Nigerian Concord Newspaper
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has said he will not be visiting states for campaign rallies, and Governor Hyacinth Iormem Alia has lost a card he could no longer count on. A presidential rally in Makurdi would have given the APC leadership a stage to bring Akume and Alia into the same photograph and sell Benue a staged peace. That stage is gone, and Alia has nothing to replace it.
The governor had ample time to mend fences. He could have settled with Senator George Akume, addressed the grievances of the SGF’s loyalists and reached a workable understanding with the party’s established leadership before the presidential campaign machinery took shape. He did none of it. Now he enters the contest carrying an unresolved party crisis.
Recall 2023. Alia did not win in a vacuum. His personal appeal mattered, but it was the mobilisation capacity, networks and influence of Akume and his loyalists that turned it into victory over the PDP. Those interests are now in conflict, and Alia wants the platform that carried him to Government House without the relationships that made it formidable. That is the contradiction at the centre of his reelection bid.
Comrade Austin Agada, Benue APC chairman and National Secretary of the Rainbow Coalition, has made the position plain. Supporting Tinubu’s reelection does not mean supporting Alia’s second term. This is no small quarrel over campaign logistics. It is a declaration that the presidential ballot and the governorship ballot may not command the same loyalty within the APC.
Agada’s position carries weight because of his closeness to Akume’s camp. A group mobilising for Tinubu while withholding support from Alia shows that the governor cannot command a united structure under his own party’s banner. Anyone who wants Tinubu back in Aso Rock is under no obligation to work for Alia’s return to Makurdi.
The absence of Akume and the senators aligned with him will cost far more than empty spaces in campaign photographs. These men have constituencies, relationships and grassroots structures of their own, and they helped the APC coordinate its effort across Benue in 2023. Without them, Alia faces a serious mobilisation deficit that official visibility cannot repair.
He may still organise rallies, share campaign materials and gather the supporters around him. But crowds are not votes. Winning requires coordinating political interests, reaching communities, keeping a common message and converting support at the polls across the state. Alia is in crisis at exactly the level where that coordination matters most.
The result could be an odd arrangement. The APC presidential campaign runs in Benue while the governorship campaign struggles for the same cohesion. Tinubu’s supporters mobilise for the President, the Rainbow Coalition pursues its presidential objective, and Akume’s loyalists protect their own interests, all without carrying Alia’s second term ambition. He risks becoming the candidate of a ruling party whose most influential networks are not behind him.
Wike’s reported remarks add another layer. His assertion that Suswam and his group, including the governor, are jealous of him but that he will win tells us Benue sits in his wider calculations. With Wike inside a coalition backing Tinubu and the Benue APC openly divided, the national contest now touches the state governorship race. Support for the President does not require anyone to endorse Alia, and the governor cannot dictate how these actors deploy their influence at home.
The APC’s crisis has also opened space for realignment beyond the party. Reports of discussions between Akume’s camp and Chief Michael Kaase Aondoakaa, SAN, the PDP governorship candidate, show that new relationships are being explored. Aondoakaa has positioned himself as the candidate around whom aggrieved interests can gather, while Alia is busy managing a fractured party.
Aondoakaa does not need every aggrieved APC member to defect publicly. Support can come as cooperation, mobilisation, a strategic alliance, or simply a decision not to work for the incumbent. If influential APC figures hold back, Alia loses their active participation whether or not they ever change party. Aondoakaa’s job is to turn that opening into an organised advantage by building relationships, consolidating his own base and assembling a coalition that can challenge the incumbent across the state.
The contest is therefore between a governor weighed down by broken relationships and a challenger positioned to profit from the breakdown. Alia has incumbency, but incumbency cannot replace a united campaign structure. Aondoakaa can draw on networks that no longer wish to place their interests behind the governor’s second term.
Without presidential rallies, Alia must face the substance of his political relationships instead of leaning on the symbolism of a Tinubu visit. The President’s presence would have supplied a backdrop for joint appearances and loud declarations of loyalty. Its absence exposes the depth of the division and removes the theatre that might have disguised it.
For the APC itself, the implications are costly. A party heading into a presidential election should coordinate its interests across every level of government. In Benue, one governor’s second term ambition has split the same political family, and the governorship candidate struggles to win the active backing of the party’s established leadership.
Aondoakaa offers Benue voters a different proposition: leadership that builds relationships, coordinates interests and works with others toward a common purpose. The APC’s divisions give him a practical illustration of what he says is wrong with Alia’s political management.
Taken together, 2027 is shaping up very differently from 2023. Akume’s camp is not united behind Alia. Agada has separated support for Tinubu from support for the governor. The senators aligned with the SGF are not expected to campaign with him, and the President will not be coming to states for rallies. Alia’s greatest miscalculation was allowing the crisis to reach a stage where leaders outside his camp now limit his options. The coalition of 2023 will not return on its own, the time for reconciliation has been squandered, and he will meet the consequences at the ballot box.
For Aondoakaa, the moment demands consolidation. He must turn the APC’s division into a credible statewide alternative, deepen ties with stakeholders and prove that dissatisfaction with Alia can become votes. The opening exists because the incumbent’s party created it through its own conflict, and the candidate who organises best around that reality will shape the contest.
By Aondoakaa Tersugh Daniel 17/10/2026