The Gamble That Did Not Pay Off: How Adelabu, Tuggar, and Alkali Lost Everything by Resigning

The Setup: A Presidency Directive and a Leap of Faith

In mid-March 2026, the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation issued a circular on the instruction of President Bola Tinubu directing all political appointees who intended to contest elective offices in the 2027 general elections to resign their positions on or before March 31, 2026. The directive was rooted in Section 88(1) of the Electoral Act 2026, which prohibits serving political office holders from participating in party primaries or general elections without first vacating their appointments. The message was unambiguous: if you want to run, you must give up what you have.

For the members of Tinubu's Federal Executive Council who harboured political ambitions, this directive posed an existential question. Cabinet positions in Nigeria are among the most coveted appointments in the country — they come with power, resources, public visibility, and access to the highest levels of federal decision-making. Surrendering such a position to enter the brutal arena of party primaries, where incumbency, local influence, and the weight of sitting governors and established political structures typically determine outcomes, was a genuine gamble. The stakes were total: resign and win a party ticket, or resign and have nothing.

Five cabinet members and several other political appointees chose to roll the dice. By the weekend of May 22–23, 2026, the results were in — and for the three most prominent names who made that leap, the outcome was catastrophic. Former Minister of Power Adebayo Adelabu, former Minister of Foreign Affairs Yusuf Maitama Tuggar, and former Minister of Transportation Saidu Ahmed Alkali all resigned their positions, participated in or attempted to participate in APC governorship primaries in their respective states, and lost. Two of the five who resigned — former Minister of State for Labour and Employment Nkeiruka Onyejeocha and former Minister of State for Humanitarian Affairs Yusuf Sununu — managed to secure party tickets. The score, in stark political arithmetic, is two wins and three losses, with the most high-profile names all on the wrong side of the ledger.

Adebayo Adelabu: The Most Crushing Defeat

Of all the stories emerging from the weekend's primaries, none is more individually devastating than that of Adebayo Adelabu. The former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, who served as the face of Nigeria's power sector reforms under Tinubu, had been nursing governorship ambitions in Oyo State since at least 2018, when he resigned from the CBN to enter politics. He ran as the Accord Party governorship candidate in the 2023 election, finishing third. When Tinubu appointed him Minister of Power in August 2023, many interpreted it as a patronage arrangement designed to consolidate support in Oyo State ahead of 2027. Adelabu himself declared his governorship interest as early as October 2025, telling supporters that his ambition to govern Oyo State predated his ministerial appointment.

Unusually, Adelabu did not resign by the March 31 presidential deadline. While Tuggar, Alkali, and Sununu handed in their letters by month's end, Adelabu waited until April 22, three weeks after the deadline, before submitting his resignation letter with an effective date of April 30. Presidency sources leaked that Tinubu had not wanted Adelabu to resign, and that the delay reflected pressure from the president to stay. Others close to Adelabu said he had a power sector project to complete before leaving. His legal team later argued, credibly, that the March 31 directive was an administrative circular without the force of law, and that what mattered legally was the Electoral Act's requirement to resign 30 days before the primary — a window Adelabu technically met.

When the Oyo APC governorship primary was held on May 21–22, 2026, the result was not a defeat. It was a rout. Senator Sarafadeen Alli, the incumbent senator representing Oyo South and a politician with deep structural roots in the party machinery, polled 578,143 votes. Senator Abdulfatai Omotayo Buhari came second with 37,265 votes. Adelabu, the former federal minister who had staked his career on this election, came third with 19,193 votes. The gap between Alli and Adelabu was not a narrow loss attributable to a few thousand swing votes in contested wards. It was a margin of nearly 560,000 votes — a number so large that, even accounting for the allegations Adelabu subsequently raised, it defies explanation through fraud alone.

