President Tinubu’s Political Engineering: When Party Loyalty Becomes a Casualty of Presidential Ambition

By Frank Ofili

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has an interesting way of listening to his party. He listens, perhaps, not necessarily to be persuaded, but to know what his party thinks before proceeding to do precisely what he wants. In his political universe, the advice of party elders and strategists is apparently just that: advice, not a commandment. The President reserves the final right to agree, disagree or simply ignore it.

His latest political manoeuvre, involving the reported appointment of Nyesom Wike, Ademola Adeleke and Chukwuma Soludo into the APC Presidential Campaign Council, takes this presidential independence to a curious new level. Wike belongs to the PDP, Adeleke to the Accord Party, and Soludo to APGA. Yet, if the appointments stand as reported, these men from outside the APC are being brought into the machinery of an APC presidential campaign, apparently against the counsel of influential voices within the ruling party, including the APC Governors Forum.

Welcome to Nigerian politics, where party membership is increasingly looking like a loose social association, political loyalty is negotiable, and the boundary between opposition and ruling party is becoming so porous that one wonders whether the country is practising multiparty democracy or operating an elaborate political cooperative.

President Tinubu appears to be conducting a political experiment that challenges conventional assumptions about party discipline. Why should a president restrict his political calculations to the membership roll of his own party when he can recruit influential figures from other parties? Why should he concern himself excessively with the discomfort of APC chieftains when he can assemble a broader coalition of political heavyweights, regardless of their party affiliations?

What, then, is the place of party loyalty? What is the value of the APC’s internal deliberations if the President can simply override the preferences of those expected to defend and sell his party to the electorate?

In the President’s calculation, political capital may matter more than party cards. Influence may be more valuable than ideology, and electoral usefulness may trump ideological consistency. It is a strategy that could be defended as pragmatic politics. But it also raises an uncomfortable question: what becomes of political parties when their leaders treat party identity as an inconvenience rather than a defining commitment?

There is something particularly intriguing about this arrangement. Mr. President is not merely reaching across party lines; he appears willing to do so even when members of his own political family counsel restraint. It is one thing to disagree with the opposition. It is another to disregard your own party’s strategic thinkers in order to accommodate members of that opposition.

This is where the political engineering becomes confounding.

The APC is the ruling party. It has governors, legislators, former governors, party elders, strategists and an army of political operatives. Yet, if the President believes that the services of politicians from rival parties are necessary for his electoral project, he seems prepared to accommodate them, regardless of the objections of his own party’s influential members.

What, then, is the place of party loyalty? What is the value of the APC’s internal deliberations if the President can simply override the preferences of those expected to defend and sell his party to the electorate?

Perhaps President Tinubu understands something about Nigerian politics that his critics have not fully appreciated: political parties are useful vehicles, but political power is the destination. Once power becomes the overriding objective, the vehicle can be modified, its passengers changed, and even its original route abandoned.

That is a plausible explanation for the President’s approach. It is not necessarily a flattering one.

Consider the cast of characters.

Nyesom Wike remains one of the most consequential figures to emerge from the PDP’s internal crisis. His political confrontation with the party’s leadership after the 2022 presidential primary, and his refusal to support Atiku Abubakar’s candidacy, helped expose and deepen the fractures within the opposition. His eventual appointment as Minister of the Federal Capital Territory under an APC-led administration further complicated the traditional distinction between the governing party and its principal rival.

Nigerian politicians frequently speak the language of party supremacy, ideological commitment, internal democracy and loyalty. They condemn political defection when it threatens their interests but celebrate political realignment when it serves them. They invoke party discipline when they want to restrain dissenters, yet demand personal freedom when party rules become inconvenient.

Wike’s political journey illustrates the remarkable flexibility and hypocrisy of Nigerian partisan politics. A politician can remain formally associated with one party, serve in the government of another, and potentially participate in the campaign machinery of a president whose party is supposed to be his political opponent. Such is the elasticity of political identity in Nigeria.

Then comes Ademola Adeleke, the PDP governor who won the 2022 Osun governorship election against the APC’s Gboyega Oyetola. If he is brought into the APC’s presidential campaign structure under the Accord Party banner, the symbolism would be difficult to ignore. A governor who defeated the ruling party in his state could become part of the campaign architecture of the ruling party at the national level.

