Lagos APC’s Crisis of Democracy: Internal Strife & the Risk to President Tinubu’s Stronghold
By Fouad Oki
Nigeria’s ruling APC is on the brink of self-inflicted damage in Lagos State. As the July 12, 2025 local government and LCDA elections approach, biter infighting has replaced unity.
Party stakeholders warn that internal division and the imposition of candidates by powerful insiders threaten both the party’s credibility and its electoral prospects. In community after community, aspirants and supporters are openly defying top-down arrangements, insisting on genuine primaries.
If Lagos APC leaders persist in sidelining grassroots voices by invoking President Tinubu’s name to justify undemocratic picks we are risking alienating voters and inviting legal disaster. This crisis is more than procedural; it is a dire warning that “Lagos State APC is for sale” and that democratic norms must be defended or the party’s fortunes could tumble, even in its Lagos stronghold.
Historical Apathy: Plummenting Turnout at Lagos LG Polls
Lagos has long suffered chronic voter indifference in local elections. Civil society observers note that turnout at council elections has been “abysmally low” for years. For example, in the 2021 Lagos council polls, an average of only three parties appeared on ballots, and many polling units were nearly deserted by late morning. This echoes a decades-long slide. (Official accounts suggest that while initial turnout might have been around 41% in 1999, recent figures have often dipped into single digits.
Voter turnout in Lagos State has declined steadily from an estimated 41% in the 1999 transition elections to barely 6% in the 2021 local-government polls. Even the much- anticipated “youth wave” of 2023, catalysed by the EndSARS movement and amplified on social media, pushed presidential-election turnout only to 29%, well below the national average of 32%.
Lagos, paradoxically Nigeria’s most literate, urbanised and economically dynamic state, has entrenched itself as the country’s capital of voter apathy.
Politically, Lagos has been dominated since 1999 by the same ideological lineage, Alliance for Democracy (AD) → Action Congress (AC) → Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) → All Progressives Congress (APC). The party controls the governorship, 38 of 40 State Assembly seats, and every LGA/LCDA chairmanship. Opposition forces periodically win federal legislative constituencies (e.g., Peoples Democratic Party victories in 2015 and Labour Party surge in 2023) but struggle to entrench local structures.
This “hegemonic but britle” equilibrium shapes citizen perceptions: elections appear non-competitive at local level yet unpredictably fluid at presidential level, breeding selective participation.
Drivers of disengagement are multi-layered.
Structural factors, youth unemployment of 42%, chronic housing stress, commuting problems that average 2.8 hours a day squeeze the opportunity cost of voting. Institutional pathologies follow: citizens perceive LASIEC local polls as predetermined, citing the hegemonic dominance of the ruling party which has captured 376 of 377 councillor seats in the last three cycles. Psychologically, trust deficits are staggering: only 18% of Lagosians told Afrobarometer in 2022 that “elections enable voters to remove bad leaders,” down from 44% in 2005.
Violence, though episodic, looms large in the public imagination; 63 incidents were logged by CLEEN Foundation across three LGAs in the 2023 cycle, disproportioonately concentrated in riverine areas where turnout crashed to under 10%.
In 2021, Nigeria’s electoral NGO Yiaga Africa reported that voters were “absent in some polling units as of 11am”. Such chronic apathy has left Lagos councils with a dangerously thin public mandate. Our Party APC, the ruling party’s grassroots base once enthusiastic under Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s old Parties from Alliance for Democracy to Action Congress and Action Congress of Nigeria before meta morphing into the APC has shrunk into quiet resignation. The only way to reverse this demoralization is to make party primaries and elections genuinely inclusive. But current signs are ominous: instead of energizing supporters, Lagos APC leaders appear bent on recreating the very mistakes that turned off voters.
The consequences are profound. Governments elected by dwindling minorities suffer legitimacy deficits, undermining their capacity to impose taxes, implement tough reforms or mobilise citizens in crises. Local councils, which constitutionally drive primary-healthcare and basic-education delivery, drive into extreme unaccountability: LASIEC reports show that 27 councils did not submit audited accounts between 2017 and 2021, with negligible public scrutiny because so few residents feel any ownership of councils they never helped elect.
“Baba Sope” Politics and Imposed Candidates
Reports from across Lagos State reveal a surge of what insider’s call “baba sope” politics, the imposition of candidates by godfathers and emerging Cabals operating from Abuja. In Ojokoro LCDA, for instance, a faction of APC chairmanship hopefuls has publicly rejected a purported “consensus” candidate. In a fiery statement they declared that “No individual or clique has the right to impose candidates against the will of the people. Let it be known: Ojokoro is not for sale. The people must decide.”.
