PRESS STATEMENT
The All Progressives Congress (APC) considers the editorial of the Daily Trust of today, Monday, October 20, 2025, “APC Should Learn From History”, as displaying extreme bias, daftness, journalistic recklessness, and peddling untruths designed to malign APC.
In that piece, the paper concluded that the action of state governors dumping the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and joining APC “portends a dangerous trend towards the erosion of multi-party democracy and a descent into a despicable one-party state”. However, it failed miserably to explain how the exercise by the governors of their constitutional freedom of association, and democratic liberty to choose among competing party alternatives threatens the country’s multiparty democracy or signifies a descent into a system of one party state.
The paper postulated that citizens’ right to associate with any political organization must be exercised “within the bounds of the law” but failed to identify the law that prohibits governors from quitting the party platform on which they were elected and joining another party of their choice. The paper didn’t cite it because such law does not exist.
That governors, as candidates, are sponsored by political parties does not and cannot extinguish their constitutionally guaranteed freedom of association or democratic choice to enter and exit from any political association or party. If that was ever the intendment of the framers of our Constitution, it would be clearly and expressly so stated, and not left to Daily Trust’s warped conjecture.
Like other political parties in any democracy, APC is well within its authority and function to welcome citizens who desire to join by subscribing to its membership. There is no rule of law that prohibits a political party from receiving new members who subscribe to its membership. There is no law or democratic norm that sets a limit to the number or that defines the category of citizens who may or may not join a political party. There is also no law or democratic norm that imposes a duty on a political party to become a gate keeper to decide who may be admitted to membership of the party. Certainly, there is no law that dictates a limit to the number of governors or other elected officials that may join any political party. If such a law exists, Daily Trust failed to reference it in their mercenary editorial.
Beyond its rabid allegation that APC was seeking to enthrone a one-party state, Daily Trust’s Editorial was grossly bereft of reason, objectivity and rationality. It was clearly based on the vile intent of its editors serving as a repeater station of the opposition’s senseless screams. How do you even coerce or cajole governors to dump their party and join another? Governors occupy some of the highest political offices in the country. They are the chief executive officers of their states, and bear the mandate of their people to govern. They have authority and control over the vast resources of their states. Again Daily Trust did not tell Nigerians the nature of the influence APC has brought upon the governors to coerce or cajole them to dump their party and join the APC.
The defections from opposition parties to our Party deliver a damning indictment of their failed leadership, dysfunction and lack of internal democracy. Defections in Nigerian politics are neither new nor one-sided. Prominent former APC members like Rt. Hon Rotimi Amaechi, Malam Nasir El-Rufai, Abubakar Malami, John Oyegun, Rauf Aregbesola, Solomon Dalong Dalong, and Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar (Rtd.) have joined other parties like ADC. Similarly, notable PDP members, including Atiku Abubakar, retired Capt. Tunji Shelle, Muritala Ashorobi, Dr. Abimbola Ogunkelu, and Sir Rowland Owie, have defected to ADC. Opposition leaders like Atiku Abubarkar and Peter Obi are Nigeria’s most itinerant defectors but remain the most vocal objectors to defections to APC.
Daily Trust and other opposition actors claiming that defections to APC threaten democracy are inconsistent and mischievous. Similar defections to other parties have not sparked the same concerns. In the paper’s perspective, defections to APC is a threat to democracy but defections from APC to opposition parties advances democracy. That double standard is glaring, invidious and unacceptable.
Daily Trust’s editorial position betrays its poor understanding of the idea of democracy. Democracy is a system of freedoms. You cannot advance democracy by abrogating basic freedoms that are intrinsic to democracy, without which democracy would be meaningless.
One party states are not created by anyone’s wishful thinking. It is not created by Daily Trust’s acerbic discomfort over the rising profile of APC as Nigeria’s preeminent Party of choice. Instituting a one party system would require an extensive and far-reaching constitutional and legislative reform that is both undesirable, unrealistic and, arguably, unattainable. A total of about 19 political parties are registered and remain active in our multiparty democracy.
It is a mark of crass irresponsibility for Daily Trust to peddle falsehoods, conjectures and outright deception as editorial material. While its editors have the freedom to form and express their editorial opinions, they bear a corresponding duty to uphold time-tested values of responsible journalism in the public interest.
Our great Party, and the administration of President Bola Tinubu remain resolute in the implementation of the Renewed Hope Agenda focused on improving the quality of lives of our people, and building a stronger and more prosperous nation for all.
Signed:
Felix Morka, CON
National Publicity Secretary
All Progressives Congress (APC)
OCTOBER 20, 2025