Adelabu refused to accept the result. Speaking after voting at his ward in Ibadan South-East Local Government Area — where, he noted, 430 of 437 registered members voted in his favour — the former minister alleged widespread irregularities across other parts of the state. He cited early voting in some wards, intimidation of voters, manipulation of results, and procedural infractions across all five geopolitical zones of Oyo State: Ibadan, Oke-Ogun, Ogbomosho, Ibarapa, and Oyo. His press secretary, Comrade Femi Awogboro, issued a strongly worded statement challenging the statistical plausibility of the result itself, arguing that Oyo APC's total registered membership statewide was under 160,000 people — making a declared vote total of 578,143 for Alli mathematically impossible and, therefore, fabricated. This specific allegation, if it can be verified, is explosive: it would mean that the declared result does not simply reflect a poor performance by Adelabu, but an entirely invented number designed to deliver a predetermined outcome.

Adelabu vowed to petition the APC National Working Committee. His team's challenge has set up what analysts describe as a potentially prolonged intra-party crisis in the Oyo APC that could damage the party's chances in the 2027 general election in a state that Tinubu needs to perform strongly in. Before the primary, Adelabu had pointedly said: "If the president was going to back anybody, it would be me." The result suggested, unambiguously, that the president's preference — if it existed — did not translate into votes where it mattered.

Yusuf Maitama Tuggar: Defeated by a Former Governor

Tuggar's story is one of the more poignant in the weekend's political landscape. A former member of the House of Representatives for Gamawa Federal Constituency, a diplomat of long standing, and a man who resigned as Nigeria's Foreign Minister barely a day before the March 31 deadline in direct and public compliance with the president's directive, Tuggar had committed early and cleanly to the Bauchi State governorship race. On March 30 he wrote on social media: "Today, I formally submitted my resignation letter as Nigeria's Minister of Foreign Affairs at the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, in line with the directive of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR, and the provisions of the Electoral Act." It was a statement that positioned him as a loyalist, a team player, and a willing participant in the democratic process the president claimed to be promoting.

The Bauchi APC governorship primary was held on May 22, 2026, after a delay that stretched into hours and kept party faithful and political analysts in suspense. When the results were finally announced by the primary committee chairman, retired AIG John Abang, the name at the top was not Tuggar's. Former Bauchi State Governor Mohammed Abubakar, who had previously served as governor under the APC before losing his 2019 re-election bid to PDP incumbent Bala Mohammed, emerged with 57,517 votes to reclaim his position as the party's foremost political figure in the state. Tuggar came second with 26,001 votes, a respectable result in terms of demonstrating some base of support, but a distant second nonetheless. Nura Manu Soro came third with 13,638 votes. Former NNPC official Bala Maijama'a Wunti was fourth with 13,648 votes — barely different from Soro's figure. The remaining aspirants polled in the range of 7,000 to 8,000 votes each.

For Tuggar, the loss illustrates a dynamic that repeatedly catches high-profile federal appointees off-guard when they return to state politics: the weight of national institutional prestige does not automatically translate into the kind of ward-level structural mobilisation that determines party primary outcomes. Abubakar had been building and maintaining his political organisation in Bauchi for years, even while out of power. Tuggar, who spent much of the past two years managing Nigeria's foreign policy from Abuja, arrived in the Bauchi political theatre at a competitive disadvantage that résumé alone could not overcome.

Mohammed Abubakar, now the APC's confirmed governorship candidate for 2027, faces PDP incumbent Governor Bala Mohammed in a rematch of their 2023 contest, in which Mohammed won re-election by a margin of roughly 9 percentage points. Bauchi remains PDP territory at the state level, and the general election will be a harder fight than winning the primary.

Saidu Ahmed Alkali: A Boycott and a Landslide Loss

Alkali's path in Gombe was the most chaotic of the three major failures. The former Transport Minister had resigned from the Federal Executive Council to contest the APC governorship ticket in Gombe State, a race that pitted him against multiple other aspirants including former Minister of Communications and Digital Economy Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami. The outcome of the Gombe primary involved a remarkable procedural twist: both Alkali and Pantami submitted withdrawal letters after the electoral process had formally commenced, meaning their names had already been printed on ballot papers and votes were still being cast for them at the time of withdrawal.

