National Chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Nentawe Yilwatda, has declared that major voting blocs in Kano and Katsina states are firmly aligned with the ruling party ahead of the 2027 general elections.
PrimeTimes Nigeria reports that Yilwatda, during a media chat with journalists in Abuja, dismissed mounting pressure from the opposition about the fate of the APC in the forthcoming election.
Yilwatda identified Kano, the country’s most populous northern state, as an APC stronghold, stressing that major voting blocs, including Katsina, were firmly in the party’s corner.
He said, “I can assure you that Kano is a given to us as APC, and it is a swing state in the North-West.”
The chairman also dismissed concerns that the wave of defections from opposition parties into the APC could trigger internal implosion within the ruling party.
Yilwatda pointed to the party’s recent congresses as evidence of its capacity to manage competing interests without fracturing, especially claims that the influx of politicians from opposition parties could destabilise the APC’s internal balance.
He further attributed the party’s stability to what he described as a unique internal mechanism for resolving conflicts that sets the APC apart from other Nigerian political parties.
He stressed, “If you watch our congresses, the opposition said that after our congresses, our party will collapse because of self-implosion. We were able to manage the interest of everybody the governors, the National Assembly, and other members of the party and we did that equitably.
“I think no political party in Nigeria has our own internal conflict resolution mechanism.”
Pushing back against critics who accuse the APC of prioritising political manoeuvring over governance, Yilwatda insisted that the two were not mutually exclusive.
He added, “We are not just playing politics alone; we are also ensuring that governance will count in our elections.”