The first major crack in Bauchi APC came in 2019. Despite having an elected APC Governor in M.A. Abubakar, SAN, certain individuals within the party refused to rally behind him. They prioritized personal ambition over the collective interest of the party. Instead of closing ranks to win, they opened multiple fronts of internal war.
That self-sabotage cost the APC the governorship seat. The votes were there. M.A. Abubakar, SAN, polled over 500,000 votes, a figure that wins elections in most states. But when your own house fights against you, even 500,000 votes are not enough. The opposition did not defeat the APC in 2019; self-saboteurs within the APC did.
The primary tool of these self-saboteurs is simple: reject any primary they do not win. It happened in 2019 and the scars are still visible. Some actors act and claim ownership of the APC. They hardly accept the outcome of party primaries, nor do they believe that the APC is supreme to their personal and self-imposed ambitions.
Once the delegates spoke for M.A. Abubakar, SAN, in the just-concluded governorship primaries, the same playbook returned. Social media was flooded with speculations, not to build the party, but to delegitimize the candidate. That is how elections are lost before the ballot is even printed.
In 2019, at a moment of internal tension, Mallam Adamu Adamu was recognized as party leader in a state that had an elected APC Governor. That was a stabilizing intervention meant to preserve cohesion. But self-saboteurs twisted that precedent to mean the Governor had no base.
Today, they deploy the same strategy against Professor Muhammad Ali Pate, Honourable Minister of Health and Social Welfare. Rather than see his role as leader of the APC in Bauchi State as stabilizing in a period when the party does not control the state government, they paint it as a parallel structure. The goal is the same: divide the party so it cannot win.
Bauchi State has 20 local governments and 212 wards. The Constitution gives an Executive Governor power to appoint Commissioners, work with 20 Local Government Chairmen, and elected councilors across the wards. That is structure. M.A. Abubakar, SAN, understands it. He won in 2015 with around five hundred and fifty-four thousand votes because he connected ward to ward, local government to local government.
The Self-saboteurs ignore that structure. They prefer social media politicians and political entrepreneurs who survive amid divisions. In 2019, they abandoned the structure for noise and lost. After the recent primaries, the noise machine started again, attacking both the candidate and the Minister instead of mobilizing the 212 wards.
To justify working against their own party, self-saboteurs must erase the record. That is why they avoid hard questions. Why are they afraid to tell the world how M.A. Abubakar, SAN, governed from 2015 to 2019 without borrowing? Can anyone deny that the agricultural sector and education were his priorities? Why are they not talking about the health sector and human development, where the sons and daughters of nobody became the sons and daughters of somebody? Why hide his merit-based appointments and youth-driven policies? In 2019, they buried these facts and convinced some voters that change was needed. The result was defeat. The same erasure is happening now.
Self-saboteurs thrive on a lie: that the APC candidate is weak. In 2019, they said M.A. Abubakar, SAN, could not win, despite his over 500,000 votes when the claim party owners were nowhere to be found. They sold that fiction until the party believed it and lost. After the just-concluded primaries, the rhetoric returned. Seven other aspirants contested, yet the the party chose M.A. Abubakar. That choice was not a mistake but the best bet, given the voting patterns of Bauchi State. But the saboteurs say otherwise, hoping that if they repeat it enough, the party will again doubt its strongest hand.
After losing in 2019, these same actors blamed everyone except themselves. They did not admit that ganging up against their own Governor was the cause. They did not admit that recognizing parallel leaders while having an elected Governor fractured the base. They blamed INEC, they blamed the PDP, they blamed the people. That externalization allows them to reuse the strategy. Now, after the primaries, they are already building excuses. If the APC loses again, it will not be because of Professor Muhammad Ali Pate’s leadership or M.A. Abubakar’s candidacy. It will be because the party was sabotaged from within, again.
