Major Blow to Tinubu as Top APC Leaders Move to SDP
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu may have a crucial hurdle in the way as the former Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and some ex-ministers in the administration of now late President Muhammadu Buhari are allegedly planning a collapse of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for the Social Democratic Party (SDP).
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This is coming on the heels of former Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai’s recent move to the SDP.
“The PDP presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar and LP presidential candidate Peter Obi have also been rumored to join the SDP in forming a grand alliance against the current ruling party and Tinubu in the 2027 elections,” a source said.
According to The PUNCH, a senator of the ninth Assembly who wished to remain anonymous said that at least 10 former members of the cabinet of Buhari would be heading for the SDP.
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“What they were waiting for was the party structure in its finality on their states,” the source said.
It came to gather that the stalwarts of the defection to the SDP included the former National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, Abdullahi Adamu; the ex-Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami; and the former President of the Senate, Ahmed Lawan.
Besides Pastor Tunde Bakare, who also ran and lost to President Bola Tinubu at the APC presidential primary election, among those planning to join the SDP.
Another source had disclosed, “Atiku, Peter Obi, Abubakar Malami, Pastor Tunde Bakare and Prof. Yemi Osinbajo are coming to the SDP in a matter of days.” “Most of the remnants of Buhari’s regime are heading towards the SDP,” another source told Sahara Reporters.
El-Rufai officially resigned from the APC on Monday and declared his defection to the SDP. He further directed all his political associates and supporters to join him in the new party.
The former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) cited an increasing disconnect between his overarching values and the present-day trajectory of the APC as his primary justification for leaving.
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A founding member of the APC, El-Rufai accused those in leadership positions of having long forsaken the progressive ideals that gave birth to the party in 2013 and made claims that the party was now a place ruled by thugs who disregarded internal democracy and treated members with contempt.
El-Rufai lamented that his warnings were instructive but unheeded.
“I have from time to time raised issues, once in private and more recently in the public, concerning the capricious trajectory of the party. Hence, at this juncture in my political career, I have finally come to the conclusion that I must pursue another political platform for the chase of those progressive values I believe in.”
El-Rufai, who from 2015 to 2023 governed Kaduna State, said he had hoped the APC would embrace good governance, democracy, and development.
But it has become clear to him that the party is drifting away from the very principles espoused by the founders.
The former minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) reminisced that he participated in the triumphant victories of the APC in 2015, 2019, and 2023, and lamented how poorly it has been run over the years.
“I, therefore, call upon all our supporters and, in fact, anyone else who cares about the future of our country, to join us in the SDP in the journey towards making Nigeria flourish as a beacon of pride for Africans and the Black Race,”
CPC group to work against Tinubu.
With the purported blessing of Buhari, the defection of El-Rufai opened the floodgates of mass defection as some other members of the APC in the North, most notably of CPC extraction, are leaving the party.
Buhari; El-Rufai; Malami; and Lawan were among the leaders of the Congress for Progress Change (CPC) that joined the Action Congress of Nigeria, another party in the All Progressives Grand Alliance, and members of the New Peoples Democratic Party to merge and form the APC in 2013.
The statement by the former governor of Kaduna State further revealed the long-talked-about coalition that involves some angry leaders of the APC.
Following El-Rufai’s defection, chieftain of the APC, Ahmad Kaita, a former senator, and member of the House of Representatives from Katsina, also joined the SDP.
Kaita previously belonged to the CPC.
Also, a number of former Kaduna State commissioners, including Ibrahim Hussaini for Agriculture; Aisha Dikko for Justice; Amina Baloni for Health; Halima Lawal for Education; and Hajiya Bari’atu Mohammed, former Head of Service, defected to the SDP from the APC.
Adamu Modibbo, who served as the Campaign Secretary for the APC in Gombe State during the 2015 general elections, has also quit the party-and he has now become the chairman of the SDP in Gombe State.
“We have long since lost track of why Abdulaziz Galadima defected,” said the ex-publicity secretary of the APC in Borno State, who corroborated his departure to the SDP in a conversation with our correspondent, because the APC had left the ideals and principles on which it stood for the last time.”
Galadima also confirmed that many others who were formerly of the CPC would be leaving for either the “SDP or another party.”
Another exodus
One of Malami’s supporters, who pleaded anonymity, told The PUNCH, “It is not about ousting Tinubu in 2027, but about our conviction.”
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