The recent narrative by the national leadership of the All Progressive Congress, APC suggesting that any governor who defects to the All Progressives Congress (APC) automatically becomes the leader of the party in that state reflects a dangerous oversimplification of Nigeria’s complex political realities. While such an assumption may appear logical—and has even worked—in states like Delta, Akwa Ibom, and Enugu, applying the same template to Rivers State would amount to a grave strategic error.
Politics, like warfare, abhors lazy generalizations. Rivers State is not Delta. It is not Akwa Ibom. It is not Enugu. Rivers is sui generis—politically peculiar, structurally convoluted, and historically shaped by alliances that defy neat party labels.
In Delta, Akwa Ibom, and Enugu, the governors’ defections to the APC followed months of painstaking consultations. These were not impulsive political leaps, but carefully negotiated transitions involving incoming PDP members, and original APC members and stakeholders, ward structures, local government executives, state party organs, legislators, and influential caucuses. The result was a largely seamless merger: old rivalries were managed, new power equations agreed upon, and a distinct, organically fused APC emerged in each state.
Rivers State presents the exact opposite scenario.
Governor Siminalayi Fubara did not defect to the APC as a bloc leader; he crossed over as an individual. He did not bring along local government chairmen, council executives, PDP ward or state structures, members of the Rivers State House of Assembly, National Assembly caucuses, or any significant institutional components of the party from which he emerged. There was no evidence of prior negotiations to harmonize interests, reconcile factions, or engineer a genuine merger of political forces.
More critically, there was no simple, organically unified APC structure in Rivers State before—or at the time of—his defection.
What has existed in Rivers State APC prior to his defection, and what still exists today, is a peculiar coalition: a convergence of APC and PDP elements bound together not by ideology or party supremacy, but by allegiance to a single dominant political force—the former Governor of Rivers State and current Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Barrister Nyesom Wike.
This is the political reality many prefer to whisper about but rarely confront openly. In practical terms, what operates as the APC in Rivers State is best described as a hybrid formation—a “People’s Democratic All Progressives Congress” (PDAPC). It is a coalition sustained by shared loyalty to Wike’s political structure, influence, and strategic calculations, rather than by formal party lines.
Within this context, the notion that Governor Sim Fubara can be imposed as the undisputed leader of the APC in Rivers State simply by virtue of defection is not just flawed—it is politically reckless. Leadership in Rivers is not conferred by ceremonial party switches; it is earned through control of structures, negotiated consensus, and deep-rooted loyalty networks.
Ignoring this reality risks provoking internal resistance, passive sabotage, and outright fragmentation within the party. Even if such an imposition were achieved administratively, it would not translate into the kind of total, committed, unwavering, and unquestionable loyalty required to win elections and govern effectively in a state as politically sophisticated and combative as Rivers.
For the APC national leadership, Rivers State demands caution and tactical intelligence. A “one-size-fits-all” approach to party leadership—successful elsewhere—could prove catastrophically self-destructive here. Misreading Rivers is not a minor miscalculation; it is the kind of strategic blunder that can obliterate a party’s prospects in the state for an entire political cycle.
If the APC is serious about consolidating its position in Rivers State, it must first accept the state as it is, not as it wishes it to be. That means acknowledging existing power dynamics, engaging all critical stakeholders, managing competing loyalties, and deliberately engineering a genuinely inclusive and organic party structure.
Anything short of this will not merely weaken the APC in Rivers State—it risks handing the state back to its adversaries on a silver platter, through nothing more than avoidable political hubris.
Capt. Bishop C. Johnson, US Army (rtd), is a national defense and military strategist, and a political commentator.
