The governors elected on the platform of the All Progressives Congress have drawn a firm line against cross party alliances ahead of the 2027 general elections, resolving to back only candidates fielded by their own party. The decision, taken at a closed door meeting in Abuja on Monday, 14 September 2026, marks the clearest sign yet that the ruling party’s most powerful state actors see the growing patchwork of coalitions as a threat rather than an asset to President Bola Tinubu’s re-election bid.
The resolution was announced by the chairman of the Progressives Governors Forum and Imo State governor, Hope Uzodinma, at the end of the meeting held at the Imo State Governor’s Lodge in Asokoro. According to Uzodinma, the forum agreed unanimously that its members would not participate in, support or endorse any alliance or political arrangement capable of undermining the re-election of the President, weakening the APC or adversely affecting any candidate of the party at all levels. He said the governors’ commitment was exclusively to APC candidates, and that any arrangement capable of creating confusion, divided loyalty or competing interests would not be entertained.
The forum did not name any individual or group in its communiqué. Its target, however, is difficult to mistake in the current political context. The resolution followed weeks of friction over the Rainbow Coalition promoted by the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike. Wike, a serving PDP member operating within the APC led federal government, has built the coalition in Rivers State around an arrangement that backs Tinubu at the presidential level while fielding or supporting candidates on other platforms, including the PDP, Labour Party and Action Alliance, for state and legislative seats. At a luncheon in Port Harcourt earlier in the year, Wike said the four parties in the coalition would jointly agree on a single governorship candidate, and urged politicians seeking any office in the state to align with the group.
The core of the governors’ objection is electoral arithmetic rather than personality. Their concern, as reflected in the forum’s language about divided loyalty and competing interests, is that voters mobilised to support Tinubu under a coalition banner could still cast ballots for candidates of rival parties in the National Assembly and governorship races, which hold on the same days as the presidential poll. The fear is that a coalition presenting itself as pro Tinubu could, in practice, split the APC’s vote further down the ballot. Wike, for his part, has repeatedly argued that the coalition is designed to expand the President’s support base across party lines and is not intended to work against the APC.
The rift has been building publicly. Wike has said that Uzodinma and the Kwara State governor and chairman of the Nigeria Governors Forum, Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq, were leading the campaign against him. A former deputy speaker of the House of Representatives, Chibudom Nwuche, defended the arrangement on Monday, describing it as a political bridge that allows opposition politicians to support Tinubu without leaving their parties. Monday night’s resolution places the weight of the Progressives Governors Forum on the other side of that argument.
The governors’ anxiety is grounded in real movement of politicians across party lines, though the traffic runs in more than one direction. Several APC figures who lost the party’s primaries have secured tickets under the PDP, which remains a registered party recognised by the Independent National Electoral Commission. Among them are the senator representing Kwara Central, Saliu Mustapha, who lost the APC ticket to Abdulrazaq; Kolo Jiya, who picked the Kwara North senatorial ticket on the PDP platform; and Isa Pantami, the former Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, who has emerged as the PDP governorship candidate in Gombe State. In Cross River, the PDP candidate, Arthus Davis, is set to challenge the incumbent APC governor, Bassey Otu. For the governors, these cases illustrate how loosely policed cross party arrangements can hand organised opposition candidates a foothold in states the party considers its own.
The APC position also needs to be read against the wider realignment now under way. The opposition has spent much of the past year attempting to consolidate. Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar emerged in May 2026 as the presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress, which has become the main vehicle for an opposition coalition that has drawn in figures from the PDP, the Labour Party and other parties. The PDP Governors Forum, at a meeting in Ibadan in April 2025, had itself rejected a merger and distanced the party from the Atiku led coalition, a reminder that resistance to coalitions is not confined to the ruling party. What Monday’s meeting confirms is that both major parties are now grappling with the same tension between broad alliances at the top of the ticket and party discipline everywhere below it.
The stakes for the APC are considerable. The party holds a majority of the country’s 36 governorships, and control of state structures has historically been decisive in Nigerian elections because governors command the financial and organisational machinery that drives turnout. By insisting that every level of the party’s campaign architecture align behind APC candidates, the forum is effectively closing off the hybrid support models that coalitions like Wike’s depend on. Uzodinma framed this as a matter of protecting the party’s cohesion, stating that the governors would not engage in any arrangement working against the interests of the APC or its candidates.
What the resolution does not resolve is how the party intends to reconcile its rejection of coalitions with the reality that some of its most prominent allies, Wike among them, sit outside its formal membership while working for the President’s return. Wike’s position within the federal cabinet, and the value the Presidency has placed on his political reach, means the governors’ declaration sets up a test of authority within the pro Tinubu camp itself. Whether the national party leadership enforces the forum’s line, and how the Rainbow Coalition responds in Rivers and any state that seeks to copy it, will determine whether Monday’s communiqué becomes binding policy or remains a statement of intent.
For now, the confirmed facts are narrow but significant. The APC governors have formally rejected cross party alliances. They have tied that decision explicitly to Tinubu’s re-election and the fortunes of party candidates at every level. And they have done so at a moment when coalition building, in various forms, has become the defining feature of the approach to 2027. The contest over whether alliances help or hurt the parties that build them is now firmly joined, and it is being fought first inside the ruling party.