The Primary That Never Was: How Adamawa’s APC Election Was Replaced by a List, a Headcount, and a Predetermined Answer

By twelve noon on Saturday, May 16, 2026, the APC House of Representatives primary for Adamawa’s eight federal constituencies was supposed to be in full swing. Accreditation should have been completed at designated ward centres across the state’s 226 wards. Ballot papers should have been distributed. Registered members of the APC should have been marking their choices in secret and dropping their ballots into transparent boxes in the presence of INEC monitors.

None of that was happening.

This reporter drove to two designated primary centres in the Yola North Local Government Area, one in Karewa Ward and one in Gwadabawa ward. What was found at both locations was a version of the same scene. Hundreds of people present. Some standing. Some sitting on the ground. Some in loose lines. No INEC officials at the accreditation table. No ballot papers visible. No ballot boxes were set up. No voter cards being checked. And at Gwadabawa Ward specifically, children who appeared to be between 13 and 15 years old lined up with the adults, waiting for something that was not an election.

What was happening in those crowds was a headcount. Party operatives are moving through the gathered people, counting bodies and recording numbers. Not names. Not voter card numbers. Not APC membership registration numbers. Bodies. The count went forward. The count went backwards. The same people were counted more than once at some points. Children were in the count. The count was primary.

That is not a primary. That is not permitted under the APC’s own guidelines. That is not permitted under the Electoral Act 2026. And if those counted numbers are used to declare a candidate for any of Adamawa’s House of Representatives seats, that candidate’s emergence is legally exposed to nullification before they cast a single vote in the National Assembly.

What This Reporter Saw and What the National Press Confirmed

The Gazette News’s field observation at Karewa Ward in Girei was not an isolated anecdote. It was one data point in a pattern that spread across Adamawa State on May 16, 2026, and that multiple independent national media organisations confirmed.

Daily Post Nigeria dispatched reporters across Yola North LGA on May 16, 2026. Between 2pm and 3pm, they visited three wards and found neither polling officials nor voters. The report confirmed that no primary election was taking place across the state.

Blueprint Newspapers reported that Hon. Musa Usman Terrang, an aspirant for the Gombi/Hong federal constituency, stated explicitly that “no accreditation or voting took place at the designated centres”.

TVC News confirmed that Adamawa APC Reps aspirants had raised an alarm over primary interference, with multiple aspirants from different constituencies describing the same pattern of designated centres where no election activity occurred.

The APC committee dispatched from Abuja to supervise the Adamawa primary acknowledged to journalists that materials had not arrived in Yola until Saturday morning, a logistical concession that, on its own, would make valid ward-level balloting across 226 wards on the same day impossible.

What should have happened on May 16, 2026, under the APC’s own published guidelines and under Section 84(4) of the Electoral Act 2026, is clear and specific. Every registered member of the APC in each of the three local government areas making up the relevant constituency was supposed to vote for the aspirant of their choice at a designated centre in their ward. Each voter’s identity was supposed to be verified against the APC membership register submitted to INEC. Ballots were supposed to be counted in public. INEC monitors were supposed to be present and sign the result sheets. Without any of those steps, what was produced on May 16 in Adamawa was not a primary. It was a performance.

The Presidential List: What Sixty Aspirants Are Saying

The headcount at Karewa Ward is the operational manifestation of something that Adamawa’s APC aspirants had been warning about for weeks before May 16. On May 15, 2026, the day before the primary, they gave it a name.

Sixty APC House of Representatives aspirants across Adamawa’s federal constituencies, organised under the Forum of Adamawa State APC House of Representatives Aspirants and led by spokesman Vrati Nzonzo, issued a communiqué denouncing what they described as a Presidential List of predetermined candidates being imposed on the state’s constituencies. The forum demanded free, fair, and credible primaries across all 226 wards, warning that any result produced without genuine balloting would not be accepted.

On May 15, 2026, Adamawa South senatorial aspirant Peter Fwa resigned from the APC, citing Governor Fintiri’s statement to 28 aspirants at a meeting that it was President Tinubu who would determine who received the party’s tickets. Fwa described this as a fundamental subversion of the democratic process and said he could not remain in a party whose primaries were predetermined from Abuja.

Former governorship aspirant Maurice Vunobolki also resigned from the APC, making a more specific and technically damning allegation: that individuals’ National Identification Numbers had been used without their consent to inflate membership figures in key areas, including Yola North, creating a fabricated membership register on which any “direct primary” count would be fraudulent from the first step.

The Adamawa APC state committee chairman denied the existence of any Presidential List and insisted that election materials had been deployed to all 226 wards. His denial is on the record. The evidence from the wards on May 16 is also on the record. The two accounts are irreconcilable.

