-How an APC Primary Election Exposed Nigeria’s Deepest Fault Lines Ahead of 2027
When the All Progressives Congress concluded its governorship primary in Adamawa State on 21 May 2026, it declared a winner with over 414,000 votes. Within hours, aggrieved party members alleged that no election had actually taken place, that results were simply written and announced. This is the story of what happened, who held the strings, and what it tells us about Nigeria’s fragile democracy ahead of the most consequential election year since 2015.
By Aminu Adamu, Yola, Adamawa State
The sun was still climbing when results began filtering out of the All Progressives Congress governorship primary collation centre in Yola on the morning of 23 May 2026. Professor Innocent Bariko, the chairman of the APC’s national primary election committee for Adamawa State, stepped to a microphone and read out a result that would immediately become the most disputed in the state’s recent political history.
Ahmed Tijjani Galadima, a 62-year-old former Executive Secretary of the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF), had won the APC’s governorship ticket with a staggering 414,444 votes out of a direct primary conducted across 226 electoral wards in 21 local government areas. His closest rival, sitting House of Representatives member
Abdulrazak Namdas, had polled 86,004. Businessman and activist politician Abdulrahman Bashir Haske, a 35-year-old who had mounted what appeared to be the most visible grassroots campaign in the race, came third with 65,424 votes. The results were formally announced by the APC’s primary committee chairman and reported across multiple outlets, including Premium Times, TheCable, and Blueprint Newspapers. Almost before the ink had dried on the declaration, political figures and ordinary party members alike erupted in disbelief and outrage. The results announced by the committee contradicted preliminary ward-level tallies shared widely on social media, which had shown Haske leading with over 555,000 votes — nearly 69 percent of votes counted — while Galadima lagged at 18 percent. Haske’s camp described the announced result as a fabrication. An aggrieved party chieftain, speaking to Sahara Reporters on condition of anonymity, was blunt: “This was not an election. Results were simply written and announced.”
“In Adamawa State, Governor Umar Ahmadu Fintiri was known to have a preferred candidate while the National Security Adviser, Malam Nuhu Ribadu, preferred another. At the end, it was the aspirant who was said to have the backing of Ribadu that won the ticket in circumstances analysts say was beyond the governor.” — Daily Trust, 29 May 2026
What happened in Adamawa on the 21st and 22nd of May 2026 was not merely a contested party primary. It was, political analysts and conflict experts argue, a laboratory demonstration of what they call the “power of influence” — the capacity of powerful actors who hold no formal party position to shape, subvert, or redirect intra-party democratic processes. And it raises urgent questions, not just about Adamawa, but about the health and stability of Nigerian democracy as a whole, heading into the 2027 general elections. As Daily Trust reported in its post-primary analysis, the contest exposed a pattern repeating itself across multiple states: the gap between who the people vote for and who the party declares the winner.
From Defection to Dispute: A Chronology
To understand the Adamawa APC primary, one must first understand the political earthquake that preceded it. On 27 February 2026, Governor Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri — a man who had built his entire political career within the Peoples Democratic Party, who had served as Speaker of the Adamawa State House of Assembly, who had presided over the impeachment of former Governor Murtala Nyako, and who had won re-election as governor in 2023 — declared his defection to the APC in a statewide broadcast. As National Accord Newspaper reported, the governor stated that his decision was taken in the “developmental interest” of the people of Adamawa State, moving with members of his cabinet, lawmakers, and key party officials.
For the opposition PDP, the defection was devastating, stripping it of its sitting governor in a state that had been a core party stronghold. For former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, whose home state is Adamawa and whose presidential ambitions loom large over the state’s politics, it was a serious strategic setback. But for the APC in Adamawa, it presented a different kind of challenge. The party had, for years, been built painstakingly, with figures such as Nuhu Ribadu, Saddiq Walin Ganye, Buba Marwa, and Abdulrahman Bashir Haske investing political capital and personal credibility in constructing a viable alternative platform. As Vanguard News observed in February 2026, the arrival of a powerful sitting governor carrying influence, networks, and expectations raised the prospect of transforming manageable rivalries into hardened factions.
