WHO IS IN CHARGE? Abia APC’s Battle for Supremacy Has Begun and Two Facebook Posts Just Exposed It

By Charles Thomas

A dangerous power struggle is brewing inside the All Progressives Congress in Abia State, exposed by two worrying Facebook posts published almost simultaneously by the party’s two most senior figures. Deputy Speaker Benjamin Kalu thanked President Bola Tinubu for designating him as the highest-ranking political office holder to “take care of APC affairs in Abia State.” Within minutes, Senator Orji Uzor Kalu former governor and the most senior APC legislator from the South-East also thanked the President, this time for giving him the marching order to coordinate party activities in the state.

Both men were claiming the same presidential mandate. The contradiction was impossible to ignore.

The crisis at the heart of the matter is straightforward: Abia has no APC governor, and Tinubu’s directive for governors to manage party affairs in their states has created a leadership vacuum that two powerful lawmakers are now fighting to fill. The President reportedly gave Benjamin Kalu the green light to leave the House of Representatives and contest the APC governorship ticket ahead of 2027, to confront incumbent Governor Alex Otti who has refused to defect from the Labour Party.

Kalu moved swiftly, engineering the emergence of his ally as APC State Chairman at a congress that Senator Orji Uzor Kalu conspicuously boycotted, a snub that spoke volumes in a state where political optics are everything.

Senator Orji Uzor Kalu has before then assembled his own power bloc. He formed an alliance of former governors including Senator Theodore Orji and Ambassador-designate Okezie Ikpeazu under a platform called “The Team,” with the declared objective of winning all elective positions in Abia for the APC in 2027, positioning himself as chairman of the group. He has publicly denied any rift with Benjamin Kalu, insisting the party is united.

But in Nigerian politics, you do not publicly deny a crisis that does not exist. The denial itself is the loudest confirmation.

Adding explosive fuel to the fire is the governorship declaration of Mascot Uzor Kalu, the Senator’s younger brother. Mascot, a former Chief of Staff to a previous Abia governor, formally declared his intention to contest the 2027 governorship on the APC platform, promising financial transparency and to restore the Abia Government House to Umuahia.

Yet APC stakeholders from all three senatorial zones have already endorsed Benjamin Kalu for that same ticket. Senator Orji Uzor Kalu is therefore trapped in an impossible bind back the presidential structure behind Benjamin Kalu and he sacrifices his own brother’s ambition, or resist Aso Rock and fight a battle no senator in Nigeria’s current political climate has ever won.

Mascot has not accepted the sidelining quietly. He accused APC executives of using a Tinubu re-election meeting as cover to impose a preferred candidate, warning that any consensus without the participation of all aspirants was “null and void, illegitimate and unacceptable,” and vowing: “No amount of intimidation will make me step aside.”

Senior party chieftains have echoed that alarm, warning that endorsing Benjamin Kalu while shutting out other aspirants risks splitting the party and handing Governor Otti a free path to re-election the very outcome both Kalus claim they are determined to prevent.

Governor Alex Otti and his Labour Party administration are the unlikely beneficiaries of this unfolding implosion. A united APC with federal backing and a credible candidate would pose a serious threat to his 2027 re-election. A fractured one split between two Kalus at the top, a third fighting from below, and a trail of aggrieved stakeholders is a political gift he did not have to earn.

Analysts have observed that both Benjamin Kalu and Orji Uzor Kalu have been locked in an increasingly open competition to demonstrate loyalty to President Tinubu, each trying to outdo the other in public declarations while in reality manoeuvring to control the most consequential prize in Abia politics: the 2027 governorship ticket.

The battle for Abia’s soul has begun. And as always in Nigeria, the most dangerous war is the one being fought within.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​