The Tinubu factor takes center stage, setting the tone for a fiercely contested governorship race in a state that for long remained outside the grip of Nigeria’s dominant parties.
President Bola Tinubu fully supports APC Anambra to win the 8 November governorship elections, party officials said at the weekend.
At a stakeholders’ meeting of Anambra Central Senatorial District held in Awka on Thursday, party leaders said it makes sense for Tinubu to support them.
“Mr. President told us to go and win Anambra for the party and promised to give us his full support,” Senator Uche Ekwunife said. Ekwunife is pairing with Chief Nicholas Ukachukwu as his running mate in the election. She faulted the logic behind such narrative.
“How can Mr. President hide his own party and candidate inside a warehouse and then go and promote the product of another party? That’s not possible.”
There are fears, spread in part by APGA, that President Tinubu quietly supports Gov Soludo, against the Anambra APC. The rumours have persisted, even after the President invited the candidate and his running mate to Abuja and handed them the party flag to run. The idea gained currency through claims that the National Working Committee of the APC did not support the President’s candidate in the primaries election.
APC focused on a ‘clean sweep’
On Thursday, Ekwunife declared that President Tinubu endorsed Anambra APC and mandated the party leadership to “go and win the state.”
APC State Chairman, Chief Basil Ejidike, agreed and announced that the APC is focused on “a clean sweep” on 8 November. To achieve the goal, the party will launch its campaign with local government tours this week, beginning from Ayamelum. He expressed confidence that APC will “sweep the polls with the full weight of the federal government behind us.”
“With the mandate given to us by Mr. President, it’s going to be a clean sweep come November.”
President Tinubu supported Soludo in 2021 and is feared to nursing the idea of an informal alliance with the governor. But APGA leaders have repeatedly faulted the speculation.
Framing the APC Message in Anambra
Ekwunife dismissed the insinuation of presidential backing for Soludo as “bogus and false.” She then launched a scathing critique of APGA, branding it a “sectional” party with no growth prospects beyond Anambra.
“No political party in Nigeria is tribal—except APGA,” she said.
“APC is not a Yoruba party, not a Hausa-Fulani party, and not even an Igbo party. It is a national platform that accommodates everyone. But APGA has remained a one-state party whose national chairman and leadership all come from the same state. That is not a party that is growing.”
Party chair Ejidike urged Anambra voters to look at neighbouring states like Ebonyi and Akwa Ibom, where alignment with the APC-led federal government has brought visible infrastructural and economic benefits.
“That’s what we want for Anambra,” he said. “Connecting to the center is the path to progress.”
Tinubu, an issue in the election
With the Tinubu factor now front and center in the APC’s campaign narrative, the stage is set for a fiercely contested governorship race in a state that has long remained outside the grip of Nigeria’s dominant national parties.
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