So sad that Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, until last weekend, chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) will not stay further 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 was 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 definite 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 individual dispatched 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 the interim. 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 of 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) was also struggling in its own web of crisis, at its headquarters, also in Wuse. Commonly known as Wadata Plaza, the multi-coloured expansive PDP headquarters has been the scene of regular drama these days. Wadata Plaza has housed DPD 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, the ruling party controls the instruments of coercion with which it moderates divergent tendencies within and overwhelms opposition without, at least for now. The PDP does not have that luxury at the moment. Its factions keep metastasizing like a dangerous tumour.
When, last week, Senator Samuel Anyanwu, claimant to the contentious secretaryship of the party, stormed the party secretariat to assume the secretary’s office, the staff took a novel stance that spoke of their disapproval of continued belligerence by key protagonists in the crisis. All the staff, according to reports, left the premises when Anyanwu stormed the office with his security personnel. The staff 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 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 the governorship election in Imo State in 2023. He failed in the bid and returned to the party to seek restoration 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 are precedence. Anyanwu is not the first party official who went out to contest 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 becomes; why will any political party make such an awkward law for itself? Another question then becomes, if what Anyanwu is asking for what others before him have got without rancour, why has his case led to such bitter split within the party?
The answer is obviously 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 triggers off alarm virtually everywhere he steps in. As struggle for control in PDP had split the party into Atiku Abubakar and Nyesom Wike factions, allowing Anyanwu to be restored as national secretaryship appears nothing less than a dangerous weapon in the hands of a warring faction.
Annoyingly, the 2023 presidential ticket of the party which Atiku and Wike started fighting over, rightly belonged to the South East zone. In other words, these two entities are lurked in a fight over what does not 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 inclination to obey even its own rules is largely absent.
Developments within the APC and PDP in the last week of June 2025 reflect the foundational weaknesss of the political party system in Nigeria. The challenges will substantially impact on 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.
Credit:The Sun