By Clifford Ndujihe, Demola Akinyemi, Juilet Umeh, Dan Abia & Emma Una
Powerful blocs in the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, are up in gloves against the Rainbow Coalition midwifed by Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Abuja, Minister, Nyesom Wike, saying it would not only hurt the party’s candidates in the 2027 polls but also the re-election of President Bola Tinubu.
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Wike, a kingmaker in the camp of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, recognised by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, insists that the Rainbow Coalition is 100 per cent for Tinubu, countering that his political traduces were against him because of his support for the president.
However, his opponents countered that by the Coalition’s fielding of candidates from various parties, many voters especially in the rural areas would be confused on election day and the move could reduce Tinubu’s vote tally in what is panning out as a hot presidential balloting.
Already, the issue is raising dust in many states such as Rivers, Kwara, Gombe and Cross River.
Speaking during a media chat in Port Harcourt, Rivers State capital, last week, Wike said that Imo State Governor and Chairman of Progressives Governors Forum, Senator Hope Uzodimma; and Kwara State Governor and Chairman of Nigerian Governors Forum, AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, were in the forefront of a campaign against him.
“Take for example, Kwara, he has been the one championing this campaign against me everywhere. Yes, I have confronted him too. I don’t talk about what I cannot defend,” he said.
According to him, the Kwara governor accused him of sponsoring candidates against his preferred choices in the state.
He added that the governor ought to be grateful to him for offering a platform to aggrieved APC bigwigs who ditched the party for his PDP rather than going to pitch tent with anti-Bola Tinubu coalition.
The minister also referenced a strained relationship with the Imo State governor, recalling that the governor once declined to support him, despite the support he gave him.
Wike insisted that despite these grievances, his focus remains on delivering President Tinubu’s re-election, adding that he would not allow personal disputes with the governors to distract him from that goal.
The minister maintained that he had never concealed his political intentions and challenged those alleging he was working against the interests of the ruling APC, and governors to state clearly what support they had extended to him in his own political battles.
Why we’re against Rainbow Coalition
Contacted on the issue, a top source close to the APC governors said Wike’s National Rainbow Coalition could create confusion among the electorate, and reduce the votes of President Tinubu.
Sources close to Tinubu however, said the President had been informed that the National Rainbow Coalition might affect his votes in the forthcoming general elections across the states.
Sources said these concerns were expressed by the governors at a recent meeting in Abuja.
The Wike-led coalition has fielded candidates in the PDP for National Assembly elections which come up on the same date as the presidential election in 2027.
They said the arrangement might fragment the vote strength of President Tinubu of the APC, who the coalition claimed to support.
Members of the rainbow coalition, who are desperate about their personal ambitions, were said to be merely using the president’s name in the public, while secretly promoting their candidacy in their different communities.
The joker, it was learned from sources closer to the strategic and nocturnal meetings, is to instruct their followers secretly to ditch anything APC during the election and vote for the PDP from top to bottom.
This development, Saturday Vanguard gathered is causing concern within the ranks of the APC governors as some said they won’t buy an idea which, according to them, will affect the President and APC’s National Assembly candidates.
They argued that majority of the voting public had not attained that level of political enlightenment to make proper discernment between different political parties. Political records show that people vote in a singular direction in most cases.
They said the coalition would not be able to handle the old, rural and illiterate voters. Example can be seen in the case of Oyo State in the 2023 election where in an attempt to support the presidential bid of candidate Tinubu of the APC, the PDP which was the ruling party at the state level lost the National Assembly seats.
A similar scenario played out in the South-West in 2003 when in a bid to support the re-election bid of PDP’s President Olusegun Obasanjo, the then ruling Alliance for Democracy, AD, lost five governorship and most National Assembly seats in the zone.
Ironically, the only survivor was Senator Bola Tinubu, who was Lagos State governor and his National Assembly candidates.
Now, the sources continued, the African Democratic Congress, ADC, Presidential Candidate, Atiku Abubakar, who is one of Tinubu’s fiercest challengers, has been unrelenting in promoting his aspirations, emphasising that the electorate should vote for his party. Atiku is positioning himself to harvest full votes from North-East and North-West.
