It was a Saturday in August, the kind of hot, sticky day that makes tempers short and fists itchy. August 16, 2025. Anambra South was back on the ballot after more than a year of silence in the Senate chamber. Ifeanyi Ubah’s death in 2024 had left the seat cold. Too long, the people said. INEC had stalled, claimed it was waiting for Senate signals, and by the time the green light came, frustration had boiled over. Constituents had been left without a voice, and the by-election had the makings of a street fight.
The main ring was crowded, but all eyes were on one man—Chief Emmanuel Nwachukwu of APGA. He wasn’t just running for office; he was trying to rewrite history. No APGA candidate had ever owned Anambra South. The PDP once called it theirs. YPP rode the wave with Ubah. APC had money and muscle. But this time, something shifted.
The counting told the story like a gangster’s ledger: Nwachukwu with 90,408 votes, APC’s Azuka Okwuosa a distant shadow at 19,847, and ADC’s Donald Amamgbo barely scratching 2,889. That was no narrow escape; it was a clean knockout—more than 70,000 votes in the gap. In politics, that’s the equivalent of leaving your opponent bleeding in the alley with no chance to get up.
But the road to victory wasn’t paved with roses. Reports leaked of cash changing hands—₦3,000 here, ₦20,000 there. Vote-buying, they called it. The kind of dirty currency that greases palms and twists democracy into a bargain market. On top of that, fists flew. Thugs roughed up state officials, including a commissioner. Even whispers that the Deputy Governor narrowly dodged a mob. The governor, Charles Soludo, barked in public about it, but in Nigerian elections, barking rarely stops the bite.
Still, the numbers didn’t lie. For APGA, it was a trophy moment. For the first time, the party’s flag planted deep in Anambra South soil. Symbolic, yes—but also strategic. With a governorship election looming on November 8, this win sent a message: APGA was more than a local nuisance, it was the house in charge.
Yet scratch beneath the victory parade and the questions remain. Was it pure party machinery that drove Nwachukwu’s landslide? Or did opposition division—APC on one side, ADC on another—simply hand him the crown? Constituents had gone a full year without a senator, their representation on mute while INEC dragged its feet. For some voters, APGA’s victory was less about love and more about the relief of finally having someone sit in Abuja with their name on his desk.
Civil groups aren’t convinced everything was clean. They’d warned about INEC’s credibility before the vote, demanded the resident commissioner be removed, muttered about manipulation. Without independent observers publishing hard reports, those suspicions float in the air like smoke in a cheap bar.
What’s clear is this: Anambra South didn’t just hold a by-election; it staged a rehearsal for November. The streets, the parties, the money, the violence—they’re all notes in the symphony of a bigger showdown to come. APGA scored the first hit. Whether it holds the ground or gets dragged into a tougher brawl will be seen when the governorship ballots drop.
For now, Chief Nwachukwu walks tall, the first APGA man to claim the South. The numbers are his shield, the margin his weapon. But in Nigerian politics, today’s landslide can be tomorrow’s quicksand.