Echoing that sentiment, other aspirants from Ojokoro decried media claims of a pre- arranged outcome as a “false, deceptive” ploy designed to “subvert the democratic process”. These grassroots leaders insist on transparent balloting and are demanding that every aspirant test his or her popularity at the local level.
Similar anger has broken out in Agege LGA, where the son of the Lagos State House of Assembly Speaker Rt. Hon. Mudashiru Obasa was championed by party bosses for the chairmanship slot. At a recent stakeholders’ meeting, youths and elders held up placards reading “Obasa should not impose a chairman on us from Agege” and “You can’t bring a stranger to lead us.”. One protest leader warned flatly: “We reject any attempt to sideline loyal party members who have served this council…
Let everyone test their strength at the primaries.”.
The depth of resentment was palpable: local APC stalwarts charged that an external candidate was being foisted on them in the name of “party unity,” even as their own leaders were ready to run. In short, key Lagos APC figures overreached, provoking street-level backlash.
Even President Bola Ahmed Tinubu whose political brand is being invoked as justification has been drawn into the fray. Vanguard reports that Tinubu “reportedly nullified” the endorsement of Obasa’s son in Agege, ordering the Speaker to withdraw his candidate.
Apparently, Tinubu feared the optics of another contested Imposition. He told party officials that only “popular candidates” emerging from “fair and open contests” should be fielded. Yet insiders suspect this intervention is far from altruisic: observers believe a different protégé was quietly pencilled in under the President’s oversight.
The episode underscores a biter irony: even as Lagos aspirants cry foul at meddling, the highest party office is playing kingmaker behind the scenes. Such double standards invoking direct primaries on one hand while enforcing indirect consensus on the other only deepen suspicion. The resulting disharmony telegraphs to voters that APC is playing politics of imposition, not democracy, exactly the mistake that produced unrest at past primaries.
For the 2027 general elections, the demographic clock is ticking: 1.7 million Lagosians will turn 18 between 2023 and 2027. If even a quarter of them vote, they could swing senatorial and House races. Yet registration botlenecks persist, INEC closed its Continuous Voter Registration portal 9 months before the 2023 polls, disqualifying an esrimated 317,000 Lagos youths. Unless CVR becomes truly continuous and is devolved to tertiary institutions and malls, history could repeat itself.
Centralized Primaries and Screening Controversies
The manner in which our Party (APC) is organizing its primaries stokes further criticism. The party’s State Electoral Commitee has scheduled all screening and delegate selection events at the state secretariat on Acme Road, Ogba.
The Tribune confirms that 470 aspirants were screened there between April 29 and May 3, of whom 432 were cleared for the chairmanship primaries. (Only 38 were disqualified for administrative reasons such as lacking PVCs or forged certificates.)
Importantly, Lagos APC has opted for indirect primaries: only accredited party executives not the general membership will vote for candidates on May 10. This contrasts with the Constitution of the party and accepted norms, which give local government executives the right to organize their own primaries.
Veteran APC legal adviser, Dr. Muiz Banire famously warned in 2017 that centralizing all council primaries at one venue violates the party’s rules. He pointed out that under the APC Constitution, “the power to designate the venue of such council primaries” lies with the council level executibe, not state officers. Banire even cited parallel cases: in Benue and elsewhere, APC state chapters decentralize LG primaries to honour local structures. Yet Lagos’s leaders pushed ahead with a single-location, delegate-based model anyway.
This decision has fueled rumours of hidden manipulations. Some aspirants grumble that the screening “cash-and-carry” exercise especially in competitive areas like Coker-Aguda LCDA where our Party has always been defeated felt being rigged out internally.
To make maters worse, the party has already stirred suspicion by citing of Abuja’s interest: Lagos insiders whisper of an “Aso Rock cabal” selecting pliant candidates. Although no senior APC national official has publicly ordered impositions, events in other states suggest a pattern. For example, in Ondo State last year, political commentators accused a pro-Tinubu group of “deceiving aspirants… by claiming to secure the President’s endorsement for their man”.
Lagos’s factional batle feels of a piece: without transparency, any mention of the President’s “guidance” becomes a club to beat rivals. Such tactics risk exhausting the party’s activists. When ordinary members see the party leadership playing heavy-handed games by “planning” candidates from above they turn away from campaigning, and the party mobilization grinds to a halt.
Undermining the Incumbency Privilege
One flashpoint is the fate of sitting chairmen. By tradition, returning local government or LCDA chairmen often enjoy a sort of “right of first refusal”: they can contest again without internal opposition, as a courtesy from the party.
This convention has helped APC reward loyalty and avoid needless turf wars. In the last council election cycle, for example, former governor Tinubu famously decreed that 18 one-term council chairmen would “enjoy automatic tickets” in the 2018 primaries.
