Across Nigeria, a troubling pattern is now crystallising within the ruling All Progressives Congress ahead of 2027. What is being marketed as “consensus” is increasingly looking like something far less democratic — a top-down, Abuja-directed imposition of candidates on states, on legislators, and on the Nigerian people themselves. From Lagos to Nasarawa, from Ogun to Adamawa, from the Senate chambers to the House of Representatives, the story is the same. Aspirants who spent years building political structures and courting grassroots support are being ordered to stand down — not because the people have spoken, but because a single nod has come from above. The question every Nigerian democrat must now ask is simple but devastating: Has the President of the Federal Republic become the sole elector of the APC?
In Lagos, President Tinubu formally endorsed Deputy Governor Obafemi Hamzat as the APC consensus governorship candidate at a meeting with members of the Lagos Governance Advisory Council at the Presidential Villa. Lagos — Nigeria’s commercial capital with millions of registered voters — has effectively had its 2027 governorship decided in a room in Abuja. In Ogun, findings revealed that several aspirants reluctantly bowed to the consensus decision because it was allegedly backed by President Tinubu. “Reluctantly” is the operative word. Participation under political compulsion is not participation — it is submission.
In Oyo, the drama became almost farcical. A former senator claimed President Tinubu was in support of Senator Sharafadeen Alli’s emergence, stressing that the president’s position as party leader should guide the choice of candidate. Former Minister Adebayo Adelabu fired back, insisting he too had received the president’s personal blessing. Two men, one president, two contradictory stories — and the people of Oyo State watching as their democratic choice is traded like a commodity in Abuja corridors. In Nasarawa, the reported endorsement of Aliyu Wadada drew sharp opposition from former Inspector-General of Police Mohammed Abubakar Adamu, who rejected the process as lacking transparency and inclusiveness. In Kwara, Governor AbdulRazaq is openly challenging the President’s endorsement of Bashir Omolaja Bolarinwa — making him the only sitting governor currently in direct defiance of a presidential consensus decision. In Adamawa, Governor Fintiri declared bluntly: “Imposition of a candidate on members of a political party is worse than a military coup. It destroys the very tenets of democracy and creates resentment that can damage the party beyond repair.” In Yobe, Senator Bomai declared: “We categorically reject this attempt to subvert due process. We reject the culture of imposition.”
Yet nowhere has the raw, personal face of presidential imposition been more painfully exposed than in Cross River State — in a story that would be difficult to believe if it were fiction. Former Cross River State Governor, Senator Ben Ayade, stepped down from the 2027 race for the Cross River North Senatorial seat, citing a direct directive from President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Ayade had served the party loyally, campaigned vigorously for Tinubu’s presidential bid, and was the first APC governor in the entire South-South region. None of it mattered. “Mr President wants me to withhold my Senate ambition. I yield to his request even as I pour tears of ill treatment and agony,” Ayade said, suggesting the president may not have been fully briefed on the political realities of Cross River State. The man the president cleared the field for — Senator Jarigbe Agom Jarigbe, the incumbent representing Cross River North — wasted no time firing back, dismissing Ayade as politically irrelevant and accusing him of distorting facts. Ayade further described the situation as “a spiritual murder,” lamenting that he was being asked to yield a ticket to someone who had only recently joined the APC from the opposition. One former governor, reduced to weeping in a Facebook post, while the beneficiary of a presidential directive gloats. This is the human cost of consensus by command.
The crisis does not stop at governorship. It runs straight through the National Assembly — and the story of Nigeria’s federal legislators in this season is one of betrayal, broken promises, and desperate political survival. Tinubu had earlier suggested he would “do everything within the party’s power” to ensure the return of serving legislators — a promise that raised expectations across the National Assembly. Senators and House members backed every presidential bill, swallowed every controversial policy, and delivered every vote the executive demanded — all on the understanding that their loyalty would be rewarded. That promise has now evaporated. Top members of the National Assembly met with the President at the Villa, pleading for automatic tickets for their colleagues. However, Tinubu insisted that the governor of each state has influence over aspirants.
Fresh indications emerged that the Presidency has quietly endorsed automatic return tickets for a number of serving federal lawmakers regarded as strategic allies of the administration, including Senate President Godswill Akpabio, Deputy Senate President Barau Jibrin, Senate Majority Leader Michael Opeyemi Bamidele, former Senate President Abdullahi Yari, Senator Fatai Buhari, Senator Mukhail Abiru, Senator Aminu Wamakko, and others. These are the favoured few. They will not face the same gauntlet of gubernatorial veto, stakeholder meetings, or competitive primaries that will consume their colleagues. In Lagos, House of Representatives members said to benefit from similar presidential backing include Hon. Babajide Obanikoro, Hon. Wale Raji, Hon. Lanre Ogunyemi, Hon. Oyewo Olanrewaju, Hon. Adewale Temitope, Hon. Ibrahim Ayokunle, and Hon. Taofeek Abiodun.
