Nigeria’s ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and President Bola Tinubu now have a formidable opposition opponent who they must watch very closely. Kaduna State’s 2015-2023 governor, Nasir el-Rufai, is angry and taking his revenge on Tinubu over the way he has been sidelined in the affairs the party that he helped found and campaigned for over three successful elections. 

El-Rufai announced on 10 March that he is resigning his APC membership because in the past two years — which coincides with Tinubu’s period in office — it had deviated from the principles on which it was founded. His defection has been coming for a while. The disenchantment began after his cabinet nomination was rejected by the Senate on allegations of an unfavourable security report. He recently claimed that it was actually Tinubu that changed his mind after first inviting him to join the government and help resolve Nigeria’s perennial failing power sector.

In 2023 he had vigorously campaigned for Tinubu. He was publicly begged to join his cabinet after indicating that he was not interested in any political post. It is unclear why the relationship between the two men started falling apart but the speculation is that Tinubu’s inner circle did not want el-Rufai in the cabinet because of his perceived presidential ambitions.

El-Rufai has accused the National Security Adviser (NSA), Nuhu Ribadu, of opposed him because of his alleged ambition to succeed Tinubu in 2031. Others fear that he could be a disruptive force because he is known to be blunt and not particularly loyal to anyone. The fear was that he would have been overly critical of his fellow ministers which would impact cabinet cohesion. 

There were similar concerns over el-Rufai during President Muhammadu Buhari’s first term 2015-2019 term. He was competing for influence with the then Chief of Staff Abba Kyari even though he was still Kaduna State’s governor. He was accused of scheming to replace Kyari in Buhari’s second term to position himself as a potential successor in 2023.

In 2017, a memo that el-Rufai sent to Buhari was leaked to the media. In it, he criticised Buhari’s handling of the economy and the quality of his appointments, and alleged that Kyari was incompetent. That created friction with the Presidency until Kyari’s sudden death in 2020 when Buhari ignored el-Rufai by appointing Ibrahim Gambari as his replacement. Some of Tinubu’s close aides felt that, regardless of his obvious administrative qualities, having el-Rufai in his cabinet could become a burden on governance because of his political ambitions. 

Pushed into the hands of the opposition

Keeping el-Rufai out of the cabinet has, however, pushed him into the hands of the opposition. Since last year he has been flirting with the Social Democratic Party (SDP) while denying any plans to leave the APC. He had hoped that this would have forced the APC to woo him back into their fold but that did not happen.

So far, he is the highest profile APC defector and there is an expectation that it could encourage other prominent departures. Buhari has already been forced to deny that he has any such plans. This followed el-Rufai’s claim that he received Buhari’s blessing to leave the APC. On 13 March, however, Buhari insisted that he would not leave the party that enabled him to win the presidency in 2015 and 2019. 

He was, however, silent about the defection of el-Rufai who some in the North see as having the potential to inherit the votes that Buhari usually got from the North. The main challenge was that he was never accepted in the South and therefore lost three elections in 2003, 2007 and 20011. That changed in 2015 because of the earlier alliance with Tinubu’s Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) which helped Buhari win votes in the Southwest and become president. 

Like him, el-Rufai also has a pro Hausa-Fulani disposition that makes him popular with conservative Northerners. Even though he has not tested this in a national election, the perception is that, like Buhari, he would do very well with Hausa-Fulani voters. That potentially means as many as 11 million votes in presidential elections depending on turnout. This makes el-Rufai a formidable opponent and especially at a time when Tinubu’s popularity rating in the North is low because of the hardship caused by his economic reforms. 

No immediate presidential ambitions 

El-Rufai is also ready to play very rough in opposition. This is unlike Tinubu’s two main 2023 opponents — the 1999-2007 vice president Atiku Abubakar, and the Labour Party’s Peter Obi — who have been playing ‘gentlemanly’ by restricting criticism to social media.

In a 14 March interview, el-Rufai alleged that some unnamed ministers had paid to be appointed by Tinubu. On X he also accused the Kaduna State government of arresting one of his former commissioners, Ja’afaru Sani, after he had announced his defection to the SDP. He claimed that the plan is to have him arraigned over money laundering charges and subsequently detained. Before then, however, the government has already ordered the security agencies to stop him leaving the country. 

El-Rufai has the capacity to put the government on the defensive in a way that neither Obi and Abubakar have been able. He is likely to ratchet up these kinds of allegations in a bid to paint it as oppressive and incompetent. He did so against President Goodluck Jonathan before the 2015 elections and is likely to want to do so against Tinubu in 2027. 

So far, he appears to be working closely with Abubakar and may back his bid for the presidency. After his defection he visited Abubakar and also posted a picture of Hamza Mustapha — who was Sani Abacha’s former Chief Security Officer — after he announced that he has also joined the SDP. El-Rufai has denied that there is any plan for the opposition parties to merge and instead expressed the hope that Abubakar and Obi will both join the SDP ahead of the 2027 elections. 

The real plan, however, appears to be for Abubakar and el-Rufai to come together and use the SDP to challenge the APC in 2027. So far, the SDP appears to be the only known party platform that is not in upheaval. Labour and the PDP seem to be in an irreversible decline and are unable to recover from the internal crisis tearing them apart. The SDP is largely unaffected because, until now, it has not been a formidable platform, and it also has a chairman who is determined to build a competitive party. 

El-Rufai’s defection is significant and it is likely that Abubakar will join the SDP this year as the PDP continues to struggle to overcome its internal challenges. Obi appears to be tilting towards rejoining the PDP once Abubakar leaves. This means that we are likely to see a three-way contest between the APC, the SDP and the PDP in 2027 with the same presidential candidates as in 2023. The only difference is that Tinubu will be at a disadvantage because Obi will undercut his votes in the South while an alliance between El-Rufai and Abubakar will substantially reduce his votes in the North. This will significantly narrow his pathway to victory in a transparent, free and fair election.