President Bola Tinubu has veiledly dug the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the former Vice President Atiku Abubakar-led coalition, which recently adopted the African Democratic Congress (ADC), calling on more opposition leaders to join the All Progressives Congress (APC).
The president made the statement while speaking at the APC National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting in Abuja on Thursday, July 24, saying the door is open to defecting politicians to join the ruling party.
Tinubu, in his statement, stated that it was not a bad idea to dump a sinking ship and a coalition of confusion. His statement reads in part, “It’s not a bad idea to abandon a sinking ship and be absent from a coalition of confusion.”
At the NEC meeting, the APC elected President Tinubu's minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction, Professor Nentawe Yilwatda, as its new national chairman. Yilwatda is the 2023 governorship candidate of the APC in Plateau, a north-central state.
The North Central region had earlier stepped up its game to produce the next national chairman of the party, following the resignation of Abdullahi Ganduje, who was from the North West and a former governor of Kano.
Recall that Ganduje resigned from the position in June, citing health challenges, but political actors have expressed the view that his resignation was due to the internal power play and strategic permutations within the APC ahead of the 2027 elections.
Following Ganduje's resignation, Ali Dalori, the APC deputy national chairman, was appointed as the acting national chairman of the party.
See the video of Tinubu's comment here:
Today, we have 23 governors and are still counting. We postponed the congress until December to accommodate more members who are coming. It's not a bad idea to abandon the sinking ship and be absent from the coalition of confusion.
— Imran Muhammad (@Imranmuhdz) July 24, 2025
- President Tinubu pic.twitter.com/Oks6Teaa66
