By Abraham Ogbodo
The battle is not finished. But enough of it has been fought to take stock of the casualties. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has been killed. It is awaiting a not-so-befitting burial by family members. The Labour Party has been fatally wounded and waiting to die in the intensive care unit of INEC General Hospital. With just a lone and confused combatant standing in Anambra State, the existential status of the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA) is in serious doubt. The party appears closer to death than it is to life. The New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) has just been fired a life-threatening shot. It was with the active connivance of the Garrison Commander himself, Abba Kabir Yusuf.
The capitulation of the Kano Garrison could count among the wonders of the modern world. The place had remained an impenetrable fortress since the time of Mallam Aminu Kano. It had been the hotbed of protest politics in Northern Nigeria. It ran on its own terms and promises. It chose its Governors and Emirs without recourse to so-called higher quarters. No fighters could enter the place at will and pick captives. Any arrangement to push Kano from its entrenched ways into mainstream attitudes must be negotiated and agreed upon. It could not come by conquest. In fact, GOC, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, was too shocked to be coherent. He searched diligently for what to say when news came that his Garrison Commander had be taken by APC warriors as Prisoner of War (POW) on January 23, 2026.
Finally, Kwankwaso had managed to come to terms with the reality. He agreed January 23 had become a day to remember in the political calendar of Kano. It was the day that the people lost both the right and privilege to choose for themselves. A choice was forced on them to mark the collapse of the age-long Talakawa Kingdom. It has been the rule of market forces since the advent of the BAT Presidency. The trophy goes to the highest bidder. The traditional owners of Kano had just been out-bidded in the open political market. The bottom-line was that the house that Aminu Kano built on a solid foundation and which had withstood the ferocious forces of the Caliphate, yielded to the Tinubu-induced market forces that rule both the real and political economies.
Even so, the blame should not be too harsh. The price to follow Tinubu and the APC is too attractive to resist. It guarantees total security against all manners of political and economic ill wind. If you remember, when Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, who is now a Senator, was the chairman of the APC, he did actually say, that though one’s sins be as red as scarlet, they would be as white as snow if one stepped out of the darkness of other parties into the light house of APC. Wise politicians bank on the APC. To be forewarned is to be forearmed. Only amateurs die in battles that have been foretold.
After the Kano conquest came the lamentations of the vanquished. Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso has already created a special day in the national political calendar to commemorate the conquest. It is to be called Nigeria’s ‘Betrayal Day.’ Just as June 12 has been consecrated Nigeria’s Democracy Day to mark the best presidential election on June 12, 1993, that never was, January 23 has been chosen by Kwankwaso to stand forever as Nigeria’s Betrayal Day. On that day each year, Nigerians, or to streamline it, people of Kano State, would be required to remember the handing over of the Kwankwasiyya Movement founded by Kwankwaso to the Gandujiyya Movement founded by Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, “without compelling reasons” by Abba Kabir Yusuf. It was a capitulation by manipulation. It happened smoothly without a fight.
Another frontline stakeholder called Buba Galadima maintained his own description of the event. I wouldn’t know how he invented his benchmarks, but he described the movement of Governor Yusuf from the NNPP to APC as “a betrayal of historical proportions.” And the history, according to him, ranked Yusuf third, after Judas Iscariot against Jesus Christ, and Marcus Brutus against Julius Caesar. He struggled to explain his pain against the efforts made in the 2023 governorship election to produce Yusuf as Governor of Kano State. “Nothing under the sun we did not do for Abba Kabir Yusuf to prevail.”
No doubt, Buba Galadima, Rabiu Kwankwaso and others might have performed wonders to earn their flowers as ultimate fixers in Kano politics. But politics in Nigeria does not reward efforts in that sense. It rewards brute force and intimidation nuanced as brinkmanship. That is why President Tinubu is getting everything and others are getting nothing. From the near-humble beginning of 19 governorship seats in 2023, Tinubu has worked so hard to expand the APC portfolio to 29 governors as at January 2026. The remaining seven are spread among the other 17 political parties, including the PDP, that contested the 2023 general elections. There has been a corresponding rise in APC’s fortunes in the two chambers of the National Assembly. Even Houses of Assembly in the 36 States have been doing so well to become APC compliant. Thus, without actual elections, the plurality of Nigeria’s democracy is dissolving into a single voice and ideology.
It is politics and not moral instruction. Machetes are not needed in a battle of guns. Just as cavalry or horse soldiers are of little consequence in a battle of tanks or where artillery penetration is the game changer. Governor Seye Makinde of Oyo State has been trying to work out something tangible from what is left of the PDP. It has not been too easy with him. In Osun State, the perspectives of Ademola Adeleke on the big issue of a political platform are overlapping like the convoluted body movements of a breakdancer. He hopes to find peace in an accord between the PDP and Accord Party. Governor Alex Otti is stranded alone with the Labour Party. Only two options appear plausible in the circumstance. It is either he abandons the party for a comfortable anchor somewhere else or chests the storm to refloat the Labour Party in the political stock market for new investors.
Neither way looks smooth. Tinubu and his agents are everywhere looking for ailing political parties to acquire. They operate like Doctor Kill and Cure. They cause the problem and then offer a Nazi-like final solution that only leads to total obliteration. Tinubu and the APC have an arsenal of nuclear bombs. To contemplate a match in the first place, the opposition must find somewhere to source hydrogen bombs. That way, the terror will be even and balanced to enforce a restraint. It is called Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) in ballistic science. It specifically describes a situation where all sides are equally mad and no side is ready to get madder to offset the balance of madness.
For now, the only hope of procurement of hydrogen bombs to counter the APC’s nuclear arsenal lies on the reinvented Africa Democratic Party (ADC). What the party does or fails to do in 2027 will point the direction to a multi-party or one-party democracy in Nigeria. The ADC is a special bird. Its feathers are needed to cast evil spell on Nigerians. The APC’s archers have their quivers loaded with sharp arrows and are afield to take down the special bird. And so, the bird must not fly low. It must pick up wings and wind to continually remain at a very high altitude where supply of oxygen is too low for troublemakers to survive. I am saying that the ADC now has a duty to either perform or perish. To be fair, Tinubu has not physically restrained anyone from moving confidently towards 2027. He is only playing a brand of politics that is considered offensive but not really patented in his name. Others can play the same politics and even outperform Tinubu in his own game.
In other words, the ADC can change the battlefield and make things complex for Octopus APC. That is, to ascend a performance height where the champion would be disoriented and beg for simplification. It is not enough to chorus ” in the name of Jesus we shall conquer” in baseless enthusiasm. Prayer is not a strategy. The challenger must figure out the appropriate stage to diminish the performance of the APC in 2027. This, precisely, is the job description of the ADC. The party is on a mission to keep democracy alive in Nigeria. It must not fail.
