The National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Professor Nentawe Yilwatda, has claimed that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and the Accord Party are now working for President Bola Tinubu’s re-election. He made the claim on Tuesday at the State House, Abuja, after he and the Director-General of the APC Presidential Campaign Council, Senator Abdulaziz Yari, briefed the President on the party’s campaign flag-off in Kaduna on Saturday, October 24. A closer look at the records of the three parties, however, shows a more complicated picture than the one he presented.
“All political parties that have defeated us in any election are all with us; PDP is with us, APGA is with us, Accord Party with us,” Yilwatda told State House correspondents. He said these were the only parties that had beaten the APC at the polls, apart from the Allied Peoples Movement (APM). He did not say whether he meant formal endorsements by the national leadership of each party or the support of individual politicians within them.
Of the three, APGA’s position is the clearest. Anambra State Governor Chukwuma Soludo has said the party formally adopted Tinubu as its presidential candidate, in line with its practice of aligning with the party at the centre. APGA did the same in 2011, when it adopted then President Goodluck Jonathan of the PDP, but it fielded its own candidate, Peter Umeadi, in 2023. The party will not present a presidential candidate in 2027 and will instead concentrate on legislative seats, while Soludo has been named Anambra coordinator of Tinubu’s campaign.
The Accord Party’s position is less settled. On July 25, Osun State Governor Ademola Adeleke and the party’s national leadership, led by its National Chairman, Maxwell Mgbuden, adopted Tinubu as their candidate, citing the need to complete projects such as the Lagos to Calabar Coastal Highway. The national leadership had earlier insisted that it cancelled its presidential primary and had no candidate. But on October 5, Justice Mohammed Umar of the Federal High Court in Abuja ruled that Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim lawfully emerged as Accord’s candidate at a primary held on May 30, and ordered that his name be forwarded to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
The PDP claim is the most contested. The party has been split for months between a faction backed by the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, and another led by Kabiru Turaki. INEC recognised the Wike-backed leadership under Abdulrahman Mohammed in March, and that faction’s candidate, Sandy Onor, appears on INEC’s published list of presidential candidates. The Turaki faction, for its part, named former President Goodluck Jonathan as its candidate, although Jonathan has not publicly confirmed the nomination.
Wike himself is now part of Tinubu’s campaign structure while remaining a PDP member, and Adeleke has been named the campaign’s Osun coordinator. Yet some officials within these parties have publicly pushed back. A PDP official, Ankara Umoru, has said the party remains committed to its own presidential candidate, while Olawepo-Hashim has questioned whether Adeleke’s influence would deliver votes for Tinubu beyond Osun.
The arithmetic explains why the APC is keen on such alliances. According to INEC’s declared results, Tinubu won the 2023 presidential election with 8,794,726 votes, or 36.61 per cent of valid votes. Atiku Abubakar of the PDP polled 6,984,520 and Peter Obi of the Labour Party 6,101,533, giving the two main challengers more votes combined than the winner. Atiku is now the presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress, which has inaugurated its own campaign council.
The choice of Kaduna for the flag-off also carries weight. Atiku carried Kaduna State in 2023 with 554,360 votes against Tinubu’s 399,293, according to INEC figures. Yari has said the campaign will move to Port Harcourt and then Maiduguri after Kaduna, under a timetable he said Tinubu approved on October 9.
Yari said the APC would run a campaign built on the administration’s record rather than personal attacks. “A responsible campaign, no insults, no calling of names,” he said, adding that the party would ask Nigerians to judge its performance and grant it a second term. The Presidential Campaign Council, inaugurated on October 14, is chaired by Tinubu, with Vice President Kashim Shettima and Yilwatda as vice chairmen.
The window for that campaign is short. INEC moved the presidential and National Assembly elections to January 16, 2027, following the enactment of the Electoral Act 2026, leaving 84 days between the Kaduna flag-off and polling day. Whether the alliances Yilwatda described hold firm, and whether the court ruling restores an Accord candidate to the ballot, are questions still to be settled before then.