2027: More opposition governors will move to our party soon — APC

The slew of high-profile defections into the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is yet to abate as the party leadership on Friday in Abuja stated that more governors will be joining its fold soon.

National Secretary of the party, Senator Ajibola Basiru at a one-day seminar for publicity secretaries of the party from the state and zonal levels, hosted by the Office of the National Publicity Secretary of the party made the declaration.

At the event themed, ‘Communicating Renewed Hope – A Capacity Building Seminar for APC Zonal and State Publicity Secretaries’, Senator Basiru also frowned at what he described as the weaponization of fake news, ethnicity and religion by opposition elements ahead of the 2027 general election.

He said; “Before now, people used to say, ‘do not blow your trumpets’, but if you do not blow your trumpets, the trumpets will get lost.

“This gathering is also important because even before the 2023 election, we had seen the weaponization of falsehood as an instrument of politics in Nigeria. Now, people will go and pick images from Somalia, images from Chad, images from where there is war, and put an address to it in Nigeria in order to create misinformation. We also have a situation where people who have had the opportunity of governing the sub-national, and without any achievement beyond establishment, they will come and be telling us what happened in China, in Malaysia, when in their own backyards, their communities ravaged by floods, and they did not put a single school building for eight years of their administration.

“So this gathering is important for us to be able to tackle those who have also weaponized ethnicity. Growing up in Nigeria, ethnic fault lines were not as pronounced as they have been made ahead of the 2023 election, and unfortunately, they are still doing carryover of that post-2023 election.

“Another fault line is that of religion. Weaponization of religion on the ground of politics. Even people whose sanctimonious attitude is very dubious now try to wear the toga of religion for the purpose of political ascendancy. These are part of the efforts that we need to put in place. How do we effectively tackle the weaponization of falsehoods, weaponization of ethnicity, and weaponization of religious bigotry in our country?

“In our vault today, being the largest party in Nigeria, we have 23 governors as at the last count. We still have more governors who are viable candidates to come. We also have some governors who are not viable candidates who also want to come. I won’t go into details of that. But we also need to showcase what our governors are doing so that we will be able to show to the people that it is not just about noise. It is about programmes and activities”, he added.