June 22, (THEWILL) – Testing the waters and flying the kite are familiar tactics for politicians, while assessing their strengths and weaknesses in preparation for upcoming contests.
The Sunday, June 8, 2025, Gombe State fiasco of the All Progressives Congress, APC, regarding the non-endorsement of Vice President Kashim Shettima alongside President Bola Tinubu had all the hallmarks of ‘flying the kite’ and ‘testing the waters’, as part of calculations ahead of the 2027 general election.
At that event, a fight broke out after some party leaders endorsed Tinubu for the 2027 presidential election without adopting Shettima as his running mate.
In response to what they considered a calculated move to disgrace their principal, aggrieved APC delegates loyal to Shettima disrupted the summit, insisting that the Vice President must be on the ticket with Tinubu in 2027.
To calm frayed nerves, host governor, Mohammad Yayaha of Gombe State and his Yobe and Borno counterparts, Mai Buni Mala and Babagana Zulum alongside National Chairman of the APC, Abdullahi Ganduje and National Vice Chairman, Mustapha Salihu, restated their support for the VP, even as they clarified that the presidential ticket is a joint one and it is only the President that is voted for in an election.
Providing an insight on the forces at play, a dependable party source confided in THEWILL that part of the agenda at the Gombe APC delegates summit was to confirm in the VP’s backyard whether he has a solid political camp as was being canvassed in some circles.
“The truth is that the VP has no camp vis-à-vis the President. He has no political mileage and has virtually nothing to leverage on,” the source told this newspaper asking to not be identified. When reminded that he was being harsh in his choice of words for a former two-term governor, former senator, former top banker and versatile politician with working knowledge of Nigerian politics which warranted his selection as Vice President, the source went on to paint the picture of politically cold calculations showing that Vice President Shettima would in likelihood be dropped in 2027.
“What happened is political strategy at play and rather than reaching out to other stakeholders, they are pouring emotions all over the place. This will not work,” another source said.
Even so, THEWILL checks reveal that the ongoing political calculations by the President’s camp are dual. The first is in reaction to ongoing political coalition talks among politicians. Rather than wane with inter-party defections to the APC, the coalition elements are waxing stronger, particularly in the North with its arrowheads coming from the North-West which returned the highest votes for the President in the 2023 elections. The second calculation, which is closely linked to the first one, is prompted by the need to shop for a formidable VP from the North-West and thereby checkmate the growing influence of the political coalition, while the President’s camp continues to rally politicians in the South to form a bloc vis-a vis the North, ahead of the 2027 general poll.
The southern agenda is yielding results whereby two state governors on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, notably from the oil rich and big voting-number states like Delta and Akwa Ibom, have defected recently to the APC, alongside many of their cabinet members, many local government council Chairmen, state and some federal lawmakers. In single-party states like Anambra where the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, reigns, its governor, Charles Soludo has pledged support for the President’s re-election.
THE NORTH-WEST AS BRIDE
The role of the North-West geo-political zone in the 2027 calculation is premised on its performance in the 2023 general election. The zone is made up of some of the highest voting states in the country, notably Kaduna, Katsina and Kano, besides Sokoto, Zamfara, Kebbi and Jigawa which make the zone one with the highest number of states, totalling seven, in the country. This zone gave the President the highest number of votes in the 2023 general election.
A state-by state analysis of votes cast in the zone shows that the presidential candidate of the PDP, Atiku Abubakar, won in four out of the seven North-West states, namely Kaduna, Katsina, Kebbi and Sokoto. President Tinubu won in only two, namely Jigawa and Zamfara. Dr. Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) took his home state, Kano. In Kano, Tinubu polled 517, 341 votes; Dr Kwankwaso scored 997,279 votes; Atiku Abubakar came third after polling 131,716, while Peter Obi, the Labour Party, LP, candidate, came fourth with 28,513 votes. But when it comes to the total number of votes cast for each of these three candidates in the North-West, Tinubu led the pack.
Tinubu led with 2,652,824 votes, compared to Atiku’s 2,197,824 votes. Kano, where Tinubu got almost half a million votes did the magic. Overall, Tinubu got 30 per cent of the total number of 8,794,726 votes he scored in the 2023 election from the North-West. This is almost one-third of the total votes he scored in the entire poll. In comparison, the South-West, where he hails from, gave him 2,542,979 votes.
Compared to the North-West, the North-East where VP Shettima hails from returned a total of 933,176 votes for President Tinubu, trailing Atiku who polled 1,741,846 votes. Shettima, however, delivered the votes of his home state, Borno State, which Tinubu won with 252,282 votes, compared to Atiku’s 190, 921 votes. Another challenge facing the APC in the Northeast is that the party and its main rival, the PDP are head -to- head in the control of the six states there: The PDP governs in Bauchi, Adamawa and Taraba while APC governs in Borno, Yobe and Gombe.
