BREAKING: The 2026 APC Primary Elections

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The relevance of primary elections in a democratic setting is a critical indicator of the depth of internal democracy within political parties. Since Nigeria’s present unbroken democracy began in May 1999, primaries have demonstrated how constitutional guidelines, party supremacy, and varying interests of politicians have continually collided. To comprehend the dialectics and dynamics that shaped the final outcomes of the primary elections held during the recently concluded 2026 All Progressives Congress (APC) primaries that took place from May 16 to May 23, 2026, it is necessary to examine the three legal frameworks set out in the Electoral Act: direct, indirect, and consensus option. The direct primary system allows registered, card-carrying party members to vote for their preferred candidates, aiming to decentralise power and promote grassroots participation.

Under the indirect primary system, selected party delegates, including elected officials and party executives, are empowered to vote. The consensus option involves negotiations among aspirants to step down in favor of a single candidate endorsed by the party’s leadership. Since the APC’s participation in the 2015 polls, primary elections have repeatedly been marred by logistical hurdles, deep-seated factionalism, and other challenges. In some states in 2022, the outcomes of primaries in Rivers and Zamfara sparked legal battles over flawed processes, leading to the disqualification of the party’s candidates and undermining the party’s electoral fortunes. More worrisome, the role of financial influence and incumbency constituted a tenacious challenge in changing the APC primary ecosystem. The deployment of influence and the complete alienation of grassroots members in determining primary winners, which informed certain guidelines aimed at averting anomalies that had led aspirants to exit the party to seek alternative platforms.

Unlike APC primary elections in previous years, the recently concluded primaries remain a defining moment, not only for the party but also for Nigeria’s contemporary democratic landscape. Ahead of the 2027 general elections, the ruling party implemented a coordinated, phased electoral calendar that led to the endorsement of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s re-election ticket. Across the legislative, governorship, and presidential spheres, the 2026 primaries required extensive logistical planning and grassroots participation, with the APC National Working Committee (NWC) taking charge to prevent usurpation of control and hijacking by governors seeking to impose their cronies as candidates, which could undermine the party’s supremacy. The defining operational feature of the 2026 APC primaries was the adoption of the direct primary system, which promotes grassroots participation in selecting the party’s standard-bearers.

Though there were bursts of protests in some states, with supporters of aspirants accusing state governors of breaching the party’s guidelines by manipulating the consensus option, no fewer than five states opted for direct primaries for governorship tickets. The conduct of primaries in the aforementioned states, including Oyo, Rivers, and Nasarawa, has led to successful outcomes, and the results were declared to the satisfaction of all aspirants. By dispensing voting power at the individual ward level, most visibly across the 8,809 wards during the presidential primaries, the APC left no one in doubt that it was committed to absolute inclusivity and transparency. The APC primaries culminated in the presidential primary on Saturday, May 23, 2026, when President Tinubu emerged victorious, polling nearly 11 million votes nationwide. His sole challenger, Stanley Osifo, polled only a fractional minority of the vote, thus cementing Tinubu’s re-election ticket for next year’s polls.

Despite what can be regarded as largely peaceful and orderly primary elections conducted by the APC, some governors attempted to undermine the process by directing state officials to ensure the emergence of preferred candidates. Video clips of primary elections have shown instances where the counting was more of a caricature than a transparent process, lending credence to the claim that, in some quarters, the process was largely controlled to achieve the desired objective of producing favoured candidates. In most states, the primary elections were largely hitch-free, but in some instances, the APC NWC had to step in to review several House of Representatives results to uphold transparency and address irregularities. In Zamfara state, for instance, the APC NWC intervened when local aspirants accused the state government of undermining democratic protocols by bypassing certain aspirants in favour of handpicked consensus outcomes.

There’s no doubt that the APC primaries were, unlike before, a strategic triumph for the party’s discipline and a weakening of the incumbency factor in determining primary outcomes. By successfully mobilising millions of party members, the APC has confirmed its commitment to grassroots involvement in deepening internal democracy. Despite its demonstrated dominance of Nigeria’s democratic landscape, pockets of intense disputes over legislative slots have shown that the primary elections were not devoid of challenges in overcoming intra-party ambitions. Blueprint calls on other parties to emulate the APC’s conduct of its primary elections, deepening and mobilising grassroots participation in determining candidates for the general polls.