A prominent chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and former presidential aspirant, Adamu Garba, has expressed concern that President Bola Tinubu is being misled by sycophants within his inner circle who present a false sense of stability in the country and within the ruling party. He made the comment during an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Tuesday.
“There is a lot of sycophancy around the president,” Garba stated. “People are telling him that things are okay – things are not okay.”
His remarks come amid rising political tension and the recent resignation of Abdullahi Ganduje as APC National Chairman.
Garba described the current situation as dangerous for the APC, warning that the emergence of an opposition coalition under the African Democratic Congress (ADC) could pose a serious threat to the party’s continued dominance. He likened the coalition to “vultures ready to feed on the weakness of the APC.”
“They hope for our loss, and that is why we need to be serious,” he said. “That is the more reason why we need a leadership that listens to criticisms and accepts facts without flattery or denial.”
Turning his attention to the political landscape in northern Nigeria, Garba noted that the APC’s once-solid base in the region has become fractured, especially after the exit of former President Muhammadu Buhari in 2023, and more significantly following Buhari’s death in July 2025.
Garba observed that the APC’s traditional stronghold in the North had already begun to weaken even before Buhari’s death. He recalled that the party, which once enjoyed a reliable bloc of 12 million votes under Buhari’s leadership, secured only 5.5 million votes from the region in the 2023 general election.
“In 2023, the APC managed only 5.5 million votes in the north. Where were the 12 million votes?” he asked. “Yet we won the election based on structures and strategy. But now, without Buhari, we must re-engineer those strategies to remain relevant,” he said.