Chukwuma Soludo presents another dimension. The Anambra governor belongs to APGA, a party with its own political identity and history. His inclusion would reinforce the impression that President Tinubu is prepared to build a presidential coalition that extends beyond the formal boundaries of the APC.

Of course, political cooperation across party lines is neither inherently wrong nor unprecedented. Democracies thrive on alliances, negotiations and strategic partnerships. But there is a difference between a transparent coalition founded on shared objectives and an arrangement in which party loyalties appear to change according to the immediate calculations of individual political actors.

The question is not whether Tinubu has the political right to seek support from politicians outside the APC. He does. The question is what such an arrangement says about the integrity of party competition and the credibility of political commitments in Nigeria.

If every politician is potentially available to every presidential candidate, what exactly are voters being asked to choose between? Competing ideologies and programmes, or competing networks of political influence?

And the Okowa-Wike paradox

Perhaps the most delicious irony in this unfolding drama concerns former Governor of my home state of Delta, Senator Arthur Ifeanyi Okowa.

In 2022, Okowa hosted the PDP Governors Forum in Asaba, where the party’s governors issued the declaration supporting the zoning of the PDP’s presidential ticket to the South. The Asaba Declaration was rooted in the argument that, after President Muhammadu Buhari’s two terms, the PDP should respect the principle of rotation and nominate a southern presidential candidate.

But that was not how events unfolded.

Atiku Abubakar, a northerner, secured the PDP presidential ticket, while Okowa emerged as his running mate. The arrangement placed Okowa in the curious position of accepting the vice-presidential nomination on a ticket that ran contrary to the southern zoning position associated with the Asaba Declaration he had hosted.

The political consequences were considerable. Wike, who had contested the PDP presidential primary and subsequently demanded that the party’s national chairman, Iyorchia Ayu, resign in keeping with the argument about regional balance, refused to support Atiku’s candidacy. The ensuing conflict contributed significantly to the PDP’s disunity ahead of the 2023 presidential election.

Now imagine the political theatre if Okowa and Wike find themselves working together within the same presidential campaign structure.

Here are two men whose political paths became emblematic of opposing sides in one of the PDP’s most consequential internal battles. One accepted the vice-presidential ticket after the party nominated Atiku; the other became a central figure in the revolt against the arrangement. Their disagreement was not a minor quarrel over patronage. It concerned zoning, party fairness, leadership credibility and the interpretation of an agreement that had helped shape expectations within the PDP.

And now, in the strange arithmetic of Nigerian politics, yesterday’s antagonists could find themselves enlisted in the same electoral project.

What a political irony!

The very party whose internal contradictions helped create the conditions for their estrangement may become a common historical footnote as both men navigate a new political alignment. If they are required to work together, the question will be whether political expediency has finally buried their differences or merely suspended them until the next contest for influence.

Nigerian politicians are remarkably capable of burying the hatchet when the circumstances are favourable. Sometimes, however, they bury it only by the handle, leaving it available for the next round of hostilities.

This is where the deeper problem lies.

Nigerian politicians frequently speak the language of party supremacy, ideological commitment, internal democracy and loyalty. They condemn political defection when it threatens their interests but celebrate political realignment when it serves them. They invoke party discipline when they want to restrain dissenters, yet demand personal freedom when party rules become inconvenient.

The same politicians who insist that their parties must be respected can readily collaborate with political adversaries when the opportunity arises. Those who denounce betrayal may themselves be prepared to abandon yesterday’s allies when a more attractive political arrangement presents itself.

The result is a political culture in which consistency becomes optional and hypocrisy becomes an occupational hazard that politicians have learnt to manage with remarkable dexterity.

President Tinubu’s approach takes this contradiction to another level. It suggests that the President may be less interested in maintaining a neat distinction between the APC and its rivals than in assembling a coalition of individuals who can advance his political objectives.

It is an audacious but selfish approach. It may even prove electorally effective, but electoral effectiveness is not the same thing as political principle.

