The All Progressives Congress’s recent primaries, marked by controversy and chaos, have exposed deep fractures within the party’s seemingly unstoppable rise, raising urgent questions about democratic integrity, elite power struggles, and President Bola Tinubu’s conspicuously silent stance as the 2027 elections loom. Adedayo Adejobi investigates.
On the surface, the APC looks like a juggernaut rolling toward 2027 with unshakable confidence. Governors have defected into its fold in droves, federal power is firmly in its grasp, and the opposition appears fragmented, distracted, and ideologically spent. But Nigerian politics has a nasty habit of hiding instability behind a facade of strength. The louder the victory chants, the more crucial it is to listen for the cracks beneath.
Across the country last week, the APC’s primaries were meant to showcase discipline and electoral readiness. Instead, they revealed a party struggling to reconcile its immense power with the basic democratic duties needed to stay legitimate. Reports from several APC-controlled states painted a grim picture: delayed exercises, parallel congresses, candidate substitutions, allegations of imposition, manipulated consensus deals, protests from aggrieved aspirants, and accusations that in some areas no real voting took place at all. The result was less a democratic competition and more a carefully scripted performance.
In parts of the North Central and South South, aspirants openly rejected announced results. In the South West, whispers of predetermined lists circulated long before delegates gathered. Across multiple states, complaints emerged that governors and entrenched party figures had turned internal contests into coronations. This is not new in Nigerian politics—internal party democracy has always been more of an ideal than a reality. But what made these primaries different was not just the scale of the irregularities, but how normal they have become. That shift matters.
Ruling parties often assume that electoral dominance equals political stability. History says otherwise. Sometimes the most dangerous moment for a governing party comes when it grows too powerful to tolerate dissent and too insulated to see public disillusionment. That is where the APC must tread carefully.
The party’s expanding influence may hide a fragile internal reality. Beneath the surface triumph lies a growing resentment among loyalists, sidelined aspirants, grassroots organizers, and ordinary supporters who feel shut out of meaningful participation. Political resentment rarely announces itself. It builds quietly. Then it hits all at once.
Goodluck Jonathan faced a similar situation in 2015. Surrounded by loyalists, fed optimistic briefings, and reassured by curated intelligence, his administration missed how deeply public frustration had festered. By the time the warnings became impossible to ignore, the coalition holding his power had already weakened. The lesson was harsh: political danger rarely arrives with a bang. It starts quietly, among trusted allies, compromised structures, and institutional complacency.
President Bola Tinubu now stands at a similar crossroads. His political instincts are widely respected, even by opponents. Few in Nigerian politics understand coalition-building, elite negotiation, and long-term strategy better than Tinubu. But leadership also demands attention to the symbolic side of power, especially when democratic credibility is under strain. Here, the President’s recent public posture has raised concerns.
Amid widespread reports of irregularities in the APC primaries, the Presidency has projected an unusually detached and restrained demeanor. There has been little visible urgency, little rhetorical intervention, and little sign that the ruling party’s leadership grasps the deeper institutional implications of the growing discontent. To supporters, this may seem reassuring. To critics, it looks like indifference. To undecided observers, especially younger Nigerians already skeptical of political institutions, it risks creating the impression that anti-democratic practices are becoming acceptable tools of political management within the ruling establishment. That perception carries consequences beyond party politics.
Nigeria remains Africa’s largest democracy and one of its most scrutinized political environments. International investors, development institutions, diplomats, multinationals, tech innovators, and governance experts watch the country not just for economic opportunities, but for signals about institutional stability and democratic maturity. Political systems do not lose credibility only through coups or constitutional collapses. Sometimes it erodes slowly, through repeated exposure to manipulated processes, elite capture, weakened accountability, and the gradual suffocation of competition.
The danger is especially acute for ruling parties that rely too heavily on governors and elite brokers. Across several African democracies, incumbency has evolved into a system where political structures are managed from above, while democratic rituals continue mainly for show. The result is often institutional exhaustion. Parties grow larger but weaker inside. Political participation narrows. Public trust declines. Talented younger actors withdraw from formal politics. Eventually, governance suffers because systems built on loyalty rarely encourage innovation, competence, or intellectual diversity. Nigeria cannot afford that path.
The APC, more than any other political institution in the country today, carries a unique responsibility because of its dominance. Strong ruling parties strengthen democracies only when they remain open enough to accommodate internal competition, credible dissent, and genuine participation. Once they become vehicles for elite preservation, decline begins from within.
Many of the politicians now flocking to the APC are driven less by ideology than by survival. That is not unusual in Nigeria. But such coalitions can become dangerously unstable because they are built on proximity to power, not shared conviction. When access becomes the organizing principle of politics, loyalty becomes transactional.
The President must resist the temptation to see every defection, endorsement, or orchestrated show of support as proof of long-term security. Nigerian political history is full of leaders who mistook temporary alignment for permanent loyalty. One of the great ironies of power is that the closer political actors move to the center, the harder it becomes to tell genuine allies from strategic opportunists.
What happened during the APC primaries should concern the President not just for the immediate optics, but for what it reveals about the evolving culture of governance around the ruling party. Systems that routinely suppress competition internally eventually struggle to inspire confidence externally. Business communities understand this instinctively. Investors value predictability, transparency, and institutional credibility. Tech ecosystems thrive where merit, openness, and innovation are rewarded. Democratic legitimacy, like market confidence, depends heavily on trust in process. Once people believe outcomes are predetermined, cynicism spreads fast.
This moment demands careful reflection from the Presidency. Measured intervention from President Tinubu would not necessarily weaken the APC. On the contrary, it could strengthen the party’s long-term legitimacy by signaling that democratic credibility still matters within the ruling establishment. Leadership is not diminished by correcting excesses within one’s own political family. Often it is strengthened by it. The alternative is far riskier.
If internal dissatisfaction continues to deepen while public confidence continues to erode, the APC may eventually discover that political dominance and political stability are not the same thing. One can exist loudly on the surface while the other quietly deteriorates underneath. That is the true danger now facing the ruling party. Not immediate collapse. Not a sudden rebellion. But the gradual construction of political minefields beneath an apparently triumphant structure. And history, particularly African political history, has never been kind to leaders who mistake silence for stability.
