The All Progressives Congress (APC) on Friday declared that the ongoing wave of defections into its ranks is far from over, hinting that more state governors are set to join the ruling party in the coming months.
The party’s National Secretary, Ajibola Basiru, made the disclosure during a one-day capacity-building seminar for zonal and state publicity secretaries of the APC held in Abuja.
Speaking at the event tagged “Communicating Renewed Hope – A Capacity Building Seminar for APC Zonal and State Publicity Secretaries”, Basiru noted that what Nigerians have seen in recent weeks is only the beginning of a broader political realignment ahead of the 2027 general elections.
He said, “Before now, people used to say, ‘do not blow your trumpets’, but if you do not blow your trumpets, the trumpets will get lost.
“This gathering is also important because even before the 2023 election, we had seen the weaponisation of falsehood as an instrument of politics in Nigeria. Now, people will go and pick images from Somalia, images from Chad, images from where there is war, and put an address to it in Nigeria in order to create misinformation. We also have a situation where people who have had the opportunity of governing the sub-national, and without any achievement beyond establishment, they will come and be telling us what happened in China, in Malaysia, when in their own backyards, their communities ravaged by floods, and they did not put a single school building for eight years of their administration.
“So this gathering is important for us to be able to tackle those who have also weaponised ethnicity. Growing up in Nigeria, ethnic fault lines were not as pronounced as they have been made ahead of the 2023 election, and unfortunately, they are still carrying over from that post-2023 election.
“Another fault line is that of religion. Weaponisation of religion on the grounds of politics. Even people whose sanctimonious attitude is very dubious now try to wear the toga of religion for the purpose of political ascendancy. These are part of the efforts that we need to put in place. How do we effectively tackle the weaponisation of falsehoods, the weaponisation of ethnicity, and the weaponisation of religious bigotry in our country?
“In our vault today, being the largest party in Nigeria, we have 23 governors as of the last count. We still have more governors who are viable candidates to come. We also have some governors who are not viable candidates who also want to come. I won’t go into details of that. But we also need to showcase what our governors are doing so that we can show the people that it is not just about noise. It is about programmes and activities.”
The Minister of Mines and Solid Minerals, Dele Alake, while speaking, noted that at the macro level, the federal government has implemented numerous policy initiatives, adding that these reforms have had very positive effects on the country’s macro economy.
He said, “And for the sake of those who may not be very vast in economic concepts, when you talk about macroeconomics, it means something like laying the foundation, you know, a very enduring foundation for the takeoff of the economy of the country. It’s like building a skyscraper. If you want to build a skyscraper, the foundation you are going to dig is going to be a lot deeper than the foundation for a bungalow, for instance.
“But while you are digging the foundation of the skyscraper, most people won’t see you because you are going deeper and deeper into the ground. It’s when you’ve completed that foundation and you are now laying the building blocks that people see you and it becomes visible. So that is the kind of analogy I can use.
“Now, the macroeconomic indices are really shooting up. Now, the value of the currency is stabilised. So that is what the president did, removing the hydra-headed oil fuel subsidy, which had been dragging the country’s economy back. A lot of people had been milking the country dry through the phoney fuel subsidy, which was going into private pockets, but now that the subsidy has been removed, if you recall, too, there is hardly a government in this country that did not recognise the need to remove the fuel subsidy. But none had the courage to do so. And so Nigeria was getting deeper and deeper into economic straits. So this government came, the president removed the fuel subsidy with a fiat.
“And then, of course, merged the dual exchange rate. Now, these were two hydra-headed monsters, economic monsters, that were dragging the Nigerian economy backwards. Once these were removed, a significant amount of money and revenue became available to the sub-nationals, in addition to the federal government. The states and local governments have more money than before. And if you also do a kind of content analysis, you will discover that a lot of the states that were in a deep debt morass have cleared their debts right now, and there is more money for them to embark on infrastructural development.”