Tension that had simmered for months within the All Progressives Congress (APC) has now spilled into public view, pitting Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Minister Nyesom Wike against a bloc of governors elected on the party’s ticket. The dispute raises hard questions about how President Bola Tinubu plans to keep his disciples intact heading into the 2027 election.
In a closed‑door session of the Progressive Governors Forum (PGF) in Abuja last Monday, the governors, led by Imo State Governor Hope Uzodimma, resolved that the APC would support only its own official candidates and refuse to endorse anyone emerging from an outside coalition. Uzodimma warned that backing candidates beyond the APC’s fold would dilute the party’s strength, sow confusion among voters at the grassroots, and split loyalties within the ranks.
Wike has responded with open defiance. Appearing on Arise Television, he flatly denied ever seeking the governors’ endorsement for his Rainbow Coalition, a grouping that pulls together politicians from rival parties who, he said, are mobilising for Tinubu’s re‑election rather than for the APC as an organisation. “There is no day I went to the Governors’ Forum to align with any rainbow coalition—there is no such day. I have never, one day, gone to the APC Forum for an alliance,” he said. He branded the governors as “politically lazy” and compared their handling of the matter to fraudsters who talk big but lack any real strategy for delivering the president votes. The minister also stressed his direct relationship with the presidency, saying, “There is nothing that I do that I don’t tell Mr President. I am not answerable to APC governors.”
Political analyst Uche Igwe traced the rift’s origins to Wike’s appointment as FCT minister, an appointment that unsettled long‑standing power arrangements among Tinubu’s southern allies. Former South‑East spokesman for Tinubu Denge Josef Onoh linked the current standoff to Wike’s earlier role in the G5, a bloc of PDP governors who withheld their backing from PDP’s Atiku Abubakar in 2023 after Wike’s own bid for the party’s presidential ticket fell to Atiku. Onoh suggested that the episode widened cracks inside the PDP, a precedent that may inform the present dispute.
The Rainbow Coalition project itself is the flashpoint. Wike has spent weeks publicly championing the coalition as a means of securing Tinubu a second term by pulling opposition figures into the president’s camp without asking them to formally defect. He has cited the visit of Osun State Governor‑elect Ademola Adeleke to the president as proof of a broadening political realignment. However, the governors see any Rainbow Coalition candidate elected under a different party’s banner as another seat lost to the opposition, regardless of how loyally the occupant may serve Tinubu personally.
APC’s Presidential Campaign Council (PCC) has already sounded the alarm. Spokesman Ima Niboro warned that the standoff could damage the party’s fortunes in 2027 if it is allowed to fester, even while describing it as an internal disagreement among allies chasing the same objective. The governors hold the levers of party structure, local government networks and, in many states, the grassroots machinery that actually turns out votes—resources that Wike, whatever his public profile, does not directly control across most of these states. The cost of either side feeling sidelined will be real, and the governors’ formal rejection of the Rainbow Coalition
<small>Source: Vanguard News — read the original story there.</small>
