Nigeria’s ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has declared its ongoing nationwide candidate selections the most fiercely contested primaries the country has ever seen, as the party moves to lock in candidates for the 2027 general elections across every tier of government.
Nentawe Yilwatda, the APC’s national chairman, made the claim on Wednesday evening while speaking to journalists outside President Bola Tinubu’s Lagos residence in Ikoyi, where he had gone to brief the president on proceedings. “In just simple demand and supply, we have a few positions, and we have thousands of people who have come to vie for these positions across the country,” he said, describing the turnout as evidence of the party’s reach into communities nationwide.
The primaries, which began on 15 May with House of Representatives selections, have been staggered across the week — Senate contests followed on 18 May, state assembly primaries on 20 May, with governorship races due Thursday and a presidential primary scheduled for 23 May. Thirty APC governors, 88 senators and 242 sitting House members are among those seeking fresh mandates.
Yilwatda said Tinubu had expressed particular satisfaction with two elements of the exercise: the logistical scale of what he described as effectively a nationwide election, and a reduction in violent incidents compared with previous primaries. The party printed result sheets and coordinated resources across all 36 states — an undertaking the chairman said had won the president’s approval.
Yet the picture on the ground is considerably more complicated. Aspirants in several states have complained that the party failed to publish final lists of cleared candidates in constituencies where consensus arrangements broke down, prompting fears of undisclosed disqualifications. A parallel dispute has simmered throughout between APC governors — who had lobbied for indirect primaries — and the Yilwatda-led National Working Committee, which pressed ahead with direct primaries.
The chairman sought to defend the process, insisting the party’s guidelines were being followed to the letter. Where aspirants refused consensus arrangements, he said, direct primaries were held — and no candidate could be bound to a consensus outcome without first signing a formal consent form. “There’s no state where people have complained that they wanted direct primaries and were given compulsory consensus,” he said.
On the likelihood of post-primary grievances — an inevitability in any large-scale internal contest — Yilwatda pointed to newly established conflict resolution committees at both presidential and party level. “If you lose an election, it’s not the end of the world,” he said, adding that the party intended to begin a “healing process” swiftly in order to campaign as a united front next year.
Yilwatda, who took over as national chairman in July 2025 following the departure of Umar Ganduje and was re-elected at the party’s convention in March 2026, has staked considerable political capital on the exercise running smoothly. Whether the machinery holds together in the days ahead — and whether losing aspirants accept the results — will be an early test of the APC’s readiness for the elections that lie beyond them.
