APC Eyes 2027 Landslide as 12.8m Membership Widens Gap Over Opposition

By Orkula Shaagee

The All Progressives Congress (APC) says its rapidly expanding membership and the performance of the President Bola Tinubu administration have put the ruling party in a strong position to secure a sweeping victory in the January 16, 2027 presidential election and other general elections.

A spokesman of the APC 2027 Presidential Campaign Council, Ima Niboro, expressed confidence during an interview on Arise TV in Abuja on Monday night that the party’s 12.8 million registered members give it a formidable electoral base ahead of the polls.

Niboro, a former presidential media adviser, said the APC’s membership strength far outstrips that of its major rivals, citing figures of 2.4 million registered members for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), 1.6 million for the African Democratic Congress (ADC), 1.3 million for the Labour Party and 700,000 for the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC).

He argued that the figures provide an important indication of the ruling party’s organisational strength and nationwide reach going into the elections.

“Look at the party registration. The APC has 12.8 million registered members, while the opposition parties are far behind. However, if tomorrow the APC wins, they will say we rigged the election,” Niboro said.

Beyond the party’s numerical strength, Niboro said President Tinubu deserves re-election on the strength of his administration’s record over the past three years, particularly its efforts to stabilise an economy he said was in serious difficulty when the government took office.

“The achievements of the president in the last three years are quite outstanding, such that sometimes you don’t even know where to start from,” he said.

“But the most important achievement of the APC is the stabilisation of the economy, because the economy that this government inherited was in tatters.

“This government has been able to solve or sort out most of the problems it inherited, and there is growth across sectors.”

Niboro also defended the removal of petrol subsidy, describing the policy as difficult but inevitable because the previous arrangement had become fiscally unsustainable. He explained that the former model subsidised neighbouring countries more than Nigerians because the fuel was simply smuggled out, leaving Nigerians paying humongous prices at black market rates.

He noted that the leading presidential candidates in the 2023 election had all acknowledged the need to end the subsidy regime, arguing that the fundamental disagreement was therefore not over whether subsidy should go, but how its consequences should be managed.

“Talking about fuel subsidy, the policy was inevitable because it was no longer sustainable. Let me tell you, all three presidential major candidates in the 2023 election agreed that fuel subsidy removal was inevitable,” he said.

Niboro said the government’s longer-term response should be to reduce Nigerians’ dependence on petrol by expanding cheaper transportation alternatives.

According to him, the real objective should not simply be cheap petrol but affordable mobility for ordinary Nigerians.

“What Nigerians need is cheap transportation, not necessarily cheap petrol,” he said, adding that creating viable alternatives to petrol would ultimately provide a more sustainable answer to high transportation costs.