“This will hurt Tinubu badly, if he does not get maximum votes from North-Central and South-East,” the source added.
Bukola Saraki, Abdulrazak’s rival, has teamed up with Wike in Kwara and this could hurt the APC in the state. People can’t reconcile how the Rainbow Coalition would be making case for President Tinubu on one hand and be fighting the APC on the other. However, the rainbow coalition is not a Kwara issue. They have candidates in Gombe, Cross River, Zamfara, Kwara, and other states.
In Cross River, a similar coalition, comprising PDP, Labour-Obidient, ADC elements, has also set out to challenge the incumbent governor, Bassey Otu.
Sources said the governors want the party leadership to step in to avoid what could perhaps be the biggest sabotage in the history of the country, saying “the rainbow coalition poses more dangers to the president’s re-election and needs to be addressed urgently.”
Rainbow Coalition sparks-off confusion in Rivers
Indeed, the coalition is already raising dust in many states. There is a looming climate of uncertainty over the choice of a particular governorship candidate the Rivers people would be disposed to vote for in the 2027 gubernatorial elections with the Rainbow Coalition consistently saying that it would field a consensus governorship candidate that would be acceptable to all the coalition political parties and the Rivers people at large. The Rainbow Coalition membership cuts across all the major political parties in Rivers State including PDP, APC, and Labour Party, LP among others.
The group was formed in January 2026 during the contest for supremacy between Wike and Governor Siminalayi Fubara in the heydays of the political crisis in Rivers to counter Fubara’s ‘Sin Movement.’ It was hurriedly packaged when Fubara was co-opted into APC and he later publicly flaunted his 001 registration number. And Wike pumped steam into the coalition when Fubara latched out at Wike indirectly that if you want to follow Mr. President “don’t follow corner corner”.
However, Rivers people appear to be in dilemma giving the fact that the leader of the Rainbow Coalition, Wike, without much consultation with major stakeholders picked Hon Ogundu Kingsley Chinda as APC candidate even as the minister still remains in the PDP.
Chindah was a Minority Leader in the House of Representatives on the platform of the PDP. He was the leader of the PDP caucus in the House until he surprisingly emerged before the APC screening committee. His defection from the PDP to APC still remains a subject of litigation going to the next election.
Besides, the silent grumbling within the coalition, especially from those candidates who are mainly from the riverine areas of the state, is why should Chindah who is from the upland be given the nod to be the consensus candidate of the coalition?
Most candidate of the coalition are from the riverine area of the state where Fubara comes from. The argument is that since Fubara was forced to have a balkanized four year term following the widely condemned declaration of a state of emergency by President Tinubu, “it presupposes that a riverine candidate from any of the coalition members should have been allowed to complete the remaining four years of Fubara”, an aggrieved member said. The Ijaws are already talking about marginalisation.
The coalition has picked, the present Majority Leader of the state House of Assembly, Hon Major Jack, as a running mate to Chindah. Jack is a close relation of the governorship candidate of Nigeria Democratic Congress, NDC, Chief Dumo Lulu Briggs from Abonnema in Akuku Toru LGA of the state.
The confusion the Rainbow Coalition is setting here, for instance, is that riverine people would be left to choose between APC with an upland candidate, and the NDC with a riverine candidate.“The Rainbow Coalition must answer a simple question: Which party should Rivers people actually vote for? When candidates fly different party flags but claim to belong to one coalition, are they offering Rivers state a political alternative or deliberately creating confusion?”, Dr. Jackson Omenazu, Chancellor of international society for social justice and human rights, IJSSJHR, asked.Omenazu said that Rivers people are not fools. “They deserve clarity, credible choices and a coalition built on principles—not political opportunism.”
“Rivers people are not confused”, said Hon Desmond Stephen, House of Assembly candidate of Action Democratic Party, ADP. ”The confusion they are setting is that they want to hoodwink the people to believe falsely that the election has been contested and won by their so called rainbow coalition so that there will be voters apathy on election-day. That will not happen. Rivers people are wiser”.
