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Abuja, Nigeria — September 15, 2026

Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, has hit back at APC governors after they publicly rejected his “Rainbow Coalition” initiative, describing them as smart but politically lazy and questioning their read on how votes actually moved in the 2023 elections.

“When I see the APC governors, the people who had the press conference, they are smart, but they are politically lazy,” Wike said, pointing to Imo State as an example. He noted that Governor Hope Uzodimma’s APC secured two Senate seats in Imo in the 2023 election — held the same day as the presidential poll — even though Tinubu received under 15% of the presidential vote in the state. He raised a similar point about Ebonyi, Abia, and Enugu States, where he said the APC won National Assembly seats despite Tinubu polling under 10% of the presidential vote in some of those states.

“Was it a rainbow coalition that also made the APC win National Assembly elections in Ebonyi, Abia and Enugu States where the President did not get up to 10 percent of the votes?” Wike asked, arguing the results showed Nigerian voters are capable of splitting their ballots between the presidential race and other contests without confusion — precisely the dynamic he said his Rainbow Coalition is built to replicate for 2027.

Background

Wike’s remarks follow a closed-door meeting of the Progressive Governors’ Forum (PGF) in Abuja, chaired by Imo State Governor Hope Uzodimma, at which APC governors resolved that they would “not participate in, support, or endorse any political alliance or arrangement capable of undermining the reelection of Mr. President, weakening the APC, or adversely affecting any candidate of the party at all levels.” The governors said their campaign commitment was exclusively to APC candidates, a position widely read as a direct rebuke of Wike’s Rainbow Coalition, even though he was not named in the communique.

Wike, a PDP chieftain who serves as FCT Minister under the APC-led federal government, has promoted the Rainbow Coalition — which began in Rivers State — as a cross-party platform meant to secure Tinubu’s 2027 re-election while allowing politicians to retain their existing party platforms for other contests. He has accused Uzodimma and Kwara State Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq specifically of spreading falsehoods about the coalition and working to undermine it, citing its growing acceptance and membership.

In a statement issued through his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communications and Social Media, Lere Olayinka, Wike clarified that his commitment for 2027 is to Tinubu personally, not to the APC as a party, and said he never promised the PDP would refrain from fielding its own candidates for governorship, National Assembly, or State Assembly seats. He urged APC governors to “go and face” their own state-level contests rather than treat his coalition as a vehicle for delivering victories to APC candidates down the ballot.

The dispute underscores a widening rift within the pro-Tinubu political camp less than a year and a half before the 2027 general elections, pitting Wike’s cross-party mobilisation strategy against APC governors’ insistence on party-line loyalty and exclusivity.