The result, when announced, showed that the APC governorship ticket in Gombe was won by Jamilu Gwamna, the candidate backed by incumbent Governor Muhammad Inuwa Yahaya, with a vote of 247,161. Alkali, who had boycotted the process over what he described as alleged irregularities and a process rigged in Gwamna's favour, polled just 11,612 votes in a contest he had already abandoned. The gulf between 247,161 and 11,612 tells its own story about the structural power of incumbency in determining primary outcomes in Nigerian states where sitting governors retain near-total control over party machinery.

Alkali's decision to boycott rather than simply lose was itself a political calculation — it preserved some dignity and created a basis for challenging the process — but it also meant that he got the worst of both worlds: the loss of his ministerial position, and a primary result that he did not contest but that recorded his name anyway at the bottom of the table.

The Two Who Won: Onyejeocha and Sununu

Against the backdrop of the three high-profile losses, the two ministers who secured party tickets stand out as the exceptions that prove the rule about what it takes to succeed in this environment. Nkeiruka Onyejeocha, who resigned as Minister of State for Labour and Employment, won the APC ticket for the Abia State governorship — a result that made her a potential candidate in a state where the APC is attempting to consolidate gains made in recent years. Yusuf Sununu, who resigned as Minister of State for Humanitarian Affairs, secured the APC senatorial ticket for Kebbi State, a lower-profile race than the gubernatorial contests but a party ticket nonetheless.

Both Onyejeocha and Sununu were contesting in political environments where they had deeper pre-existing structural roots than Adelabu, Tuggar, and Alkali enjoyed in their respective states. The lesson drawn by analysts this weekend is that the decision to resign and contest is not simply a question of political courage or loyalty to the president's directive. It is a question of whether the candidate has the party structure, the grassroots relationships, and the financial resources to compete at the ward level against established political machines — and whether the state's dominant political forces have decided to support or oppose them.

The Broader Political Lesson: What Happened to the Tinubu Shield?

Perhaps the most significant question raised by this weekend's primary results is the one that nobody in the APC is saying loudly, but that everyone in the party is thinking quietly: why did the president's favour not protect these ministers? All three — Adelabu, Tuggar, and Alkali — were federal ministers appointed by Tinubu. All three resigned in compliance with a presidential directive. All three presumably carried some expectation that the machinery of the APC, whose national chairman and zonal structures respond to presidential guidance, would at minimum provide a level playing field for their contests.

What they encountered instead was the immovable force of state-level incumbency. In Oyo, the governor's preference and the structural dominance of Senator Alli's political network overwhelmed whatever federal signals may have been sent. In Bauchi, a former governor who had been quietly rebuilding his organisation for years proved more effective at mobilising delegates than a fresh-faced federal minister with name recognition but shallow state-level roots. In Gombe, a sitting governor's preferred candidate was never seriously in danger. In Nigerian federal democratic politics, the president commands enormous patronage power at the national level, but that power dilutes sharply as it descends through state party organisations controlled by governors who have their own interests, their own loyalists, and their own calculations about 2027.

What this weekend has demonstrated is that resigning a ministerial position to contest a party primary in Nigeria is not a protected political move even when the president has endorsed the principle of the resignation. It is a gamble, full stop — and for three of the five who made it, the gamble came up empty.

All three losers — Adelabu, Tuggar, and Alkali — have indicated they intend to challenge the primary results through petition or other means. Whether those petitions succeed will be determined by the APC's National Working Committee and, potentially, by the courts. What cannot be petitioned away is the reality that they are now neither ministers nor candidates, occupying a political no-man's-land that represents the worst possible outcome of a high-stakes gamble that did not pay off.

Sources

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2. Punch — How Adelabu Resigned Against President Tinubu's Wish
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