Wike had boasted that all the candidates in the rainbow coalition would win the election.
But his oppoents countered, saying that many people have threatened to respond to the APC and President Tinubu on the “illegal” declaration of the state of emergency in the state and the “embarrassment” they caused Fubara.
Over the years, Rivers people have always voted PDP. But with the crisis in the party, nobody is sure what will happen even their Ogoni son, Dr Gabriel Pidomson of ADC and Chief Dumo of NDC from Kalabari remain top contenders along with Chinda.
Gombe: Pantami’s calculated realignment
In Gombe State, former Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, has moved to the PDP with the backing of the Rainbow Coalition, a realignment that implies he would support President Tinubu’s re-election bid while simultaneously working against the APC governorship candidate in the state, underscoring the multi-layered, sometimes contradictory nature of the coalition’s state-level arrangements.
Reactions trail Saraki, Wike’s Rainbow Coalition against APC in Kwara
In Kwara, the polity is tensed.
Ahead of the Senator Saliu Mustaphas’ defection saga in kwara state three weeks ago, APC aggrieved members formed alliance with former Senate President, Dr Bukola Saraki, leader of the Wike-backed PDP in the state to work against the candidates of the ruling APC and the governor’s senatorial bid.
Following irreconcilable crisis within the ruling APC in the state , Chairman Senate Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development and senator representing Kwara Central senatorial district of Kwara state at the National Assembly, Senator Saliu Mustapha took the lead and formally resigned his membership of the APC.
Recall that Senator Mustapha contested for the gubernatorial ticket of APC but lost to the Speaker, Salihu-Yakubu Danladi while he also technically lost his return ticket to Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq who is on the ticket of the party for Kwara central .
After his move to PDP, Senator Mustapha was given the Kwara central senatorial ticket of the party to slug it out with Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq in the 2027 polls.
Apart from Senator Mustapha that has resigned from APC, another APC chieftain from Patigi local government, Hon. Kolo Jiya has resigned from APC and joined PDP and has been rewarded with the Kwara North senatorial district ticket of the PDP for 2027 as well.
Similarly, two lawmakers in the Kwara State House of Assembly Hon. Olushola Odetundun and Hon. Saba Yisa Gideon representing Irepodun state constituency and Edu State Constituency respectively also defected from the APC to PDP. Wike’s PDP is really at war with APC in Kwara.
While leadership of the Kwara State House of Assembly has declared their seats vacant, the National Assembly is yet to make a declaration on the exit of Senator Salihu Mustapha from the APC.
The national leadership of APC and the presidency have also kept mum over what a source described as a PDP appointee in an APC government using APC resources to fight APC governors.
The aggrieved members of the APC in comprising those who fell out from the National Assembly and gubernatorial primaries have formed rainbow coalition in Kwara State against candidates of the APC but vowed to work for the re-election of President Tinubu.
These aggrieved members in the APC recently came under the banner of Otoge Progressives (T.O.P.) two weeks ago to formally launch the Kwara State chapter of the National Rainbow Coalition on August 26, 2026, in Ilorin as a multi-party political arrangement for the 2027 elections.
The rainbow coalition allows members and different political blocs to unite around a shared national goal— specifically supporting the re-election of President Tinubu while keeping the freedom to choose different parties for other elections.
Other prominent political actors associated with the movement include Yahaya Oloriegbe, Kolo Jiya, Yahaya Seriki, and Dele Belgore among others.
The movement particularly includes aggrieved members and former APC aspirants (such as the G15 group) opposed to the local leadership and succession agenda of Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq.
Reactions
The immediate past Head of Political science department, university of Ilorin, Dr Abdul Kareem Jimoh, Chairman Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) Ilorin branch Barr Jimoh Muhammed and a media guru turned politician Alhaji Raheem Adedoyin gave their perspectives as stated below:
Governors are right to be angry — Jimoh
His words: “The governors are right to be angry because Wike is affecting their own interest. Wike has collaborators within the presidency and among the party in Abuja and their concern is that so far as the president’s interest has been taken care of, they are less concerned about what will happen to the party at various state levels.
