Wike Says He Told Tinubu He Will Not Join APC as FCT Minister Reaffirms Loyalty to PDP

Wike Says He Told Tinubu He Will Not Join APC as FCT Minister Reaffirms Loyalty to PDP

Federal Capital Territory Minister Nyesom Wike has publicly restated that he will not defect to the ruling All Progressives Congress, saying he told President Bola Tinubu directly that he prefers to remain in the Peoples Democratic Party even while backing the president politically. Wike made the remark during a media parley in Abuja on April 3, 2026, as he pushed back against claims that his alliance with Tinubu was driven by personal gain or a hidden plan to dismantle the opposition from within. 

His comment came in the middle of a fresh escalation in the PDP’s internal power struggle, a crisis that has increasingly split the party into rival blocs with separate leadership claims, court battles and competing narratives over who truly controls the opposition platform. At the media session, Wike said he had been consistent since the 2022–2023 election cycle, insisting that his support for Tinubu was never concealed and should not be misread as a prelude to formally joining the APC. 

According to Channels Television’s account of the briefing, Wike said his backing for the president should be understood within the logic of local political calculations, not as a transaction for office or political reward. He argued that Nigerians already knew his position from the 2023 elections and said those now portraying his stance as opportunistic were ignoring a record he had made public long before his appointment into the federal cabinet. 

Wike’s declaration is politically significant because he remains one of the most prominent figures still identifying with the PDP while serving in an APC-led federal administration. Tinubu assigned him the FCT portfolio in August 2023, a move that immediately deepened debate over whether Wike had crossed the line from dissident opposition power broker to de facto ruling party ally. Since then, he has continued to present himself as a PDP member who simply chose, on presidential politics, to stand with Tinubu. 

The latest round of controversy was triggered in part by comments from Bauchi State Governor Bala Mohammed, who accused Wike of acting like an undertaker inside the PDP and suggested he was effectively no longer a genuine member of the opposition. In response, Wike dismissed the allegation as baseless and embarrassing, and used the same encounter with journalists to counterattack Mohammed as inconsistent and politically unstable. He said those accusing him of being planted to wreck the PDP should explain why they themselves had explored understandings across party lines.

Wike went further by alleging that Mohammed had previously approached him during the 2022–2023 period with a proposal that they work for Tinubu because, according to Wike’s account, Mohammed could not work with Atiku Abubakar. Wike also said Mohammed later sought an arrangement that would allow him to remain in the PDP rather than move to the APC, a claim central to the now widely circulated line that he told the president, in effect, that he could not move to the ruling party and wanted to stay in the PDP while still offering support. Mohammed’s specific response to that latest claim was not contained in the reports reviewed here, but his earlier criticism of Wike was clearly documented. 

The dispute is unfolding against the backdrop of a broader legal and organisational crisis in the PDP. A Court of Appeal ruling in Abuja in March upheld an earlier Federal High Court judgment restraining the party from proceeding on the basis of its November 2025 Ibadan convention, dealing a major blow to the faction associated with Kabiru Turaki and allies of Bala Mohammed. That court process helped set the stage for the rival Abuja convention backed by Wike’s camp

At that Abuja convention, held on March 29, 2026, Wike’s faction re-elected Abdulrahman Mohammed as national chairman and Samuel Anyanwu as national secretary, presenting the exercise as proof that the PDP remained alive despite months of predictions that it was fatally divided. Reports from Channels Television, Premium Times and TheCable all said the convention was used by Wike’s bloc to project authority and reopen the door to aggrieved members willing to return. 

Wike himself framed the moment as the end of the most destructive phase of the crisis. He said the convention had come and gone, the party’s doors should remain open, and politics should not be treated as a fight to the finish. That language was part reconciliation message and part power statement: reconciliation, because he invited returnees; power statement, because it signalled that anyone re-entering the fold would do so under a leadership balance his faction now believes favours it. 

The political contradiction at the centre of Wike’s position remains stark. He says he will not leave the PDP, yet he also says he will continue to support Tinubu. For critics inside the opposition, that posture weakens party discipline and blurs the distinction between government and opposition at a time when the PDP is already struggling to present itself as a coherent national alternative. For Wike and his supporters, however, the arrangement is presented as candour rather than betrayal: he is not hiding where he stands, and he argues that honesty should count for more than formal labels. 

What is clear is that Wike is trying to hold two positions at once as Nigeria’s 2027 political contest begins to take shape. He wants to remain a central force in the PDP, influence its internal architecture, and preserve a factional machine powerful enough to shape candidate selection and negotiations. At the same time, he is openly aligned with Tinubu’s re-election effort, at least in political terms, and has again made clear that this alignment is deliberate, longstanding and, in his view, compatible with staying in the PDP. Whether that argument persuades the wider opposition is another matter. 

For now, Wike’s latest declaration does not resolve the PDP’s crisis; it sharpens its central question. Can a party already fractured by rival conventions, court rulings and competing ambitions accommodate one of its most powerful figures while he openly supports an incumbent president from the opposing camp? Wike says yes, and says he is doing so to preserve the party’s integrity. His critics say the opposite. As the struggle for the PDP’s future intensifies, that argument is likely to remain one of the defining fault lines in Nigerian politics. 

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