An era of influence may be ending for one of Nigeria’s main opposition parties, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), as Bauchi State Governor Bala Mohammed is reportedly set to join the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) this week.
As reported on Sunday, March 15, by This Day, the terms of the chairman of the PDP governors’ forum’s defection to the ruling party were still being negotiated.
Arise News also noted the purported development.
However, multiple sources privy to the negotiations disclosed that Mohammed was offered the APC senatorial ticket and would get all the allowances received by other governors who joined the ruling party.
According to the sources, the Bauchi State governor, in a meeting with President Bola Tinubu and the APC leadership, disclosed his intention to be part of the ruling party ahead of the 2027 elections.
One of the sources stated that his planned defection to the APC may not be unconnected with the travails of his commissioner for finance, Yakubu Adamu, who is facing terrorism charges and a money laundering case involving about N4.6billion
The commissioner was said to have threatened to implicate the governor if he was not released from custody. It was learnt that the ruling party handed stringent conditions to Mohammed, different from the agreements the ruling party reached with other governors.
Sources in the party close to Seyi Makinde, governor of Oyo State, have, however, expressed disappointment and shock with the purported development.
As of March 2026, the PDP has only two governors left in Nigeria following a series of high-profile defections to the APC. The remaining are Mohammed and Makinde, both second-term governors.
The PDP, Nigeria’s former ruling party, has been engulfed in a deep factional crisis that could threaten its survival in the 2027 elections if reconciliation efforts fail.
The crisis has produced two main factions within the party, one aligned with the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, and the other led by Kabiru Turaki (SAN), who insists his leadership emerged from the national convention and has since attempted to take control of the party’s national headquarters.
The leadership dispute was challenged in court. In January, a Federal High Court sitting in Ibadan nullified the PDP’s national convention, which produced Turaki as chairman.
In his ruling, Uche Agomoh held that the caretaker committee led by Abdulrahman Mohammed, with Samuel Anyanwu as national secretary, and backed by Wike, remained the only recognised National Working Committee (NWC) of the PDP pending the conduct of a valid national convention.
The judge ruled that the Ibadan convention was held in flagrant disobedience of two subsisting court judgments and barred Turaki and other officials elected at the convention from parading themselves as national officers of the party.
Turaki subsequently appealed the ruling. On Monday, March 9, 2026, a three-member panel of the Court of Appeal upheld the Federal High Court’s decision on the PDP, invalidating the convention.
The appellate court also barred the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) from recognising the outcome of the convention, including the emergence of Mr Turaki’s leadership of the party.
Turaki had also indicated interest in challenging the ruling at the Supreme Court.
