By Nigeria’s ruling party is looking less like a united front and more like a family arguing over Sunday lunch, and President Bola Tinubu may soon have to play referee. Multiple sources say the President is set to step in and calm the storm brewing between FCT Minister Nyesom Wike and a bloc of APC governors, with the peace talks reportedly happening on foreign soil, perhaps even in France, where Tinubu is currently on vacation.
A presidential aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the President intends to resolve the standoff before the week runs out. The timing matters. With 2027 already casting a long shadow over Abuja, nobody in the ruling party wants unresolved beef spilling into election season.
At the center of the storm is Wike, a PDP heavyweight now serving inside an APC-led government. He has been busy building his Rainbow Coalition in Rivers State, positioning it as a vehicle to support Tinubu’s re-election bid. But not everyone is applauding. Wike has accused Kwara’s Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq and Imo’s Governor Hope Uzodimma of working against him, framing their pushback as fear of the coalition’s growing reach.
Uzodimma, who leads the APC Progressive Governors’ Forum, didn’t take that quietly. Following a Monday night meeting in Abuja, he insisted the governors’ loyalty belongs to APC candidates alone, and that no political arrangement should be allowed to weaken the party or its 2027 chances.
Wike, for his part, isn’t backing down. He maintains that supporting Tinubu doesn’t mean bowing to every APC candidate on the ballot. He has also taken aim at the governors themselves, suggesting they lack the political muscle to win their states without outside help, a jab that has clearly not gone unnoticed.
Beneath the noise, though, there’s a deeper current. Two APC insiders told this reporter’s source that the tension isn’t just about coalition politics. It stretches into questions about 2031 ambitions, who controls the 11th National Assembly, and how Wike’s mobilization of PDP challengers might reshape races the governors thought were already settled.
It’s a lot of moving pieces, and several party stakeholders worry that if nobody steps in, the fallout could dent Tinubu’s own re-election chances. Hence, the quiet diplomacy now underway.
The South East Responds
While Abuja waits for a truce, APC leaders in the South East have already picked a side. In a joint statement, the party’s National Vice Chairman for the zone, Dr. Ijeomah Arodiogbu, alongside chairmen from Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu, and Imo, called Wike’s comments “most unfortunate, reprehensible and completely unacceptable.” Their message was blunt. Return to party discipline or step back entirely.
The statement pushed back hard on any suggestion that the Progressive Governors are underperforming, pointing to their 2023 electoral numbers, including securing more than 25 percent of the presidential vote in their states, as proof of their standing. They also rejected what they called a “rainbow chameleon coalition” attempting to make inroads into their region, warning that any move to destabilize their structures would be met with resistance.
Their closing line carried the weight of a party trying to hold itself together. The APC, they said, is bigger than any single person, and loyalty should run from the presidency all the way down to the State Houses of Assembly.
A Warning From Within
Not everyone reacting to the feud sits comfortably outside it. Former House Minority Leader Farouk Adamu Aliyu didn’t hold back on Channels Television’s Politics Today, warning that Wike will not be allowed to do to the APC what he once did to the PDP.
He acknowledged Wike’s role in weakening the PDP ahead of 2023 but drew a clear line. Gratitude for past help doesn’t translate into permission to reshape the ruling party from within. “We appreciate everything Wike has done for us,” he said, “but we will not allow him to use our party to build his own party.”
He also reminded viewers that Wike, despite his ministerial post, remains outside the APC’s formal structure. “Wike is not a member of our party,” he said. “So we will treat him as a member of the opposition.”
Adamu Aliyu didn’t spare his own party either, criticizing the tone some leaders have taken toward everyday Nigerians amid ongoing economic hardship. His preferred approach, he said, would be quieter diplomacy, resolving disputes privately rather than through public sparring that risks alienating voters already struggling to keep faith in the system.
As for Wike’s camp, efforts to reach his media aide, Lere Olayinka, were unsuccessful. No comment, at least for now.
