Story by Ene Mary McDickson. ABUJA, SUNDAY, MAY 24, 2026 — President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has secured the All Progressives Congress presidential ticket in a commanding fashion, sweeping Sunday’s direct-mode primary election conducted simultaneously across Nigeria’s 8,809 wards to emerge as the party’s flagbearer for the 2027 general election. In what party officials described as an unprecedented show of grassroots support, the incumbent president crushed his sole challenger — Edo-based trader Stanley Osifo — by margins that left little room for political interpretation. Results collated from across the federation showed Tinubu recording towering vote tallies in commercially and politically strategic states, including 500,852 votes in Kano and 280,082 votes in Rivers State alone — figures that underscored both the depth of his national reach and the organisational machinery the ruling party deployed to deliver Sunday’s exercise. The APC Presidential Primary Elections Committee formally crowned the victory Sunday afternoon, presenting President Tinubu with his Certificate of Return and the party flag at a ceremony held at the Bola Ahmed Tinubu International Conference Centre in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja — a venue that bore the president’s own name, lending the occasion a symbolism that was unlikely to be lost on observers. The direct primary model, which bypassed delegate-based voting in favour of direct ward-level participation, was seen by the party as a deliberate strategy to anchor Tinubu’s candidacy in the broadest possible democratic base ahead of what is expected to be a fiercely contested 2027 presidential race. Osifo, widely regarded as a token opposition within the primary, had no realistic path to the ticket and did not mount any significant challenge to the president’s dominance across the geopolitical zones. With his candidacy now formalised, attention turns to the general election landscape — and whether the opposition will be capable of mounting a credible unified front against a sitting president who has now secured his party’s full institutional weight behind his re-election bid. . Only time, and the unforgiving nature of Nigerian politics, will tell.