There is also a danger in treating every political relationship as transactional. A coalition assembled primarily around the immediate objective of winning an election may struggle to explain what binds its members together beyond access to power. If party affiliation no longer predicts political behaviour, voters may find it increasingly difficult to hold parties accountable for their promises, decisions and failures.

After all, if politicians can move freely across partisan boundaries without a convincing explanation of what has changed, why should citizens take party manifestoes and campaign rhetoric seriously?

One is tempted to wonder whether the next stage of this political engineering will involve the NDC, ADC and Omoyele Sowore’s African Action Congress. If Tinubu can accommodate influential politicians from the PDP, Accord Party and APGA, what prevents him from seeking relationships with figures in other opposition parties?

Judging from the Reno Omokri and Daniel Bwala experience, one could even declare without equivocation that the President has political moles everywhere, quietly reporting from the enemy camp. That may be speculative but the joke resonates because it captures a widespread suspicion about the Nigerian political establishment: that beneath the public spectacle of confrontation, many of the actors may be connected by interests that transcend the party labels they display before the electorate.

The opposition may be divided publicly while its individual members negotiate privately. Politicians may trade accusations at rallies and discover common interests in the corridors of power. The language changes, the party colours change, but the struggle to secure influence and political advantage remains constant.

This is why the strength of an opposition cannot be measured solely by the number of parties it contains. It must also be measured by its ability to maintain a coherent political identity, enforce internal discipline and persuade voters that its alternative is more than a collection of ambitious individuals.

Every time a president disregards his party’s established voices, he risks weakening the very institution through which he exercises power.

An opposition that cannot retain the loyalty of its own influential figures will find it difficult to convince the electorate that it can offer a credible alternative to the ruling party.

To be fair, there is a strategic logic to President Tinubu’s manoeuvre. Presidential elections are not won by party membership figures alone. They are won through alliances, grassroots networks, regional calculations, elite negotiations, political organisation and the ability to attract support beyond one’s immediate constituency.

A president seeking re-election would naturally want to broaden his coalition. He would want to neutralise influential opponents, cultivate governors and exploit divisions within rival parties. From this perspective, bringing politically influential figures into a campaign structure may be seen as a demonstration of political strength rather than a repudiation of party loyalty.

But there is a price to be paid.

Every time a president disregards his party’s established voices, he risks weakening the very institution through which he exercises power. Every time politicians cross ideological and partisan boundaries without clearly explaining their reasons, they reinforce public cynicism about the sincerity of political competition. And every time electoral arithmetic takes precedence over party identity, the distinction between a political party and a temporary alliance of interests becomes more difficult to sustain.

Mr. President may believe that he is building a winning machine. His critics may see a cynical assembly of political opportunists. Both interpretations could contain elements of truth.

The ultimate test will be whether this arrangement strengthens democratic competition or further reduces Nigerian politics to a marketplace in which political loyalties are bought, sold, exchanged and repackaged according to electoral convenience.

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of Nigerian politics is not that politicians disagree, defect or form alliances. These things happen in every democracy. It is that political actors often move between incompatible positions without appearing to feel obliged to explain the contradiction to the citizens whose votes they seek.

A declaration made yesterday can be forgotten today. A political adversary can become a campaign associate tomorrow. A party’s strategic advice can be ignored by its own president. And men whose disagreements helped deepen a party’s crisis may yet find themselves working towards a common electoral objective under a different political arrangement.

President Tinubu’s political engineering is therefore more than an intriguing campaign strategy. It is a mirror held up to the contradictions of Nigerian democracy.

It raises questions about party discipline, political accountability, the meaning of opposition and the place of principle in the pursuit of power.

Perhaps we should stop asking which party a politician belongs to and begin asking what, precisely, the politician believes in.

Because in a political environment where yesterday’s adversary can become today’s ally, where a party’s own leaders can be overruled in the name of electoral strategy, and where political declarations appear to have the shelf life of yesterday’s newspaper, one thing is becoming increasingly clear:

In Nigerian politics, party loyalty may be negotiable, political memory may be selective, and principle may be expendable. But the pursuit of power is remarkably consistent.

And that, more than any campaign council appointment, is the real political engineering worth examining.