By Sarah NEGEDU
As the battle for the soul of the Federal Capital Territory draws closer, original Inhabitants of the FCT have advised President Bola Tinubu to reassess the role of the All Progressives Congress if the party wants to record landslide victory in the 2026 area council elections.
Their advice is coming following a light-hearted joke by president Tinubu cautioning the FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, against swinging the political tides in Abuja in favour of the main opposition, the Peoples Democratic Party, through his infrastructure drive.
Tinubu made the remarks on Sunday, while hosting some FCT stakeholders who were at the Presidential Villa for Sallah homage.
Tinubu recounted, “I remember the day Nyesom Wike came to me and said, ‘Please, take us out of this problem of TSA so that I can do more work and achieve more.’
“Then I said, ‘Okay, tell me what you’re about to do.’ And he presented it. And I threw in my own political guide. ‘Would that give me any opportunity for my party to win the election in FCT?’
“I said, ‘I know where you are coming from, your own party or my party. If this thing goes too much in your own favour, yo will lose your job.’ Then he said, ‘Okay, we will settle that, Oga.’”
Reacting to the banter, some residents under the aegis of FCT Stakeholders Assembly, insist that the APC has just 30 to 50 percent chance of winning any election in the FCT under Wike.
President of the group, Dr. Aliyu Daniel Kwali, said the Wike-led administration has not done much to ameliorate the toxic political environment he inherited.
Kwali, in a statement issued on behalf of the FCT Stakeholders Assembly, noted that, “Keen observers of the performance of minister Wike since assumption of office are quick to declare a 30 to 50 percent chance of the APC winning any election in the FCT under Wike for two reasons.
“First, the propensity for the FCT voting population to vote against the ruling party at the center has become a tradition for reasons that are already in the public domain. Second, Minister Wike , under the supervision of the President, has not done anything to ameliorate the toxic political environment that he inherited from previous FCT Ministers. If anything, he has made it more acidic for the ruling party.
“There’s no doubt that we all agreed that Wike’s performance in the provision of road infrastructure is superlative, but his relationship with the voting public demonstrates certain insensitivity.”
The group which also accused the minister of securing at least 40 plum federal government political appointments for his Rivers state constituency, said the minister has failed to secure any for his shadow FCT constituency.
They warned that if the trend is sustained, there’s no doubt that the FCT will become a sub-colony of Rivers state in no distant future.
According to the FCT Stakeholders Assembly, “There’s undoubtedly a calculated and sustained effort to annihilate the indigenous communities of the FCT, reminiscent of the apartheid era in South Africa. This effort is to make room for unhindered occupation by the colonizers, thus confirming the status of the FCT as an internal colony of Nigeria.”
They therefore suggest that, “To deliver the ruling party at any FCT election will require much more than ego boosting projects. It will require human face in governance.”
They posit that, “The voting pattern is however distinctly at variance with the contest for political supremacy among the elite groups. Two factors are responsible. First, members of the elite class constitute an insignificant, infinitesimal proportion of the FCT voting population. Most of them are compelled to actively participate in the electoral processes in their states of origin in order to gain national prominence, leaving the FCT indigenes who have no other State but the FCT, and the masses of other ethnic nationalities who are resident in the FCT to determine the outcome of elections. Incidentally, both FCT indigenes and the resident masses are aggrieved by government actions or inactions, and the polls have increasingly become a welcome opportunity to vent their frustration.”