Surprisingly, many making these divisive utterances are no longer members of the APC. Yet they still shape the narrative. Meanwhile, the fact that M.A. Abubakar, SAN, has never left the APC is not an understatement. He never left the party, rather than threaten to leave despite the injustice orchestrated by self-saboteurs in 2019. He has continued to support the party and recruit a new generation of leaders. In 2019, they punished loyalty and rewarded rebellion. The party paid for it at the polls. The same attack on loyalty is being deployed now, with social media noise elevated above eight years of consistency.
Some seem not to reckon with the word of the Holy Qur’an that power belongs to Almighty Allah alone, Who gives and takes it to whomever He wills. In 2019, they thought power belonged to them to give or withhold. They were wrong, and the APC lost. The precedent of Mallam Adamu Adamu’s stabilizing role when the APC had an incumbent Governor shows that leadership interventions are not sabotage. If he could fittingly assume that role then, Professor Muhammad Ali Pate is eminently qualified to lead the party now in a state that currently does not enjoy the 2019 status. But self-saboteurs misread precedent as conflict. That misreading is how they lost before and how they plan to lose again.
The APC cannot be threatened by numbers, as over 12 million Nigerians have already registered with the party. In 2019, the party lost because self-saboteurs deployed division as strategy. After the recent primaries, that same strategy is back: reject the candidate, question the leader, ignore stewardship, amplify noise, and rewrite history. If Bauchi APC allows this to stand, it will not be another party that defeats it. It will be the party of self-saboteurs defeating itself, again. The injustice against M.A. Abubakar, SAN, is not just about one man. It is about whether the APC wants to win or wants to keep losing to its own shadow.
Beyond discipline, the APC at both state and national levels must pursue genuine reconciliation and inclusion to neutralize self-sabotage. The party that made these individuals and gave them a platform cannot afford to permanently alienate talent, but inclusion must follow party rules, not personal terms. In Bauchi, the State Working Committee should immediately open reconciliation channels that bring aggrieved aspirants from the just-concluded primaries into the campaign structure of M.A. Abubakar, SAN.
Their capacities should be deployed across the 20 local governments and 212 wards, not left to ferment into opposition on social media. Professor Muhammad Ali Pate, as leader of the APC in Bauchi State, can drive this process by constituting an Elders and Stakeholders Council that reflects all tendencies, using the same stabilizing mandate that guided Mallam Adamu Adamu’s intervention in 2019.
At the national level, the APC must match sanctions with incentives for loyalty. The National Working Committee should create a standing Reconciliation and Integration Directorate that resolves post-primary disputes within 30 days, assigns meaningful roles to runners-up, and publicly reaffirms that the party is supreme. The umbrella of the APC sheltered and discovered these men. Reconciliation ensures they work for its success rather than jeopardize it, because no ambition is above the party and the injustice against M.A. Abubakar, SAN, ends when all interests submit to the collective.
The candidate of APC is not the problem of the party in Bauchi State. The challenge has always been internal actors who elevate personal interest above the platform that gave them relevance. When a party produces a candidate through a transparent process and that choice reflects the preference of delegates across diverse constituencies, questioning that outcome becomes a deliberate attack on cohesion.
These self-saboteurs have consistently manufactured doubt, amplified discord, and projected their own lack of loyalty onto others. Their actions in the past fractured the base and handed advantage to the opposition, not because the party lacked capacity, but because it lacked unity of purpose at critical moments.
They will not sabotage an innocent man twice. The political realities on the ground have shifted, and there is now a clearer understanding that the APC’s strength lies in its structure, not in the whims of a few. With mechanisms for reconciliation being activated and a renewed commitment to discipline, the space for internal subversion is closing.
The party that discovered and elevated these stakeholders will enforce its supremacy, ensuring that the umbrella is not used to shield those working against its success. When loyalty is rewarded, structure is respected, and all ambitions submit to the collective will, APC will win. The era of allowing manufactured crises to define the party’s electoral fate is over.
Danaudi, Public Affairs Analyst Writes From Bauchi Via danaudicomrade@gmail.com