By March 2026, what had initially been a diplomatic tension had erupted into an open political war. Sahara Reporters documented how Fintiri and National Security Adviser Nuhu Ribadu were locking horns over control of the APC’s structures in the state, noting that the fight was “less about ideology and more about raw political survival, influence, and future power.” The stakes crystallised around a single logic: whoever controls the party structure controls the delegate system; whoever controls the delegate system controls the primary; whoever controls the primary controls the ticket; and whoever holds the ticket holds the realistic prospect of becoming the next governor of Adamawa State. Tensions further boiled over during the APC North-East Zonal Congress held in Gombe, where a candidate aligned with Ribadu, Barr Shuaibu Idris, emerged as the party’s zonal chairman, dealing a significant blow to Fintiri’s camp.
In April 2026, House of Representatives aspirants in Adamawa’s eight federal constituencies issued a communiqué, reported by Sahara Reporters, accusing state party executives of mounting pressure on contestants to step down while “invoking the names of the Governor of Adamawa State, Ahmadu Fintiri, and the National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu.” The aspirants alleged that party officials had been circulating what they described as a “Presidential List” of preferred candidates for all eight constituencies, candidates described in the communiqué as either unpopular or “not sellable” to voters. Investigations by the National Accord Newspaper, published in April 2026, placed Galadima at the centre of this controversy, reporting that some aspirants faced possible pressure to step down under a “voluntary withdrawal” or “consensus” arrangement, while those unwilling to comply could face possible disqualification based on adverse security reports, though these claims remain unverified.
The contradiction at the heart of Ribadu’s camp was striking. His support group spokesman, Uba Danarewa, speaking to The Punch, publicly confirmed their backing for Galadima while simultaneously demanding a direct primary: “We are fully prepared for the direct primaries. We do not want consensus. The people of Adamawa should decide who rules them, not an individual.” The group was publicly demanding competitive elections while, according to multiple sources, coordinating behind the scenes to ensure a predetermined outcome.
In the days immediately before the 21 May 2026 primary, three governorship aspirants — Engr. Diaulhaq Abubakar, Comrade Mustapha Salihu, and Alhaji Ibrahim Bello Thul — announced their withdrawal from the race in favour of Galadima. Their stated reasons, cited in Leadership Nigeria and Blueprint Newspapers, were party unity and cohesion. Abubakar pledged N200 million and all his campaign offices to Galadima’s effort. Salihu subsequently declared his intention to contest the Adamawa Central Senatorial seat. The cable’s post-primary analysis described these simultaneous withdrawals as part of a nationwide pattern in which, as the outlet noted, “unity is increasingly valued above competitive uncertainty” — a framing that treats managed outcomes as rational political management rather than democratic violation.
On primary day, preliminary ward-level results, collated and shared in real time by what appeared to be Haske’s monitoring team, showed him leading decisively: with the majority of wards counted, Haske had accumulated approximately 555,427 votes (68.66 percent), Galadima had 146,068 votes (18 percent), and Namdas was on 64,430 votes. These figures were reported by The Guardian Nigeria, Freedom Online, and 21st Century Chronicle. When Professor Bariko announced the final official result on 23 May, the figures were dramatically different. Galadima had won with 414,444 votes; Namdas was second with 86,004; Haske was third with 65,424. The official tally had Galadima winning by a margin that defied the ward-level preliminary data and the visible evidence of Haske’s campaign machinery on the ground. As The Whistler reported, Haske called on his supporters to “remain calm, peaceful, and law-abiding while consultations continue.”
In a striking gesture that intensified suspicion, Galadima, after his victory was declared, publicly thanked “party stakeholders, including National Security Adviser Nuhu Ribadu, for ensuring a level playing field during the primary,” according to News Diary Online. The acknowledgement of Ribadu’s role, framed as benign, placed the NSA’s fingerprints visibly on the outcome. Governor Fintiri, for his part, issued a defensive address dismissing protests as the product of “inexperience” among aspirants new to the party process, while simultaneously warning members against anti-party activities, a signal that he was acutely aware of the scale of internal resentment. His formal warning was later reported by Alexa.ng, which noted that the growing resentment within the Adamawa APC was already being viewed by political analysts as a dangerous echo of historical internal crises that had cost the party elections in 2019 and 2023.
