The All Progressives Congress (APC) finally inaugurated its presidential campaign council on the 14th day of October, 2026. The venue of the event was the banquet hall of the presidential villa. This is the first act of political impunity. Playing politics of election by a political party in a building built and serviced by the taxpayers for the administration of the country. Since APC came into power, it has found it difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between the affairs of its party and the affairs of the nation. Obviously, it has failed to distinguish between the purse of its party and the purse of Nigeria.
Gov Charles Soludo of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), one of the co-opted governors from the opposition parties to serve Tinubu of APC, said at the inauguration that the inauguration stands as the endorsement from the largest number of elites in Nigeria. I guess he is not far from the truth, because the only set of people who endorse Tinubu’s regime are the elites who benefit directly or indirectly from the corruption that is oozing out from the regime.
What Soludo did not say is that this is the regime that is most loathed by the Nigerian people. Even The Economist that hazarded a guess that Tinubu may be re-elected, did so on the emphatic foundation that the President is disliked strongly by the Nigerian people. No doubt, Tinubu is not expecting to win by the votes of Nigerians but by the shenanigans of the elites who bypass the electoral process to declare whoever they benefit from as winners of election. In 2023, the then Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman bypassed the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV Portal), which he vowed to use for collation, to declare Tinubu as President.
Could this be what APC is planning to do again in 2027? It is anyone’s bet that the party will surely repeat it if the people fail to be vigilant. The National Assembly had commenced this process of bypassing the IReV Portal by making a law that where electronic transmission of results to the IReV Portal fails, manual collation can be used to declare results. This is in spite of the fact that the Presiding Officer does not need network to transmit electronically, but network is needed only to download, which INEC had said, time without number, that every collation centre has the network for the download of transmitted results.
APC does not look at the reasonability of what it is doing or what it is saying, it does whatever it wants, and says whatever it likes. This is impunity at its highest. Senator Godswill Akpabio, the 10th Assembly Senate President declared openly while presiding over a Senate session on 15 October 2026 that the post of President and the Vice are already gone, what was left was the position of the Senate President. Senator Mohammed Munguno of APC quickly declared that the seat is also reserved for Senator Akpabio. Can you imagine, reserving the post of Senate President for the 11th Assembly in 2027 for a Senator who is yet to win his senatorial seat? This assurance can only come from a party that has already written results waiting for the announcement of it.
Gov Nyesom Wike, during his media chat, declared that the President had already won. There is a saying that Nigeria is the country with the fastest capacity to announce results of election. The saying goes that in America, it takes about 24 hours to declare presidential result. In India, results are announced in few days. But in Nigeria, even before the election, results are already announced. This is impunity at its highest. What APC cannot do does not exist.
At the same inauguration ground we witnessed a lot of inconsistencies, contradictions and impunities. Gov Hope Uzodimma hinted that Tinubu would stay back in office and concentrate on governance while they continue with the campaign. He actually pleaded with Tinubu that Nigerians are better of with him concentrating on governance rather than politicking. Tinubu actually accepted the advice from the Chairman of Progressives Governors Forum, Uzodimma, that he would not be joining in the campaign as expected, but will be speaking to Nigerians from his office. The inauguration of APC Presidential Campaign Council has finally exposed Tinubu’s physical incapacity to embark on the onerous task of a presidential campaign.
First, governance and politicking are not mutually exclusive. Democratic governance is enthroned by politicking, not by combat. A President who came into office by politicking but who wants to be re-elected without politicking wants to win through other means. The actual truth about such deceitful arrangement is that APC was actually telling the President indirectly to take care of his health.
The fact speaks for itself that for the first three and half years of Tinubu’s presidency, since 2023, he had spent about 290 days outside Nigeria for about 52 times, on a purported “working vacation” which is an euphemism for medical vacation. Does this also amount to governance of Nigeria?
When the 10th National Assembly was inaugurated in 2023, the opposition were more in the House of Representatives than APC, and had about 50 members in the Senate out of 109 Senators, leaving APC with about 59. Today APC has about 88 Senators in the National Assembly leaving the opposition with about 21. APC has almost two thirds of the members of the House of Representatives. APC had about 20 Governors during 2023 inauguration. Today, it has about 31 Governors.
The President spent the whole of his three and half years muscling the elected opposition members into joining the APC. Immediately any politician joins APC his sins were forgiven. Senator Okowa used to be a regular visitor to the EFCC when Delta State was under the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Immediately he joined APC, his sins were forgiven. With the mindset that whichever politician that joins APC earns more money from the Federation account and more forgiveness of sins, politicians trooped en masse to APC, not by election but by intimidation. So Tinubu used the first three and half years for politicking and holidaying but not governance.
The results of this abandonment of governance for politics for the past three and half years are obvious. The Federal Government spent N7.7trn on interest payments in the first half of 2026, representing 124.2 per cent of its total revenue of N6.2trn during the period, according to the World Bank. The figures indicate that interest payments alone exceeded the government’s revenue by N1.5tn between January and June 2026, raising concerns about Nigeria’s debt burden despite improved revenue collections. Tinubu has borrowed Nigeria into bankruptcy. The country can no longer service its debt without borrowing to do it.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned that higher prices for essential goods, food, and energy are compounding a severe cost-of-living crisis, with national poverty estimated at 63 per cent and roughly 27 million Nigerians facing food insecurity. This means that more than 145m Nigerians are poor. More than 27m Nigerians are feeding essentially from the dustbins.
His ill-advised “fuel subsidy is gone” from the first day in office and his ill-fated devaluation of naira, without cushioning the effects of these policies on the cost of living of citizens, ballooned the transportation costs and engineered the greatest inhumane living conditions on Nigerians in history. Fuel sells at N1500 per litre. Minimum wage is N70,000.00. It takes N150,000 to fill up a 100-litre fuel tank. Nigeria and Nigerians are broke and gasping for breath.
Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) couldn’t take it anymore and decided to issue a two-week ultimatum to the Federal Government to adjust the minimum wage and reduce the cost of fuel. Practically, every sector of the economy is in distress. Electricity is not yet provided. Industrialisation cannot take off without electricity. Nigeria is crippled. A President who removed subsidy on fuel, yet has out-borrowed all his predecessors has no claim of being in governance. He is simply being in deception. It is ridiculous that three months to the election, APC is now saying that Tinubu should jettison politicking and concentrate on governance. Whereas he had never been governing all the while but politicking. This is the contraption and the contradiction.
Opposition parties had been at the ugly side of this politicking. All the opposition leaders who refused to join APC are subjected to one form of torture, intimidation, or the other. Atiku Abubakar, who is the leading opposition leader and a major frontrunner believed to be the only politician that can defeat Tinubu in 2027, has recently been subjected to a campaign of calumny by the APC misinformation and propaganda machine.
Unfortunately for APC, as they are peddling unfounded allegations of corruption against opposition leaders, their own presidential candidate, Tinubu, continued to face increasing pressure of allegations of criminality and corruption worldwide. Tinubu himself filed an objection to the plans by a US Judge to release the records of his alleged dealings in illegal activities, especially drug related matters.
As the campaign heats up, it has become very obvious that the incumbent president lacks the energy and acumen needed to govern. However, if Nigerians are not vigilant to vote and protect their votes, he may still be imposed on Nigerians through the power of the elites whom Gov Soludo referred to, but certainly not by the Nigerian people.
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