It was seen as a peace gesture for their support in the gubernatorial bid. But now, that arrangement is fraying. In the current round of primaries, the official screening list shows only a handful of incumbents running unopposed. (The Nation reports that four incumbents—Surulere’s Sulaiman Yusuf, Iba’s Jibril Yisa, Ijede’s Motunrayo Alogba, and Lekki’s Kasali Bamidele faced no challengers, but most others have multiple rivals.)
Many returning chairmen feel cheated. If their initial bids were ratified by council delegates, denying them a smooth path to renomination is seen as a breach of trust. In ethnically mixed LCDAs like Coker-Aguda or Agboyi-Ketu, an unpopular outsider could alienate local voting blocs. One Abuja insider warns that undermining this “incumbency privilege” could backfire spectacularly. With no incumbents’ “first shot” guarantee, aggrieved past chairmen can mobilize their followers or even jump ship to opposition parties.
The result would be stronger challengers not only in the APC primaries, but also in the general LG elections. In LG/LCDAs, where ward-level identity and performance of past council administrations still count, ignoring party veterans is politically reckless.
These men know their constituencies; sidelining them invites backlash. The Lagos APC leadership would do well to remember: what is convenient for elite deal-makers can be catastrophic for grassroots supporters.
Legal Pitfalls: Section 84(8) and APC v. Marafa (2020)
Beyond politics, there are stark legal dangers in overriding party democracy. The 2022 Electoral Act introduced new constraints on how parties conduct primaries. In particular, Section 84(8) mandates that any party using indirect primaries must “clearly outline” and implement a “democratic election of delegates” – meaning delegates must be elected by majority vote, not handpicked. In plain terms, the Act forbids any hybrid or appointive delegate system where officeholders pack the electorate with loyalists.
As one legal analyst noted, allowing top officials to load delegates with their own “hirelings” flagrantly violates Section 84(8). The Act is emphatic: any departure from these rules carries heavy penalties. Section 84(13) explicitly provides that “where a political party fails to comply with provisions of this Act in the conduct of its primaries, its candidate…shall not be included in the election”. In other words, if Lagos APC is shown to have rigged its process, the party could be stripped of its ballot. No Lagos APC official seems to have publicly addressed this risk, but opposition lawyers have. Indeed, the Supreme Court signalled zero tolerance for primary abuse in the landmark APC v. Marafa judgment. In that 2020 Zamfara State case, the Court held that the entire APC ticket was invalidated because the party defied its own primary timetable.
The ruling famously empowered aggrieved candidates and rival parties with new legal standing (locus standi) to challenge defective primaries. It even embraced the “doctrine of wasted votes,” meaning opponents could sue after the fact to void the election results, blaming the party’s shoddy internal vote instead of individual candidates.
Lagos APC veterans should remember Marafa: it means any candidate chosen by an “Aso Rock cabal” instead of a fair election could be booted by the courts. Already, lawyers of opposition parties are scouring Lagos for procedural slights. For example, if any Lagos APC aspirant is known to be “anointed” rather than elected, a person could disqualify the man and even nullify all APC’s council votes in that area. Given President Bola Tinubu’s razor-thin margin in Lagos in 2023 (we actually lost the state to Labour Party’s Peter Obi), the party cannot afford another broad disqualification. The clock is ticking: if primaries on July 10 violate Section 84(8) or 84(13), losing the entire local election round is a real risk. This looming legal albatross haunts any hint of a manipulated outcome.
Lessons from Lagos’s Own History
The dangers of forsaking democracy have played out before on Lagos soil. More than once, aspirants have turned the party’s own primaries into riot grounds. In 2017, for instance, Lagos APC attempted to hold all council-chairman primaries at the Teslim Balogun Stadium in Surulere. That move was wildly unpopular. In the pitch of the event, delegates revolted when “consensus” winners were announced without a ballot. As one report describes, angry supporters “engaged in a free-for-all… smashing ballot boxes over allegations of imposition of candidates”. The Electoral Committee was even badly roughed up on stage as he fled a mob accusing him of partisanship.
The same pattern repeated earlier in Lagos. The mere talk of a fixed outcome sparks chaos. No wonder long-time party lawyers likeDr. Muiz Banire have publicly warned: “This is alien to our constitution… Local Government Executives must designate the venue for primaries in their councils,” not the State Secretariat. Dr. Banire’s 2017 letter admonished that massing all aspirants under one roof invites mob action. He cited how in other states APC held ward- level caucuses rather than centralized contests, and urged Lagos to stop its “centralized primaries” scheme. Yet party bosses ignored him with the predictable result that delegates brawled and police had to intervene.
