So sad that Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, until last weekend, chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) will no longer be there at the helm of the party, to welcome the next batch of opposition governors defecting to his party. Three more are said to be on the queue to be poached.
Whether Ganduje left as a result of over-night health emergency, or he was scornfully discarded, based on permutations of better yielding political alignments, the bottom line is that the former Kano State governor is gone from the APC secretariate.
In recent times, contrived euphoric rallies heralding formal crossing over of opposition governors from their parties into APC has been a hallmark of Ganduje’s schedule as national chairman. Harvesting opposition governors for the ruling party has become a routine item on his weekly schedule of duty.
Instructively, the defecting governors do not join the ruling party because of any deal with the party chairman or any behind-the scene prodding from him. That godfather’s work belongs to someone else in the house – the grandmaster of the art. Ganduje lapped it up, all the same. Now, no more.
As of Friday, June 27, 2025, when he suddenly took the plunge or was pushed, Ganduje had no known health challenges. It was not surprising, however, that references to his ill health were belatedly inserted in some reports of his ouster. Not that anyone bought the spin. In APC, almost all the former national chairmen developed fever at some point, leading to their exit.
The formal statement on Ganduje’s exit by the party through its Publicity Secretary, Felix Muoka, was quite coy in handling the matter. It spoke of Ganduje leaving to attend to “urgent and important personal matters”. Whatever.
APC Governors Forum adopted a more esoteric approach to the development. From their meeting location in Benin, Edo State, at the same period as their former national chairman ‘resigned’, the governors said his exit was “a strategic step towards repositioning the party”. They added that the development was “not a sign of crisis, but aligns with internal reforms and ongoing efforts to strengthen the APC”
The idea, in all the effort, was to create an impression that Ganduje’s exit was a part of some sequenced activities in a scheme by APC for better performance. That is not true.
Neither the governors nor the party officials at the Secretariat, and certainly not Ganduje himself, knew that he would be ousted when it happened. Only one man knew the time and the reason. That, unfortunately, is what has become of the political party system in Nigeria.
Political parties have progressively become appendages of the executive branch of government, especially where the parties are in power. Where they are not, the party chairman becomes the czar.
Ganduje held his office at the behest of one man, the president, and that one man disposed of him according to his purposes. Every other attempt by other persons to present the development as structural is nothing more than third party jostling by bystanders, to appear important.
The leadership of the APC (read Bola Tinubu) moved quickly to replace the departed Ganduje, albeit in an interim arrangement. Ali Dalore, a North East party stalwart, was plucked right away to assume the party chairman’s seat. The clinical substitution spoke of a premeditated act. So now, the next batch of cross-carpeting governors can approach. There is someone to officially usher them into APC.
Why Ganduje was dispatched with such urgency will be manifest in the days ahead. His sudden ‘resignation’, which the APC governors said does not indicate crisis, may yet herald that which they fear. Time.
Few kilometres away from the Wuse 2 location of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, where Abdullahi Ganduje used to hold sway at the APC Secretariat, separated by busy stretches of streets and roads, the People Democratic Party (PDP) also has its headquarters.
Last week, it was also struggling in its own web of crisis.The PDP head office, a multi- coloured structure, commonly known as Wadata Plaza, has been the scene of regular drama these days. The Plaza has housed PDP from its years of affluence to its present days of chronic disorientation.
Early last week, PDP was embroiled in another round of contentious leadership drama.
There may not be any comparison in the fortunes of the APC and the PDP at the moment. The case of the latter is not just pathetic, it appears hopeless.
By dint of wielding the federal might, APC controls the instruments of coercion with which it moderates divergent tendencies within and overwhelms opposition without, at least for now. The PDP does not presently have that luxury. Its factions therefore keep metastasizing like a dangerous tumour.
Last week, the staff of the party at its secretariat tried to wade in somehow, in the unending leadership squabbles. When Senator Samuel Anyanwu, claimant to the contentious secretaryship of the party, stormed the party secretariat to assume the secretary’s office, according to reports,the staff took a novel stance to express their disapproval of continued belligerence by key protagonists in the crisis.
As Anyanwu entered the party secretariat with his security details,and made for the secretary’s office,all the staff left the premises.They simply walked away without rancour, leaving the former senator to have the secretariat to himself. Mahatma Gandhi will be very proud of such non-violent protest.
With the echo in the vast estate bouncing uncomfortably back at him, and with not even a tea boy or office assistant to deal with, the man eventually went away
The day after, the leadership corps of the party held a meeting with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in a bid to resolve the party’s intractable leadership problem. Alas, an otherwise innocuous question from the electoral commission’s leadership; “who is your national secretary?” eventually aggravated the squabbles. What is to be done with PDP?
As of yesterday, policemen were reported to be barring party executives from accessing the party secretariat for a scheduled National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting.
In more ways than one, the case of Senator Anyanwu’s claim to the secretaryship of PDP captures the problems of political parties in Nigeria. The parties are, in most instances, architects of their own predicament.
Anyanwu appears on a cursory look as a trouble-maker, whose claims are unreasonable.
He was the national secretary of the party. Then, he stepped aside to contest governorship election in Imo State in 2023. He failed in the bid and promptly returned to the party and asked to be restored as national secretary.
That appears, on the face of it, to be immoderate, if not outrightly tendentious, until you realize that the PDP law allows for such. Indeed, there is precedence. Anyanwu is not the first party official who went out to contest an election, failed, and returned to his office at the party secretariat. What he is fighting for, therefore, is more or less within his right.
The question then becomes; Why will any political party make such an awkward law for itself? Another question becomes, if what Anyanwu is asking for is legitimate and others before him got without rancour, why has his case led to such bitter split within the party?
The answer is located in the company Anyanwu keeps. He is guilty by association. He is a close associate of former Governor Nyesom Wike, whose name and presence trigger off alarm virtually everywhere he steps in.
The struggle for control of PDP had since 2022 split the party into Atiku Abubakar and Nyesom Wike factions.For one side of the divide, allowing Anyanwu to be restored as national secretary will amount to nothing less than a dangerous weapon in the hands of an opponent.
Annoyingly, the 2023 presidential ticket of the party over which Atiku and Wike went to war rightly belonged to the South East zone. In other words, these two entities are lurked in a fight over what does not rightly belong to them. That is a statement on who they are. And they have refused to let go, to the detriment of PDP – a party in whose DNA the nobility of disposition to obey even its own rules is largely absent.
Developments in the APC and PDP in the last week of June 2025 reflect the foundational weakness of the political party system in Nigeria. The challenges will substantially impact the national politics in the months leading to the 2027 elections.
There will, surely, be more twists, resignations, defections, and possibly reversed defections down the road. The worry is that neither the judiciary nor any other institution of the state is robust enough to moderate excesses in the political environment.
