On 24 March, The PUNCH broke the story, and other outlets confirmed it soon after.
At President Bola Tinubu’s Lagos Eid meeting, Sharafadeen Alli in Oyo, Obafemi Hamzat in Lagos, and Olamilekan Adeola (Yayi) in Ogun were all unveiled as consensus candidates in a pre-primary arrangement that has now become the anchor of the APC’s South-West strategy.
This was no ambush. Every aspirant and their promoters stepped into that Lagos gathering of APC heavyweights with hope in their pockets, convinced that “collegiate politics”, the South-West’s peculiar brand of collective decision-making, would tilt in their favour.
Here, consensus was not demonised; it was embraced as the highest form of party discipline. Yet, beneath the velvet glove lies an iron fist.
While consensus stabilises the structure, it simultaneously silences individual ambition.
The APC has demonstrated that in the South-West, politics is less about individual gladiators and more about Baba sope (the leaders have spoken).
This stands in ironic contrast to the proverb: Àgbàjọ ọwọ́ la fi ń soyá la fi ń soya, it is with joined hands that we beat our chests in strength.
However, what began as a regional “understanding” has mutated into a national template of clinical exclusion. With the APC now governing 32 of 36 states, an unprecedented consolidation of sub-national power, this “collegiate consensus” has become the party’s primary armament for 2027.
Oyo became a temporary exception on the day of “affirmation”; it was one of the few battleground states where the APC governorship ticket was still openly contested. But at the end of the day, Alli trumped the in-house renegades, including the former senator Abdulfatai Buhari, and the immediate past Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu.
Even in Rivers State, Siminalayi Fubara chickened out like a “SIM card without network” when it mattered most.
A rare piece of political alchemy was the emergence of Kingsley Chinda.
Created by the Nyesom Wike machinery, Chinda was a PDP member and Minority Leader in the House of Representatives until April, 27, 2026, when he defected to the APC and obtained a waiver to contest the Rivers governorship primary.
The Rivers APC leadership confirmed his membership and issued his party card while his screening was still pending national approval. But on Thursday, the primary committee chairman, Bitrus Kwamoti, declared Chinda the APC governorship candidate after Governor Siminalayi Fubara, Tonye Cole, and Dax George-Kelly withdrew, leaving him unopposed.
The controversy stems from the optics of a sitting PDP Reps leader switching parties to secure an APC ticket, with reports linking his emergence to FCT Minister Nyesom Wike’s consolidation of control over Rivers politics generally, and the APC structure in particular.
This raises serious questions about party loyalty, discipline, and the legitimacy of consensus arrangements ahead of 2027.
As things stand, we are witnessing what the Yoruba call Ìpadànù arere — the sudden, violent shedding of leaves by the iroko tree.
The scale of this shedding is staggering. While the APC boasts 242 Representatives and 88 Senators, the “Night of Long Knives” has ensured that no fewer than 70 of these 330 serving lawmakers will not return in 2027.
The primaries unfolded less like a democratic ritual and more like a theatre of discontent, a paradox where the party reaped a harvest of senatorial candidates on one hand, and a harvest of grievances on the other.
In the North, the strategy was even more surgical. From the shadows of Kaduna to the plains of Plateau, the “Divine Right of Governors” replaced the ballot box.
Take the case of Representative Donatus Matthew, famously known as the “okada rider”. Having swapped the grassroots bicycle of the Labour Party for what he thought was the armoured tank of the APC to represent Kaura, Kaduna, he found the hatch welded shut.
He was disqualified during screening by the APC hierarchy, his populist appeal neutralised by the cold geometry of the party machinery.
Matthew was not the only political migrant to find the APC’s gates barred from the inside. A suite of former LP federal lawmakers who defected for sanctuary found only the scalpel.
Esosa Iyawe lost his Oredo ticket to Dr Paddy Iyamu; Senator Neda Imasuen (Edo South), Tochukwu Okere (Imo), Bassey Akiba (Cross River), and Daulyop Fom (Plateau) all discovered that in the APC, internal democracy is often subordinated to elite consensus.
They swapped their “kiosk” platforms for a “supermarket”, only to be told they were not on the authorised vendor list.
The purge spared no titans of the Red Chamber. The senatorial list is now a graveyard of established ambitions. In Ogun East, Gbenga Daniel’s machinery disintegrated; in Plateau Central, Diket Plang was sidelined; Osita Izunaso (Imo West), Emmanuel Udende (Benue North-East), Titus Zam (Benue West), Olubiyi Fadeyi (Osun Central), and Saliu Mustapha (Kwara) all saw their tickets vanish into the fog of the “Divine Right”.
Even Senator Ned Nwoko, the billionaire lawyer and flamboyant politician in Delta North, discovered that wealth is no shield against a ruthless state engine. His fall was existential.
As the Igbo proverb captures it: Agwụghị agwụ n’ọnụ nnụnụ — the bird that lands on an anthill is still on the ground. Nwoko flew high, but the machinery swallowed him whole.
Across the federation, the ballot was not a contest of numbers but a crucible of grievances.
In Nasarawa, the air was thick with protests over missing materials; in Kaduna and Bauchi, candidates rejected results as though the ink of legitimacy had been smudged before it could dry.
The North-Central Forum thundered with accusations that the process had been “commercialised”, reducing aspiration to transaction. This was the APC’s dual face: while leaders in Abuja hailed the primaries as peaceful, grassroots members decried them as manipulated and exclusionary.
Yet, amid the cacophony, monuments of continuity remained. Heavyweights like Godswill Akpabio, Jibrin Barau, and Hope Uzodinma secured their tickets, their triumphs standing as anchors of stability in a landscape of contestation.
In my native Ogun, the narrative cut deepest. Ibikunle Amosun’s fiefdom collapsed under the scalpel of a former aide, Shuaib Afolabi Salis.
Even Deputy Governor Noimot Salako-Oyedele, a symbol of technocratic inclusion, was erased from the list.
In the ruthless mathematics of power, she became a remainder rounded down to zero. That is not to say the purge was mindlessly misogynistic; Adijat Adeleye and Funmi Efuwape were “consensually mainstreamed” to fly the flag in their respective federal constituencies.
Yet, feelers from Abuja suggest that all such jubilations and remonstrations may be pyrrhic. There is hope for the “living dead” politician.
The National Working Committee insists it is illusory to celebrate state-level “winners”. The real kingmakers are no longer in the state capitals; they are behind closed doors in Abuja reviewing the “centralist list”. For those who celebrated, it is not yet Uhuru.
The new Electoral Act 2026 further compounds this purge. By criminalising “dual membership” with a two-year jail term, the law has effectively boarded up the exits. The era of “decamping” after a loss is over. Disgruntled heavyweights like Rochas Okorocha are now trapped within the very party that humiliated them.
The APC has perfected Michels’ “Iron Law of Oligarchy”, creating a self-preserving organism that treats independent gladiators as contaminants.
While the APC builds its monolith through a “Night of Long Knives”, the opposition, the so-called “kiosk parties”, stands as a collection of fragmented sole proprietorships.
If the PDP, ADC, NDC, LP, and others do not merge into a supermarket of ideas, they will remain peripheral actors in a one-party play.
Does this “Absolute Order” guarantee victory in 2027?
Structurally, the APC is unmatched. Yet legitimacy is won not only at the ballot but in the perception of fairness. By trapping titans and erasing representation, the APC risks building a Trojan Horse within its own fortress.
Trust and cohesion were the true casualties of these primaries. The graveyard silence of 2026 may yet be broken by ghosts haunting the 2027 ballot.
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