Regionally, however, Tinubu had a better showing in the North than in the South. Of the total number of 13, 716,667 votes cast in the North region, Tinubu got 5,346, 404 votes, followed by Atiku who scored 4,834, 767 votes, Obi who polled 2,080,847 votes and Kwankwaso who polled 1, 454,649 votes.
Prior to the incident that happened in Gombe, the North-East and North-West geo-political zones had endorsed President Tinubu for the 2027 presidential election.
This impressive showing by the President in 2023 in the North is being threatened by the ongoing political coalition, whose leaders are capitalising on the hardship and worsening insecurity in the country to drive their agenda, especially in the North.
These leaders include Atiku, Obi, former Kaduna governor, Nasir el-Rufai, ex- National Vice Chairman of the APC, Salihu Lukman, former Transportation Minister, Chibuike Amaechi, former Cross River State governor, Liyel Imoke, former senate president David Mark and former presidential aide, Prof Umar Ardo, as well as many other political bigwigs across political parties in the country.
On Thursday, June 19, 2025, the National Coalition Group took their 2027 bid higher when they publicly unveiled a new group called the All Democratic Alliance, ADA, and formally wrote to the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, for its registration as a political party. They have chosen Chief Akin Ricketts, a former Chairman, board of the Nigeria Ports Authority, as its Interim National Chairman.
Reacting to this development on Friday, Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, SAN, said the ADA is a failed attempt to clone the 2013 legacy parties that formed the APC in 2013.
In a post shared via his official X account (formerly Twitter) on Friday, Keyamo ridiculed the move, describing it as a “pedestrian joke.”
“If they are thinking of recreating what the APC did in 2013, then this is nothing but a pedestrian joke; a complete mockery of that seismic political coalition,” Keyamo wrote on his X platform, adding, “It is an unnecessary hype that the promoters have been struggling to create all along; it is just psychological warfare on Nigerians — a weak attempt at mass appeal. This is not different from several political associations springing up every day for the same purpose.”
ENTER KWANKWASO AND KANO
Amidst the political calculations ahead of the 2027 poll, there are whispers that Rabiu Kwankwaso, could be Shettima’s replacement and Tinubu’s joker to contain the potential threat posed by ADA.
Apart from having arguably the highest voter population in the country, Kano is a key state in the all-important North-West geo-political zone. Among the six other states, Kano is king when it comes to voting strength. In addition, it has a unique quality: It is free from insecurity that plagues and reduces the political integrity of all the other states in the zone, courtesy of the state- of -the art security infrastructure built by ex-Governor Abdullahi Ganduje. Picking a VP from the North-West, the President’s camp reckons, is the best way to secure it and prevent the coalition from taking it.
Sources say Kwankwaso has left his political options open and may grab the deal when offered. NNPP is currently factionalised. The party’s National Chairman, Dr Agbo Major said recently that the former Kano governor remained expelled from the party, just as one of its Senators from Kano, Abdulrahman Kawu, recently defected from the party alongside some other party representatives from Kano State. Moreover, Kwankwaso has been playing smart recently, neither speaking for nor against the political coalition. An offer of a VP position by the governing party would not only keep him politically relevant but keep his presidential ambition alive.
Kwankwaso has however restated that he has never held meetings with President Tinubu to discuss his political future and the APC National Chairman, who had been opposed to his re-admission into APC recently, reversed himself while receiving Senator Kawu and other federal lawmakers into the party, saying APC was ready to admit the NNPP presidential candidate into the party without conditions.
PRESIDENCY RESPONDS
Mr Bayo Onanuga, Special Adviser to the president on information and strategy, waded into the matter last Thursday. In an interview with a national newspaper, he said the President and the Vice President were on good terms and any speculation of a rift between them amounts to trading in “beer parlour gossip.”
According to him, President Tinubu will choose his 2027 running mate after the next convention of party, obviously in 2026.
“That’s what happened under Buhari; he was nominated first and later picked his running mate. You don’t do both at once. Once INEC releases the timetable, the party convention will hold and if the President is nominated again, he will choose his running mate,” Onanuga told the national newspaper, adding, “I’m not aware of any issues between the President and the Vice President. From what I know, they have an excellent working relationship. All the speculation is just beer parlour gossip.”
Meanwhile, an Islamic human rights group, the Muslim Rights Concern, MURIC, has warned President Tinubu and the governing APC against picking another running mate ahead of the 2027 general election, saying that such a move is ill-advised.
When THEWILL asked the leader of the group, Professor Ishaq Akintola to explain further, he said the group asked the APC to “do more consultation so that the decision to drop Vice President Shettima does not boomerang. I will not say more than that.”
Amos Esele is the Editor of THEWILL Newspaper. He has over two decades of experience on the job.