These incidents aren’t ancient history. Some of today’s Lagos Party leaders were present at Balogun Stadium in 2017. They should recall the lesson: enforced consensus leads to chaos. The memory should deter any repeated attempt to shortcut democracy now. But shockingly, current APC planning seems strikingly similar to the old model (all-venue, delegate-based primaries).
If anything, veteran voices like Dr. Banire’s should be raised again: as he warned, continuing this approach “will not be in consonance with the letter and spirit of the [APC] Constitution”. The party urgently needs to heed such reminders or risk re-igniting violence.
Broad Consequences: Parochialism vs. Party Strength
These infighting flashes have implications well beyond Lagos’s council halls. The ruling party’s credibility and grassroots cohesion are on the line, at a moment when every seat counts. Locally, a mass of aggrieved APC members threatens to either stay home or even aid opponents in the July 12ts elections. Nation-brand damage is equally severe: Nigerians see every imposition as hypocrisy, especially coming from the President’s own party, which campaigned last year on “renewal” and inclusion. Lagos insiders fear that current tactics will reinforce the narrative that APC leaders prefer cartels to voters.
Moreover, the timing is ominous. Lagos is President Bola Tinubu’s home state and the linchpin of his national clout. If APC succumbs to factionalism here, it sends a warning to 2027 planners. Remember: in 2023 Lagos voters defected from President Tinubu and went Labour Party. A repeat or worse in 2027 would be disastrous.
Already, public outcry is growing. Local media and opinion columns are blasing the one- sided process. On social media, even loyal APC activists lament that the party “sidelines members” and “dumps direct voting for delegates,” as one grassroots commentary put it. The leadership should not mistake enforced “order” for unity. In fact, if pressing ambitions tramples justice, the Lagos APC’s vaunted organization could unravel entirely.
Calls to Action: Reconnect with the Grassroots
Time is short but the remedy is clear. Lagos APC must pivot from top-down diktats to genuine internal democracy. Specifically:
• Hold primaries at the local level. Empower each LGA/LCDA executive to organize its own candidate selection, in line with party rules. This respects the “letter and spirit” of APC’s constitution and honours community ownership of leadership.
• Resist any “consensus” fixes. If a candidate has true popularity, let them win in a vote, don’t coronate them behind closed doors. That means inviting all cleared aspirants to campaign and have delegates cast ballots on May 10.
• Reinstate the incumbents’ courtesy. Allow one term LG/LCDA chairmen the “first refusal” they’ve long enjoyed. Encourage any veteran champions to run unopposed or with minimal contest. At the very least, consult them on friendly terms. Their networks and goodwill are assets; alienating any one of them now is foolish.
• Enforce Section 84’s rules. Ensure delegate lists are prepared by election, not edict. Make the selection of party delegates themselves transparent and properly voted. In short, obey the new Electoral Act if they value even a single APC vote in 2025.
• Reaffirm President Bola Tinubu’s message. Publicly pledge that every aspirant irrespective of connections will have a fair shot. As the President himself has insisted, “all APC aspirants… should be given equal opportunity” to compete. Let Lagos leaders broadcast that mandate and the President’s name should not be misused to bend rules.
In short, the Lagos APC must choose democracy over cliques. If party managers still believe they know beter than voters, permit me to remind you of the stakes: disenfranchised grassroots can sabotage not only council polls, but also general elections to come. Unity forged under injustice is britle; lasting strength requires inclusivity.
The 2016-2019 cycle demonstrates that digital enthusiasm is a necessary but insufficient condition for turnout. Online mobilisation boosted registration but collapsed against analogue obstacles, collection queues, logistical postponements, rainstorms and persistent distrust. LASIEC’s 2017 replay of low-salience apathy spilled into 2019 nationals, while invalid-ballot ratios signalled simmering protest.
Mis-handling of Party nominations and misinformation can shave 10-15 points off participation, making Lagos uniquely vulnerable in the climate-change era.
The paradox persists: the hegemonic APC retains power on ever-shrinking vote totals, deepening the legitimacy deficit identified in prior chapters. Whether the EndSARS-era civic awakening can finally convert mobilisation to votes is the crux of the 2020-2023 narrative that follows.
The warning signs are unambiguous.
The APC could either learn from past Lagos missteps and legal precedents, or repeat them and reap the consequences. Let this op-ed be a rallying cry within the party: abandon the politics of imposition, honour the rights of members, and give Lagosians a real voice. Failing that, our Party risks losing Lagos not to an opposition challenger, but to its own internal discord – a disaster that would echo all the way to 2027.
My most regard and love always,
Ogboni Fouad Oki