The Shadow Party: Structure and Mechanics
In political science, the term “shadow cabinet” refers to an opposition party’s alternative government-in-waiting. In the context of Nigerian party politics, analysts increasingly speak of a “shadow party” — a network of power brokers, financiers, federal officials, and political godfathers who operate outside the formal constitutional structures of a party but whose influence on candidate selection, delegate management, and primary outcomes is often decisive and sometimes total.
The Adamawa APC primary exhibited the classic characteristics of shadow party operation. The formal party structure — the state chairperson, the national election committee, the screening panel — went through the motions of a direct primary. Wards were supposedly activated. Voters were supposedly mobilised. Results were officially collated. But the observable evidence, including the discrepancy between preliminary ward tallies and official results, the coordination of aspirant withdrawals, the allegations of a circulated Presidential List, and the winner’s own public thanks to an NSA who holds no formal APC organisational role, suggests that the real decisions were made in spaces that no primary committee controls.
Nuhu Ribadu’s political biography in Adamawa is complex and instructive. He rose to national prominence as the founding chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) under President Olusegun Obasanjo. His political ambitions in Adamawa have been less triumphant: in 2015, he emerged as the PDP’s governorship candidate following a primary widely reported to have been conducted in Nyanya, Abuja, far from the Adamawa constituency he sought to represent. He subsequently lost to APC’s Jibrilla Bindow by a wide margin. As the National Accord Newspaper noted in its April 2026 investigation, those developments have “resurfaced in current political conversations as the APC prepares for another crucial election cycle.” Now serving as President Bola Tinubu’s National Security Adviser, Ribadu occupies a role that formally has nothing to do with party primaries and candidate selection, yet reporting by multiple credible Nigerian outlets consistently places him at the centre of the Adamawa succession calculus.
The ethical and constitutional question this raises is significant. A serving National Security Adviser is not a party official. His powers, which touch on intelligence, security services, and access to the highest levels of state authority, are not party powers. When they are perceived to flow into party primary processes, the boundary between legitimate political participation and the abuse of state machinery becomes dangerously blurred.
Fintiri’s role in the primary reveals a different dimension of the shadow party dynamic: the vulnerability of a sitting governor who, despite commanding state resources and administrative machinery, finds his preferred outcome overridden. Daily Trust‘s post-primary analysis concluded that the outcome in Adamawa was “beyond the governor” — an extraordinary formulation suggesting that even a sitting governor of Nigeria, with all the patronage resources and structural advantages that office provides, found himself outmanoeuvred by a network operating through federal channels. This dynamic mirrors a pattern identified by researchers studying elite competition in Nigeria’s federalism: the tension between state-level political patronage networks and federal-level power brokers is a recurring source of intra-party conflict.
In Nigeria’s party primary system, a direct primary is supposed to involve all registered party members in the selection of candidates. In practice, the management of voter registration, the accreditation of party members, the deployment of voting materials to wards, and the collation of results at multiple levels creates enormous opportunities for interference. The gap between Haske’s preliminary ward tallies and the official result — a swing of more than 350,000 votes in Galadima’s favour — is not easily explained by statistical variation alone. Without an independent forensic audit of the primary, something the APC has not committed to, it is impossible to determine with certainty what happened between the ward-level counting and the official declaration. The APC’s primary election committee chairman stated that the election was “conducted peacefully across all 226 electoral wards in line with guidelines and regulations.” Haske’s camp, and multiple independent observers, allege otherwise. As Channels Television reported, the declaration proceeded amid the presence of an appeals committee prepared to receive petitions — an acknowledgement that controversy was anticipated.
