Nasarawa SSG’s guber bid tears APC apart amid Malami pact, ADC Ties
…..Toto LG APC Congress Exposes Anti-Party Plot
Rumours are swirling thick and fast across Nasarawa State’s political scene that Hon. Labaran Shuaibu Magaji, the Secretary to the State Government (SSG), is aggressively positioning himself for a 2027 governorship bid under the All Progressives Congress (APC) banner, even as he struggles to make the ambition public amid whispers that he has confided in close allies about an alleged promise from Governor Alhaji Abdullahi Sule to hand over the party ticket.
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Magaji, who climbed the APC ladder from Commissioner for Justice and Attorney General to his current powerhouse role as SSG, now stands accused by authentic party leaders of deeply meddling in internal affairs, sowing seeds of confusion in areas like Toto Local Government where harmony once reigned supreme, a development that has cast a long, ominous shadow over his undeclared guber aspirations and ripped open gaping fissures within the APC’s local chapter.
During a recent visit to his country home in Toto to participate in the ongoing ward and local government congresses, Magaji brazenly flouted explicit directives from both the national and state APC secretariats, which mandated the retention of executives who had served less than eight years, a position firmly backed by Governor Sule himself, by secretly axing positions held by loyalists who hadn’t even clocked five years and handing them over to his alleged PDP loyalists with zero track record of service or faith in the current administration, while at the LG level orchestrating the ouster of the party chairman, secretary, and other officials still within their four-year tenures, moves that drew sharp rebukes from serving council officials who warned such actions blatantly violated party guidelines and risked derailing the entire congress process.
Today, Magaji finds himself mired in a web of confusion and secrecy, as the list of executives he unilaterally altered stands no chance of approval under the party’s strict rules, explaining why the much-vaunted Toto LG APC congress, hailed by his camp as a resounding success, remains shrouded in mystery without any official unveiling of winners, leaving stakeholders to question the legitimacy of the entire exercise.
As the storm over the SSG’s meddlesome role rages on, fresh details have emerged revealing Hon. Magaji as a close ally of former Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, whose enduring influence as a leader in the Africa Democratic Congress (ADC) in Kebbi State underscores Magaji’s chequered political pedigree, long whispered to harbour anti-APC sentiments that now threaten to boomerang disastrously on the ruling party not just in Nasarawa but nationwide.
Having defected to the APC only as recently as 2015 from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Magaji’s insubordinate governorship ambition, fuelled by alleged backchannel, assurances from Governor Sule, has escalated into a reckless power grab, with his congress manipulations poised to hand the APC a crushing defeat in upcoming elections, all because he continues to parcel out party positions to loyalists who remain firmly ensconced in the PDP fold, betraying the very progressives he claims to serve while bypassing consultation with key stakeholders like governorship aspirants and other heavyweights whose buy-in could have lent legitimacy to the process.
This blatant disregard for established protocols not only exposes Magaji’s lingering PDP hangover, evident in his preference for allocating APC executive slots to non-committed PDP elements over tenured loyalists, but also risks fracturing the party at its most vulnerable local level in Toto LG, where unity is paramount ahead of primaries that could make or break his yet-unannounced guber bid, with Malami’s ADC shadow looming large and Magaji’s 2015 switcheroo now haunting the progressives like a bad dream.
Stakeholders are now asking piercing questions: Is this the beginning of a broader anti-party sabotage that could spell doom for the APC in 2027, or merely the desperate gambit of a man whose ambition outpaces his loyalty? If the exercise was truly successful as claimed, why has Magaji failed to announce the emergent executives, a nagging question that demands urgent answers from the SSG amid growing murmurs that these machinations are all in service of his shadowy governorship plot, where he reportedly boasts of being anointed by the governor as the next APC flagbearer?
Who exactly is Magaji afraid of, that he dares not declare his guber ambition openly while shortchanging loyal party executives in broad daylight, a misstep that now debases the APC’s standing in Toto LG and threatens broader party unity ahead of the 2027 elections?
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