“it’s not a new thing in politics that we’re having this kind of political development, that a particular politician that belongs to a political party will still have his way in another party. Wike is even so powerful than some of the landlords of the APC. So,as a political scientist, we are studying it, we want to see the aftermath of this kind of action.
“To some extent, I have my reservations on the consequences of this particular development regarding Wike in particular.
The consequences will be on the ruling party APC not today but in 2031, that is when Wike would have probably satisfied Tinubu’s interest and APC will want to pick another candidate and Wike will now become a serious threat and challenge, but we will wait and see in 2031 what will happen.”
FCT minister has freedom of speech — NBA ilorin chair
On his part, Mohammed said: “I’m not speaking in my capacity as the NBA chairman Ilorin branch, I’m speaking as a lawyer. The issue between FCT Minister and Kwara State governor is best known to both of them.There may be political issues, political differences between the two of them. Okay? So FCT minister who is having a daily bread from APC and at the same time attacking the state governor who is also APC, there must be something fishy between the two of them, And since that issue happened, up to today I’ve not heard or seen any press statement from the government at the national level condemning the act or attitude of FCT Minister. “So one has to be careful in handling the issue, In his own right, if FCT Minister sees something that is not okay, he has freedom of speech and the governor himself knows what he is doing. That is the way I see it.”
It’s pretty bad – Raheem Adedoyin
In like manner, Adedoyin said: “Kwara has a sad history of people stepping into offices on the platform of APC where they were exposed to the resources of the party but would later work against the APC. Remember that in 2019, you had a Senate President who was elected under the auspices of the APC. You also had a governor who was elected under the office of the APC. There were also chairmen of boards of directors and boards of governors appointed under the party.
“Furthermore, you had federal agencies whose heads were appointed as APC members, but they later defected to the PDP after making use of resources from APC. That was 2006, and of course in 2023 you also had ministers who were using the resources of the federal government to work against the APC state government and APC structures in Kwara State.
“So now I am not surprised that we are witnessing a situation where people are taking APC money in Abuja and using the same to cause “katakata” for the APC in kwara state.
“We need to take a look at how Kwara State is being used in a dark way to marginalize the very party that is giving them the resources. So, Wike saying that they are going to form their rainbow coalition in kwara state, as far as I’m concerned, it is more or less like a slaughter of all of us in the APC because it is APC resources that they are going to use to fight the APC.
“I don’t want to go personal.All I know is that anybody who contested under the platform of the APC ought to relinquish the offices they got through the APC as well and test their popularity in their new party.”
Confusion, conflict in Cross River
In Cross River, where PDP presidential candidate, Professor Sandy Onor, hails from, the Rainbow Coalition is challenging APC candidates including Governor Bassey Otu.
The PDP has a very active governorship candidate, Mr Arthur Jarvis, the owner of a popular private university, Arthur Jarvis University and son of former military governor of the state, Brigadier Dan Archibong . The party also has an array of Senatorial, House of Representatives and House of Assembly candidates who are actively campaigning for votes across the state.
However, the candidates have not been heard to have made any utterance on the presidential candidate of the party neither are they declaring their support for President Tinubu openly. Most people, particularly in the rural areas do not know the direction the party is taking. Many members of the party who left when the party had issues have returned.
About 500 members of the APC left the party to join the PDP in Cross River State recently. A support group called Osopel Support Group with members and coordinators cutting across seven local government areas of the Cross River South Senatorial District took its members to the PDP from APC
According to Mr Abel Bassey, leader of the group, “we have taken a bold step to defect officially from the ruling APC to the PDP because we have found the PDP to be more reliable and humane compared to our former party”.
This same scenario is repeating in virtually every part of the state and the PDP is , without doubt, making impact but the key question is: Are most members aware of the relationship between their party and Wike who is seemingly seeking to turn in their votes in the presidential election to President Tinubu?