Conflict Analysis: Reading the Warning Signs
Johan Galtung’s conflict triangle identifies three dimensions of conflict: direct violence, structural violence embedded in systemic inequalities, and cultural violence through legitimising narratives. The Adamawa primary displays features of all three dimensions. Direct violence did not occur during the primary itself, and this should be acknowledged. But the history of post-primary violence in Nigeria, including the Rivers State crisis and various other state-level contests, demonstrates that the frustration generated by perceived manipulation of primaries can translate into physical confrontation in the weeks and months that follow. Fintiri’s urgent warning against anti-party activities, reported by The Punch, is itself a recognition of this risk.
Structural violence is visible in the architecture of the primary itself: a system that allows powerful actors to control delegate lists, manage the collation of results, and shape candidate withdrawals, without providing losers with effective remedy. The Electoral Act 2022 provides for intra-party democracy, but enforcement mechanisms remain weak. Courts can nullify primary results — and have done so in Adamawa’s political history — but court processes are slow, expensive, and subject to manipulation through adjournments and interlocutory orders. Cultural violence is present in the legitimising narratives deployed to justify the outcome: the language of “party cohesion,” “unity,” and “stepping down in the interest of the party” functions to normalise what critics describe as imposition. When a candidate is pressured to withdraw while publicly citing unity, the structural coercion is obscured by the cultural packaging of sacrifice.
Conflict early warning analysts examining the post-primary environment in Adamawa would identify several concerning indicators. The first is the delegitimisation of process: when a substantial number of party members, including some of the primary’s own participants, describe the result as fabricated, the primary loses its legitimacy as a mechanism for managing internal competition. Illegitimate outcomes breed grievance; grievance breeds defection or active sabotage. The second is fragmentation risk, with aspirants threatening to dump the party or work against APC in the general election — a classic scenario in which primary losers’ revenge costs the party the general election. The third is the entanglement of state security apparatus with party processes: when a serving National Security Adviser is perceived as directly shaping primary outcomes, challenging the result is not merely challenging party leaders but potentially challenging power that can deploy non-political tools. The fourth is social media polarisation: the circulation of competing results — Haske’s ward-level tallies versus the official committee announcement — created two distinct truths in the Adamawa political information space, making reconciliation harder and radicalisation easier. As aspirant Hon. Vrati S. Nzonzo warned publicly: “APC will fail woefully in 2027 because Fintiri imposed people with a high sense of impunity. The party is doomed to fail.”
Patron-client theory, well established in Nigerian political science, holds that political relationships in Nigeria are fundamentally organised around the exchange of material resources and protection for political loyalty. The Adamawa primary illustrates the theory in operation: aspirants who withdrew endorsed a candidate backed by a patron with federal resources; those who did not withdraw faced a structural environment in which resistance was politically costly. The question political economists ask of such scenarios is straightforward: what does each actor actually control? Haske controlled grassroots votes. Ribadu’s network controlled access to federal patronage and, allegedly, the party’s technical machinery. In a properly functioning primary democracy, the grassroots votes would determine the outcome. As Leadership Nigeria observed in its analysis of the emerging dynamics in Adamawa, “some potential aspirants who had earlier shown interest in the race may now find themselves politically disadvantaged or completely edged out due to the emerging alignments and shifting loyalties within the state’s political structure.”
Historical Parallels: Nigeria Has Been Here Before
The 2022 APC presidential primary, which produced Bola Tinubu as the party’s candidate, established a template that many state-level primaries have since referenced. The convergence of key power blocs around a single candidate, preceded by withdrawals, behind-the-scenes negotiations, and the deployment of federal and private patronage, was widely documented by Nigerian and international media. The Adamawa governorship primary of 2026 exhibits structurally similar dynamics, adapted to a state-level context. The 2015 Adamawa PDP governorship primary, in which Ribadu himself emerged as the party’s candidate in a process reportedly conducted in Nyanya, Abuja, is equally instructive. Critics at the time described the process as a manipulated primary conducted at a distance from the constituency it was supposed to represent. Ribadu subsequently lost the general election to APC’s Jibrilla Bindow by a wide margin — a defeat that political historians describe as among the most decisive in the state’s electoral history. The lesson drawn by analysts, that imposed candidates struggle to generate genuine popular enthusiasm, has not prevented the repetition of similar patterns. As the Punch’s investigative feature on Fintiri’s defection and the 2027 equation noted, the governor’s entire political career had been built on navigating exactly these kinds of elite-managed transitions, from his emergence as an Action Congress assembly member in 2007 without “political popularity nor a powerful godfather” to his dramatic impeachment of Governor Nyako.
