Dele Momodu has declared the All Progressives Congress jittery even after President Bola Tinubu summoned governors, ministers and federal lawmakers to fortify the ruling platform. Speaking on Channels Television's Politics Today on Tuesday, the African Democratic Congress chieftain said the swelling accord among opposition leaders had rattled the governing party. "They cannot believe that we will have maybe four or five major opposition leaders in the country, and some people will go and put fire in their houses so that none of them will be strong enough to stand against the leader," Momodu remarked, adding that the "obvious panic" in the APC was visible despite the presidential rally.
He painted the governing party as a place where dissent is suffocated, claiming that many members "grumble behind the master, but they dare not speak up." Momodu further accused the APC of "gatekeeping institutions," alleging that venues for conventions are blocked and courts are manipulated. Charging that Tinubu seeks to replicate nationwide the political architecture he built in Lagos, Momodu warned against a slide into "one-man rule," insisting Nigeria is "too big for the voluminous ambition of one man." On 2027, he endorsed an Atiku Abubakar–Peter Obi ticket under the ADC banner, arguing their 2019 partnership gives them a head start.
Dele Momodu's claim that Tinubu has corralled governors, ministers and legislators yet still faces "obvious panic" inside the APC is the clearest admission yet that the ruling party's famed machinery is sputtering. The image of a national chairman who must "gather people by fire by force" exposes the limits of patronage when voters grow restless.
What unsettles the APC is not just opposition numbers but the possibility that disparate grievances—cost-of-living anger, northern security fears, youth unemployment and Christian–Muslim friction—could coalesce into a single electoral wave. Momodu's taunt that lawmakers would approve "one trillion dollars" in five minutes hints at a legislature that has traded oversight for access, leaving the party with no internal shock absorber when public mood sours.
For ordinary Nigerians, the takeaway is stark: the same machinery that allocates palliatives, contracts and student loans is now too anxious to guarantee its own survival. A trader in Kano or a bus driver in Lagos may not join ADC, but if ruling-party governors start scrambling for cover, federal allocations to their states could wobble and subsidy removals may be reviewed through the prism of electoral survival rather than economic logic.
Momodu's proposed Atiku–Obi pairing under ADC is still speculative, yet it sketches the outline of a coalition that could split the North–South divide that Tinubu's 2023 map exploited. If the APC's response is more gatekeeping—blocked venues, court maneuvers—it will only confirm the opposition's rallying cry that the party fears ballots more than bullets.
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