Dr Lyon Ebamane, lecturer in the University of Calabar, said Wike’s effort to turn-in PDP votes to President Tinubu in the election of next year will not work. Most candidates of the PDP are not informing their members and supporters of such plan. What the members know is just PDP and PDP in all the election. I’m sure you have carried out your surveyor as a journalist.
“I can assure you that the PDP members in this state are all going to vote for PDP during the presidential ballot and that would tantamount to waste of votes. Wike is holding on to PDP because he wants to contest the presidential election in 2031 and he feels the PDP is the only platform that can give him that opportunity since the APC ticket will go to the North in 2031.”
Wike’s Rainbow Coalition may injure Tinubu — Sambo
Politics Editor of Arise News, Sunna Sambo, warned that the political coalition being championed by Wike, could hurt President Bola Tinubu’s chances in the 2027 presidential election.
Sambo, speaking on Arise News analysis, said the APC should be cautious about the emerging coalition, arguing that its structure could make it difficult for voters to maintain straight-ticket voting on election day.
According to him, the emergence of the ADC vice-presidential candidate from Rivers State, coupled with the reception given to opposition figures such as Peter Obi and Rabiu Kwankwaso in Port Harcourt, suggested that the political landscape in the state could be more complicated than some actors might assume.
He said APC governors were already concerned about the potential impact of Wike’s coalition on Tinubu’s 2027 calculations, particularly because of the possibility of voters splitting their choices among different political parties.
He said: “The governors in the APC are already advising President Tinubu to be cautious of this coalition that Nyesom Wike is trying to put because they are afraid that on election day, not many people will be able to decipher between voting for President APC, and then voting for governors PDP, and then maybe voting for some other party.
“You see that the governors are already having a morbid fear that this coalition that Nyesom Wike is building may actually injure President Tinubu at some point, because voters may not be able to decide in some states whether to vote APC all through, or to vote PDP all through.
“And so, they are being cautious of that coalition.”
Sambo further linked the concern to the position of the APC Governors’ Forum and the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, NGF, saying the development had created apprehension among governors within the ruling party.
He said the situation had also contributed to the political exchanges between Wike and key figures in the governors’ structure, particularly the APC Governors’ Forum Chairman, Governor Hope Uzodinma of Imo State, as well as the leadership of the NGF.
According to him, Wike’s recent media appearance showed that he was prepared to confront those within the APC who had questioned or criticised the coalition he was putting together.
Sambo also cautioned Wike against underestimating the political mood in Rivers State, describing the state as one of Nigeria’s cosmopolitan states where voters could not simply be assumed to follow the dictates of political leaders.
He added that the turnout recorded during visits by Obi and Kwankwaso to Port Harcourt should serve as an indication that the electorate could spring surprises in 2027, particularly if the election is free and fair.
Wike: ‘Adeleke belongs to us’
For his part, Wike has remained defiant, declaring that his mission ahead of 2027 is to make opposition figures, including Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi, uncomfortable.
Speaking with journalists in Abuja during an inspection of ongoing projects in the FCT, he dismissed suggestions that Osun State Governor-elect Ademola Adeleke’s re-election victory represented a boost for the opposition, insisting Adeleke remained firmly in the Rainbow Coalition camp.
“Adeleke was a member of the PDP, but because of the internal wranglings, and for him to be able to secure a ticket to run for a second term, he had to find a platform,” Wike said, adding, “so, Adeleke is fully supporting Mr President and so we had to meet last night and encourage ourselves to continue. In the next few weeks, watch what is going to happen. You will see the Rainbow Coalition in this country supporting Mr President.”
On the discomfort his coalition-building has caused opposition figures, Wike said, “my business is to make them not to feel well. It is not my wish that they should feel well. My business is to make sure that you beat him thoroughly and he will be sick all through. And that is what we are doing to them.”
He maintained that the current political landscape lacked a clearly defined leading opposition party, saying, “when you say we are leading opposition, I have told you there is no opposition. What do you have? People who are just trying to see whether they can be relevant.”
Vanguard News
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