Rivers State under Governor Siminalayi Fubara has provided Nigeria’s most dramatic recent example of intra-party conflict within the APC’s broader ecosystem. The battle between Fubara and his predecessor Nyesom Wike demonstrated how personal rivalries at the top of state politics can translate into institutional paralysis, legislative defections, and even physical confrontation. Adamawa’s crisis is not yet at the Rivers level of intensity, but the structural conditions — a powerful defecting governor, a federal patron, and a contested succession — are comparable. Lagos State’s APC has built what many political scientists describe as the most efficient political machine in sub-Saharan African subnational politics, one in which succession is managed and primary results are essentially predetermined by the party’s apex leadership. Critics call it undemocratic; defenders point to the electoral consistency it has produced. Adamawa’s experiment in managed succession lacks Lagos’s decades of machine-building, its economic weight, or its relatively homogeneous political culture, making the transplant of similar techniques considerably riskier. The News Nigeria captured the historical weight of the moment presciently in February 2026, warning that “welcoming Governor Fintiri may appear bold, but boldness without foresight can be indistinguishable from a self-inflicted crisis.”
The 2027 Risk Assessment
The 2027 governorship election in Adamawa will be held in the shadow of a contested primary, internal party fragmentation, and a structural conflict between a sitting governor and a federal-level political patron. The APC now has a candidate who owes his ticket to a process that many party members regard as illegitimate. Whether this can be overcome depends on several factors: the effectiveness of post-primary reconciliation, the extent to which Haske’s and Namdas’s networks are brought into the fold, the state of the opposition (a PDP diminished by Fintiri’s defection, but potentially energised by the APC’s internal crisis), and whether the Fintiri-Ribadu fault line is managed or deepens further.
The Adamawa case is not isolated. Daily Trust‘s post-primary analysis identified similar patterns across multiple states in the 2026 APC primaries, noting in Yobe State that the process was “quite complex” with aspirants protesting against gubernatorial choice. The Cable’s analytical piece on the politics of stepping down documented simultaneous withdrawal patterns in Rivers, Adamawa, and Kwara states, arguing that the underlying message was clear: “unity is increasingly valued above competitive uncertainty.” This framing — which treats managed outcomes as a form of rational political management rather than democratic violation — reflects a troubling consensus that party democracy in Nigeria is, at best, a performance. If the 2027 general elections are preceded by a wave of contested, manipulated, or shadow-managed primaries across the country, the cumulative effect on political legitimacy could be severe.
The Legit.ng analysis by political commentator Olajumoke Shaqiru Victor, written in the aftermath of Fintiri’s defection, offered a diagnosis that has only become more acute in the months since: “These developments indicate that ideology is still secondary in Nigerian politics, while political survival and influence remain the primary drivers.” In such an environment, primaries are not contests between visions for governance; they are contests between networks of power, patronage, and proximity to Aso Rock.
Expert Perspectives
“What began as a strategic defection has rapidly degenerated into a fierce supremacy battle, with both camps scrambling to seize the party machinery, dictate leadership positions, and control the delegate system.” — Sahara Reporters, March 2026
“As the 2027 election approaches, the stakes are high — not only for aspirants but also for the credibility of the party’s democratic process. If the allegations of manipulation persist, observers warn, the APC may risk not just losing an election, but also eroding public trust.” — National Accord Newspaper, April 2026
“If sections of the party interpret Fintiri’s entry as part of a broader ethnic-balancing strategy or a counterweight against specific blocs, the consequences could be profound. Decisions made at the top ripple through communities with historic sensitivities.” — Vanguard News, February 2026
Political scientist and former INEC chairman Professor Attahiru Jega has repeatedly emphasised in public lectures and writings that the failure of internal party democracy is among the most serious structural threats to Nigeria’s democratic consolidation. When parties cannot select candidates through legitimate internal processes, Jega has argued, the legitimacy deficit travels with the candidate all the way to the general election and beyond. The Adamawa primary tests exactly this proposition. Channels Television reported that an appeals committee was on the ground to receive petitions following the declaration, a procedural acknowledgement that the primary’s legitimacy would be challenged. Whether those appeals will be heard, or disposed of quietly, will be one of the earliest tests of the party’s commitment to internal democracy before the general election season begins in earnest.
