On the way towards the general election in 2027, the All-Progressives Congress (APC) ought to be the most confident of the contenders on the turf. APC is the ruling party. It has all of 33 or so, of the 36 state governors in its fold, for whatever their respective electoral worth is.
The party and its leadership insist also that the economy is doing very well, that difficult times are behind now, and that Nigerians are almost at the gate of Eldorado. In other words, the people are happy with the government, or at least, can feel the air of a new dawn not far in the horizon. President Bola Tinubu actually said that prosperity has set in.
The people definitely are on a different page from the man who presides over their affairs. president. An improving economy is like a pregnancy, it simply cannot be hidden, not for long. In any case, nothing lifts the veil of melancholy like a buoyant pocket. If the Nigerian economy is getting out of the doldrums, Nigerians would not require being told.
However, if the government says the economy is doing well, that should be an added source of confidence for the ruling party. Everything then, ought to be going well for the APC. Its national membership is also robust, according to the party’s leadership. As at the last public declaration, the APC leadership said that the official membership of the party stands at 12.9 million registered members. That is a substantial jump from the 8million plus that was officially ascribed to the party at the last presidential election in 2023.
Then again, the opposition parties are repeatedly touted as being weaker for standing respectively on their own and failing to coalesce. Without the opposition pulling together, they are greatly diminished, so chorus many analysts. So, everything appears to be working to the favour of the ruling party.
Curiously, however, that does not appear so. The APC is showing serious signs of being in the throes of jitters bothering on desperation. It is either that the ruling party knows something that it is not openly saying, or it is having a presentiment that the future is delicate. It is either these, or that the party is in the grips of unruly elements, who may yet undo it.
The increasing cases of APC state governments and apparatuses brazenly attacking the fundamental fabrics of multi-party democracy which the party is expected to guide, hardly reflect a ruling party that is at peace with itself and the system. A party that is sure of itself cannot be throwing up Molotov cocktail at every turn of the road. That should be the pastime of a group that has nothing to lose.
It does not speak well of a ruling party entrusted with the values of democracy in the society that the APC elements are dispensing violence and threats of more violence all over the land, just because elections are in the offing.
Last week in Benin City, the state chairman of the APC, Mr. Jarrett Tenebe was at his ugly best once again publicly threatening that “anybody who wants to stand on our way from getting 2.5 million votes for President Tinubu… AK 47 fire!”. Tenebe has become one of the ugly faces of the APC. In Edo State, he has cut a profile for himself as a man of violence.
He was obviously caged successfully under the immediate past Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) government in the state. His temperament has been let loose since APC gained control of Edo State. For the Edo state APC Chairman, winning any number of votes for Tinubu is not a matter of campaigning and convincing the electorate. It is a matter of wielding AK 47.
There is no indication yet that either the Police or any of the relevant security agencies has invited him over for clarification of his expressed intent for the election in 2027. Could that be the way the APC plans to win the 2027 elections?
Barely one month ago, specifically on September 8,2026, Mr. Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) had his visit to Benue State disrupted by supposed youths who blocked the Makurdi-Gboko federal highway. The said youths refused the former Anambra State governor and his entourage entry into the state. There was no good reason beyond political intolerance.
Although the NDC presidential candidate’s visit was more humanitarian than political, the fact that such a prominent citizen could have his fundamental freedom of movement abridged in the APC state was instructive. The statement of the APC governor of the State, Hyacinth Alia to the effect that Obi did not give him prior notice before coming into Benue State left no one in doubt about the belligerent disposition of the APC to alternative views.
Before Alia, there was Senator Francis Fadahunsi of Osun East who mounted the podium during the campaign for the Osun State governorship election last August and publicly advocated for violence and death to all those who were not for the APC. Fadahunsi is 75 years old.
In Lagos, the APC government has taken steps to rid the state of outdoor advertisement of presidential candidates of other parties beside the APC. In the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja, the Kuje Council Chairman, Danjuma Samuel Shekwolo found it necessary to affirm his APC bona fides by asking all residents of his council area who would not vote for the APC in the coming presidential election to pack out of the council area. Over at Enugu, a local meeting of the NDC was violently sacked by hoodlums in early September. The list goes on and on. The things the APC do.
Yet, in all these manifest threats to peace, safety of individuals and democracy, the only known arrests made so far by the police for acts of political intolerance are some persons wearing “Tinubu must go” T-shirts somewhere in Borno State.
Fear often drives people to act in very irrational and tactless ways. A ruling political party that has been in government for a period in excess of ten consecutive years should have a more efficient strategy to win the embrace of the electorate than the APC is showing at the moment. Resort to intimidation and violence cannot be a viable electoral strategy, no matter how the electoral contest is configured.
The sooner the APC brings the reality to bear on its desperate members that Nigeria’s democracy was not designed with any particular political party in mind, the sooner the society will have peace. The predominant impression of the APC at the moment is that of a party that cannot rein in its unruly members, at all levels.
This gun-boat democracy being manned by a disparate set of unruly elements who tend to believe that every other person must give way to their, warts and all, points to no other end but grief for all.