Meanwhile, those who backed the wrong governor or made the wrong political calculation are paying a steep price. In Ogun State, Senator Gbenga Daniel of Ogun East faces a concerted effort by Governor Dapo Abiodun to reclaim the senate seat for himself. Daniel was reportedly shut out of a stakeholders’ meeting of the Ogun East senatorial district presided over by the governor. A sitting senator — blocked from entering a meeting that will determine his political future. In Benue State, the fallout between Secretary to the Government of the Federation George Akume and Governor Hyacinth Alia over control of the APC structure has pushed 10 of the state’s 11 federal lawmakers into Akume’s camp. Tinubu’s decision gave the governor the green light to determine the direction of the state’s primaries, potentially placing those 10 lawmakers at severe disadvantage. Ten legislators. Ten constituencies. Ten sets of voters whose representatives may be wiped out not because they failed the people, but because they aligned with the wrong power broker. Deputy Spokesman of the House of Representatives Philip Agbese had already defected from the APC to the Labour Party after his return prospects under the APC collapsed — a harbinger of what may await others on the wrong side of their governors.
Some of the affected lawmakers have privately admitted they would not have defected into the APC if they had known automatic tickets would not be guaranteed. The thinking was that every bill President Tinubu brought to the National Assembly, they would push in its favour — because he was going to grant them automatic tickets. Now they are living in regret. This is a devastating indictment — not just of the political system, but of the transactional culture that has replaced genuine democratic representation in Nigeria. Lawmakers were not voting for their constituents. They were voting for their own survival. And even that bargain has now been broken by the same hand that made it.
The contradictions are glaring. President Tinubu told lawmakers at an interfaith dinner at the Presidential Villa: “I will do everything within our party’s power. I wish that everyone would return.” Yet in the same breath he empowered governors to block those same legislators. In one breath, encouragement. In another, empowerment of their political executioners. Both camps then race back to Aso Rock to claim the president is on their side. This is not governance — it is a carousel of political dependency that benefits only those at the very centre.
The defenders of this process will argue that consensus is legal. But legality is not the same as legitimacy. The Electoral Act recognises only two pathways for candidate selection — consensus, which requires written agreement by all cleared aspirants, and direct primaries. If even one aspirant refuses to step down, the party must revert to a direct primary. What is happening state after state is not consensus by this definition. It is consensus by coercion — and no law in Nigeria authorises the President to handpick governors and legislators across the federation.
Can these states override the President? Legally yes, but politically the cost is enormous. Rivers State Governor Fubara initially resisted Tinubu’s intervention in his crisis with Minister Wike. The defiance led to the burning of the State House of Assembly, a state of emergency, and Fubara eventually visiting the President in London to secure his mandate back. But can those waving the President’s endorsement actually win without him? Nigerian history answers this loudly. In 2019, Seyi Makinde won the Oyo governorship against APC’s Adebayo Adelabu, who had the full backing of President Buhari’s federal government, defeating him with 56% of the vote. In 2023, Makinde was re-elected, winning 31 of Oyo’s 33 local government areas — again against the full machinery of the ruling party. Where a candidate has genuine grassroots connection, presidential endorsement of their opponent is not a death sentence. The senators and representatives rushing to Aso Rock for photographs would be better served in their own constituencies.
The dangers of this trajectory are not abstract. Political observers have warned clearly: “Consensus often leaves people unhappy, even if they don’t say it openly. That kind of dissatisfaction usually shows up later during campaigns or even on election day.” History is merciless on this point. In 2014, the PDP cleared the field for President Jonathan’s return ticket. Jonathan lost to Buhari — and the party that had ruled Nigeria for sixteen years collapsed. The APC is now writing the same chapter with its own hand. A suppressed senator becomes a quiet saboteur. A sidelined House member campaigns half-heartedly. A bitter ward chairman delivers his people to a rival party. These silent rebellions have toppled empires far stronger than any APC state chapter.
Some within the APC’s own National Working Committee are already weighing options to push back, with one official warning: “What the president has done is to remove powers from the party leadership, make them redundant and kill the party.” When a party’s own officials speak in such terms about their leader’s actions, the internal rot is deeper than any press statement can conceal.
The voters of Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Kano, Kwara, Nasarawa, Adamawa, Benue, Cross River, Gombe, and Yobe — and the millions of Nigerians represented by the legislators now fighting for their political lives — did not elect President Tinubu to choose their governors or their lawmakers. That remains their exclusive constitutional right. Ben Ayade, who built the APC in Cross River with his own hands, is weeping in a Facebook post because a sitting president ordered him aside for a man who was in the opposition only months ago. Ten lawmakers in Benue are staring down a governor emboldened by the same presidential directive. And across the federation, legislators who voted loyally for every presidential bill are discovering that loyalty in Nigerian politics is a one-way street. The lesson from past electoral cycles is clear: unresolved pre-primary grievances rarely disappear — they mutate. The people are watching. The legislators are watching. And in 2027, all of them will have the final word.
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