having gifted the opposition a ready-made battalion of experienced politicians with fully functional grassroots machinery.”

Defection, however, is not the only weapon being sharpened. For those who cannot or will not leave and there are many, the law courts beckon as both sanctuary and siege weapon.

This is where the new Electoral Act becomes a double-edged sword for the APC leadership. The Act explicitly recognises two additional modes of conducting party primaries beyond the convention-based delegate system: direct primaries, in which all registered party members in a constituency vote directly for their preferred candidate; and consensus arrangements, in which candidates can emerge through documented agreement among stakeholders.

If a governor attempts to impose a preferred candidate through a delegates’ primary that aggrieved members believe was manipulated, those members now have a statutory basis to challenge not just the outcome, but the very process. They can go to court arguing that they were denied their right to participate in a direct primary, or that no genuine consensus was sought.

Legal practitioners familiar with electoral litigation say the courts have shown increasing willingness to interrogate party primaries since the Act came into force.

“The era of a governor just writing names and announcing candidates is legally more vulnerable than it has ever been,” one senior advocate told our correspondent. “The Electoral Act has given aggrieved members ammunition they didn’t have before. And they know it.”

The implications for the APC are staggering. If a fraction of the planned court challenges materialise after the 2027 primaries, the party could find itself simultaneously fighting election campaigns and defending dozens of primary outcomes in tribunals across the country.

In constituencies where a court temporarily restrains a substituted candidate from flying the APC flag, the opposition would need only to stand aside and let the ruling party bleed itself.

The governors themselves are not unaware of the fire they are stepping into. Several, according to party sources, privately welcomed the President’s directive as a tool they can deploy against rivals and federal legislators who have used their Abuja platforms to undermine state executive authority.

But the more politically sophisticated among them understand that the directive is a double-edged privilege. Wielding it aggressively could destroy the very party structures they need to win re-election or deliver their preferred successors in 2027.

“The smart governors will negotiate,” a former party official told our correspondent. “They’ll give some ground to the sitting legislators in exchange for loyalty during the presidential campaign. The ones who try to clean house completely will create chaos that outlasts them.”

In 2027, President Tinubu will seek a second term. His re-election case will rest substantially on the APC’s performance in the National Assembly elections and the governorship races running concurrently.

If the ruling party goes into those elections with a depleted legislative caucus, a bruised Senate presence, and a trail of unresolved primary litigation in multiple states, the political environment will be significantly more hostile than anything the President currently enjoys.

The opposition, fractured after 2023, is watching these developments with the closest attention. Strategists within the PDP, the Labour Party, and several smaller parties now courting APC defectors understand that they do not need to build a perfect alternative.

They merely need to create a credible harbour for enough APC members to bleed the ruling party in enough constituencies to swing the National Assembly balance.

“This directive is the APC’s biggest internal threat since the merger itself,” said one former party chieftain. “Tinubu is a brilliant politician. But even brilliant politicians can miscalculate. This may be his.”

A serving National Assembly member from the North Central, when told that some colleagues were already in talks with other parties, did not express surprise. “My brother,” he said quietly, “some of them are not just in talks. Some of them have concluded.”

A state party chairman in the South-South summed up the dilemma: “We are chasing unity and creating division. That is the honest truth of where we are.”

Media aide to the National Chairman of the APC, Mr. Abimbola Tooki, in his reaction, denied knowledge of any such directive allegedly given by the president or any other leader.

“Where did the president issue such a directive? I hope you’ve reviewed the widely reported outcomes of that meeting, which did not include any of the issues you’ve raised here,” he said.

National Publicity Secretary of the APC, Felix Morka, did not respond to messages sent to his active mobile line as at the time of filing in this report