By Seyi Odewale, with agency report
Nigeria’s political landscape lurched again on Tuesday as two sitting governors, Siminalayi Fubara of Rivers State and his Osun counterpart, Ademola Adeleke, abandoned the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), dealing simultaneous blows to the opposition ahead of consequential election cycles.
In Osun, Governor Adeleke formally declared for the Accord Party, confirming weeks of speculation after he resigned from the PDP on December 2.
His spokesperson, Malam Olawale Rasheed, said the declaration took place at the Banquet Hall of the Government House in Osogbo in the presence of national and state leaders of Accord.
Adeleke disclosed he had actually joined Accord more than a month earlier, on November 6, after prolonged consultations with stakeholders.
In a letter addressed to his ward chairman in Ede North LGA, he cited persistent leadership crises at the PDP national level as the primary reason for his exit.
He said his decision was guided by the need to secure a stable platform for his 2026 re-election bid, adding that Accord’s welfarist orientation aligned with his administration’s focus on workers’ welfare and citizens’ well-being.
“Osun voted for good governance in 2022, and they will support continuity in 2026,” Adeleke said, touting what he described as unprecedented improvements in infrastructure, social services and governance delivery.
He maintained that Accord had become the “new platform for victory” and vowed to lead a united structure into the August 8, 2026, election.
While Adeleke’s switch was widely anticipated, developments in Rivers State delivered an even more dramatic turn.
Governor Fubara dumped the PDP for the APC at a stakeholders’ meeting at Government House, Port Harcourt, on Tuesday.
Fubara said he decided to leave the PDP to support President Bola Tinubu of the APC, saying that he would have become a former governor without Tinubu’s support.
“The reason why we are still standing is because of that place, and the truth is, without Mr President, there wouldn’t be any His Excellency Siminalayi Fubara; it would have been the former governor.
“So, we have every reason because the truth, let nobody be fooled in this state, we have the people, we have the supporters. Our only thank-you to Mr President is to support him, and we cannot support the President in isolation;
“We cannot support the President if we don’t fully identify with him, not backyard support. We made that decision today because we received the pass. Everyone here who had followed me, who had suffered with me, our decision today, this evening, we are moving to APC,” Fubara said.
His declaration followed an extraordinary political realignment in the Rivers State House of Assembly, where Speaker Martins Amaewhule and 17 lawmakers defected to the APC.
The defection came less than 24 hours after Fubara met President Bola Tinubu behind closed doors at the Presidential Villa, a meeting analysts say may have sealed the realignment.
The move is historically significant: Rivers State, a PDP bastion since 1999, has shifted to the APC, strengthening the ruling party’s grip on the South-South and further eroding the PDP’s long-held dominance in the region.
With Adeleke and Fubara now repositioned on new platforms, analysts say the twin defections underscore the existential crisis confronting the PDP, once Africa’s largest political party but now bleeding influence in key states ahead of pivotal elections.