For the APC’s national leadership, the minimum necessary response to the Adamawa situation is an independent review of the primary results, including forensic comparison of ward-level tallies with official collated figures, before Galadima’s candidacy is formally confirmed. A transparent, time-bound reconciliation process for aggrieved aspirants, with credible commitments on future roles and inclusion in the party’s 2027 campaign architecture, is equally essential. The party must also clarify, publicly and unambiguously, the proper role of federal officials including ministers and the NSA in state-level party primary processes, and enforce compliance with existing party regulations on this point. Without these steps, the shadow party dynamic will simply continue operating, unchallenged and unaccountable.
For Governor Fintiri and state party leadership, the priority must be moving beyond rhetorical warnings against anti-party activities to structural reconciliation measures: including major aspirants in campaign committees, offering credible consultation on running mate and cabinet positions, and acknowledging the primary’s controversies without defensiveness. History in Adamawa and across Nigeria’s Fourth Republic is unambiguous that anti-party activities by disgruntled primary losers have cost the APC elections before, including in 2019 and 2023 in the state itself.
For INEC and electoral reform advocates, the Adamawa case reinforces the urgent need for stronger enforcement mechanisms for internal party democracy provisions under the Electoral Act 2022, including independent monitoring of primary elections and mandatory publication of ward-level results before final collation. For civil society and media, forensic documentation of primary processes — including ward-level vote tallies, aspirant withdrawal patterns, and post-primary political movements — should be continued as a body of evidence for both accountability and early warning purposes.
A Warning Signal, Not an Isolated Contest
The Adamawa APC governorship primary of May 2026 is not an isolated political contest. It is a warning signal, one flashing in a system with structural fault lines that run deep. It demonstrates that shadow party dynamics, in which powerful actors outside formal structures shape candidate outcomes, are not a marginal pathology of Nigerian democracy but a central operating principle of its party system.
It demonstrates that a serving governor, with all the administrative weight of state machinery, can be outmanoeuvred by a federal-level political network operating through patronage, party infrastructure control, and the invocation of proximity to Aso Rock. It demonstrates that the gap between the results of a primary as experienced by ordinary party members and the results as officially announced can be wide enough to drive a political rupture through.
And it demonstrates, most urgently, that the 2027 general elections in Nigeria are approaching through a landscape of contested legitimacy, unresolved grievance, and elite power struggles whose resolution is not guaranteed by the calendar. For Nigerians who believe in democratic governance, the lesson of Adamawa is not comfortable. The formal institutions, the primary committee, the party guidelines, the Electoral Act existed. They were present. They were formally observed. And yet, credible reporting suggests that the outcome was shaped by forces that none of those institutions were designed or empowered to constrain.
The question is not whether Nigeria has elections. It is whether those elections, and the processes that precede them, genuinely reflect the will of the people who participate in them. In Adamawa in May 2026, that question received a troubling answer. Whether it receives a different answer in 2027 depends on choices that party leaders, state actors, civil society, and the media make in the months ahead. The shadow party has shown its hand. The question is whether democratic institutions and democratic Nigerians have the will to call it.
*Aminu Adamu Ahmed is a conflict analyst, investigative journalist, and 2025/2026 HumAngle Fellow. A Master’s student in Peace and Conflict Studies at Modibbo Adama University, Yola, his work examines the intersection of security, governance, and environmental pressures across the Sahel and West African frontiers. Aminu is the Editor-in-Chief of The North Journals, The Green Time Africa, and West African Journalist on Environment, Science, Health, and Agriculture. He specializes in counterterrorism policy, jihadist insurgencies, and post-conflict peacebuilding in the Lake Chad Basin. He writes independently and can be reached via WhatsApp at +2348093040705.
