The candidate of All Progressives Congress (APC) in the November 8 2025 Anambra state governorship election, Chief Nicholas Ukachukwu, was at Aso Rock on May 26, 2025.He went for the symbolic collection of the party flag from President Tinubu. Ukachukwu was in the company of his dogged running mate, Senator Uche Ekwunife.
At the ceremony, inside the chambers of the presidential villa, Tinubu, who doubles, unmistakably now, as the undisputed national leader of APC, reportedly mandated the APC gubernatorial ticket to “go and get me Anambra State” (mark the authorisation and the language). The charge, more authoritarian than democratic, would have passed for a routine statement at such occasions, but for interesting sub-themes on the backdrop.
Until the Anambra APC governorship flagbearer and his deputy went to the presidential villa and came away with Tinubu’s endorsement and a charge, as it were, Professor Chukwuma Soludo, incumbent governor of Anambra State and candidate of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) in the said election, had been feeling irie. He carried on with an air of a candidate who had satisfactorily covered all grounds in a scheme of study and was only waiting for examination day to fulfil formal obligations.
Barely two weeks before Tinubu’s charge to the APC flagbearers at Aso Rock, specifically on May 8 2025, Anambra state had hosted him to a one-day state visit. No presidential state visit in recent times had been promoted by the host with such unrestrained enthusiasm. The desire to court the visitor was very conspicuous, without reservations. Almost every aspect of the Tinubu visit to Anambra, from its timing, and its itinerary to its promotional theme, seemed designed to meet the primary purpose of creating an impression that Tinubu and Soludo were an item. For good measures, Soludo distributed gratuitous insults wherever he believed they will please Tinubu.
Even the obvious fact that the visiting president was of a different party and his party had members in Anambra state were de-emphasized with some curious vehemence, as an all-out effort was made to advance an impression that there was no difference anymore between APC and APGA. Soludo laboured to remind anyone who was listening, that the two parties, APC and APGA are all progressives marching in tandem to wherever their destination may be. Quite interesting.
In his press briefing just before the presidential visit, the governor had gushed of the presidential visit thus; “This is proof that my administration is forging a partnership that works. I urge you all to give him (the visiting president) a resounding welcome”. In all this, the governor elected to ignore the reality that APC, the party of the visiting president, is a living and active party in his state and that whatever partnership he was constructing in his mind with Tinubu may not thrive if it excluded the party chieftains in Anambra. To him, obviously, Tinubu is APC. He is all that matters. That may well be true.
In the wake of the one-day visit by Tinubu to Anambra, Governor Soludo was in good spirit and exuded palpable happiness. He came across even in the media, as someone who could easily take a walk on the water. His quest for a second term seemed to be going remarkably well. Tinubu accepting to visit Anambra appeared, in his reckoning, to be all that was needed for him to be coronated for a second term in November. Somehow, really, the impression was created, all over the place that Tinubu accepting the governor’s invitation for a one-day visit was the biggest event in Anambra state since the first Niger Bridge was commissioned in December 1965.
Although Soludo had lavishly endorsed Tinubu for a second term, an action that has become a past time of a number of fickle opposition governors of the day, the sole APGA governor in the country did not manage to extract a reciprocal endorsement from the far more politically savvy Tinubu. In the end, even if he was disappointed by not receiving the endorsement he clearly sought, Soludo remained upbeat, making of the presidential visit what pleased him. As it seemed, to him, the mere visit of the president was an endorsement. Of course, not many thought so, but he obviously did not care. Then, the APC governorship candidate in the state was told by the same President Tinubu to go and get him Anambra State. Get it from who?
The question is, why should it matter so much to a Soludo governing Anambra State whether Tinubu endorses him or not? It is instructive that for Soludo and virtually all governors of the present miserable political season in Nigeria, the surest pathway to electoral success does not pass anymore through the electorate. Tinubu is the way, even if he is not the truth. Courting Tinubu is now the new winning formula and magic wand to win elections. Such a pathetic turn of affairs.
Being friend to a president in a presidential system certainly does not hurt. There is nothing wrong, or illegal about it. It is a different matter however, when, an individual, a president still struggling to establish a firm footing for his presidency, is being transformed, with or without his approval, into a deity, from whose foot all electoral successes must flow. The fault may not be Tinubu’s entirely.
The reality that what counts for Governor Soludo, as he seeks re-election is not the endorsement of the town unions and communities in Anambra State, but the approval of Tinubu, a president from a competing political party, is, at best appalling. The indictment is not only on the system, but also on the individuals, the governors in particular, who have proved themselves to lack conviction, strength of character and moral strength, to stand on their own. What potentate did Tinubu kowtow to as governor?
The image of state governors seeking audience to pledge loyalty to President Tinubu as a guaranty for re-election, in almost all the political parties, evokes the image of Mario Puzo’s 1972 epic, The Godfather. It leaves a sour taste about democracy in Nigeria.
Over at Akwa Ibom state a fortnight ago, before he finally took the leap, Governor Umo Enoh, was heavy-hearted and virtually in tears, as he publicly testified to how much he loved Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and how he would ordinarily not want to leave the party. Yet, he said, he had to defect to APC. He made it appear as if he had no choice.
It was a very pathetic scenario, made more absurd by the governor himself, when the now APC governor insisted that he would not allow “just anybody”to come and take control of PDP, which he said he laboured to build. In other words, even as Governor Enoh’s body goes to APC, his spirit will continue to hover around PDP secretariat like a youth dispatched in his bloom. What a life?
In Delta, Akwa Ibom, possibly Osun, Anambra and other states that will join the queue of absurdity, the days ahead promise interesting drama. As divergent political interests, contenders and wayfarers coalesce under the singular command of Bola Tinubu, whose will, rather than the will of the electorate, may now be the ultimate decider of the electoral fortune of candidates across constituencies, Nigeria’s democracy is headed for an uncharted territory, the form and future of which no one can predict.
In a scenario such as is playing out in Anambra, for instance, where an authentic APC candidate now has to contend with a wannabe Tinubu acolyte coming in to take shelter, having repudiated his natural turf, it will be interesting to watch how Tinubu, as the sole determinant of electoral fortunes across states and constituencies in the country, will resolve the multiple contradictions at hand. Will he discard his party members for the new destitutes? Or will he return all contenders to the field, back to the dispossessed electorate?