Why Abbati Is the Central Figure in What Happens Next

The House of Representatives primary on May 16 is not the story that carries the most immediate consequence for Adamawa’s political future. The story that matters most, and the one that is still two days away as of this publication, is the APC Senate primary scheduled for Monday, May 18, 2026.

And at the centre of that primary is a man whose profile, documented fully in the papers submitted to The Gazette News and verified against public records, represents exactly the kind of candidate that a managed, predetermined primary process is designed to prevent from winning.

Aliyu Abbati Abdulhameed was born in Limawa Ward, Jimeta, Yola North. He was Head Boy of Government Secondary School Mubi. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture and Agricultural Economics from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, obtained in 1987. He holds a Master of Public Administration from the Nigerian Defence Academy, an MBA from Business School Netherlands, and an Executive Masters Certificate in Project Management from the Project Management College, United Kingdom. He completed executive programmes at the Said Business School, University of Oxford, in 2022; two separate executive courses at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania; the Risk Management Executive Education Programme at Imperial College Business School, London; and specialist programmes at the Galilee International Management Institute in Israel. On December 13, 2025, he graduated from the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies in Kuru, Jos, and was conferred Membership of the National Institute with the post-nominal designation ‘mni’ by the Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

None of those credentials are what make him dangerous to those who prefer a managed primary outcome. What makes him dangerous is NIRSAL.

From 2015 to 2022, Aliyu Abbati Abdulhameed was the inaugural Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of NIRSAL Plc, the Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending, a Central Bank of Nigeria subsidiary established to de-risk agricultural finance for smallholder farmers and agribusinesses across Nigeria. He did not inherit a functioning institution. He built one from nothing. Under his leadership, NIRSAL forged partnerships with the African Development Bank and multiple multilateral bodies. It became globally recognised as an innovative agricultural finance mechanism. And its model was replicated in Togo, where it became MIFA, the Mechanism for Agricultural Finance in Africa, an achievement that earned Abdulhameed the Grande Chancellerie De L’Ordre Du Mono, conferred directly by the President of Togo in 2018.

In 2018 alone, he received the Presidential Award of Excellence from the Rotary Club of Abuja; the Anchor Borrowers Programme Recognition Award presented by President Muhammadu Buhari; Honorary Senior Membership of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria; Honorary Fellowship from the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply Management of Nigeria; the Credit Management Director of the Year award from the Institute of Credit Administration; and recognition from the Risk Management Association of Nigeria, the Institute of Directors Nigeria, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, the Finance Houses Association of Nigeria, and the African Takaful Forum.

A senator who built NIRSAL and earned recognition from a foreign head of state for exporting a Nigerian institutional model internationally is a senator who arrives in the National Assembly knowing how federal money moves, how agricultural policy connects to rural livelihoods, how multilateral partnerships are built, and how to hold a ministry to account for the budget it receives. That is not a skill set that can be improvised from a delegate list. It is the product of three decades of documented, internationally recognised professional achievement.

Blueprint Newspapers, analysing the Adamawa Central Senate race, described it as involving a paradigm shift, with Abdulhameed’s credentials representing the kind of departure from conventional political backgrounds that the zone had not previously seen in a senatorial aspirant.

The question the Adamawa Central primary must answer on Monday is whether a zone with that candidate available will be given the genuine opportunity to choose him, or whether the same mechanism that replaced Saturday’s elections with headcounts will replace Monday’s ballot with a name from a list.

The Law That Makes This Specific and Consequential

This investigation is not simply a complaint about unfairness. It is a precise legal analysis of what the law says must happen and what happens to any candidate who emerges from a process that does not comply with it.

Section 84(1) of the Electoral Act 2026 states that a political party seeking to nominate candidates for elections under the Act shall hold primaries for aspirants to all elective positions, and those primaries shall be monitored by the INEC. Section 84(4) specifies that in a direct primary, every registered member of the party votes for the aspirant of their choice at a designated ward-level centre. Section 84(13) is the enforcement provision: where a political party fails to comply with the provisions of this Act in the conduct of its primaries, its candidate for election shall not be included in the election for the particular position in question.

That last sentence is worth reading slowly. Not “may be excluded”. Not “could face challenges”. “Shall not be included. The disqualification is mandatory if the non-compliance is proven.

The Cable’s analysis of the Electoral Act confirms that the 2026 iteration effectively eliminates indirect or delegate primaries as an option, leaving only direct primaries, where all registered members vote, or consensus arrangements, where all aspirants voluntarily agree in writing to a single candidate. A headcount of bodies, including non-members, including children below voting age, is none of those things. It is not permitted under any provision of the current law.

INEC’s 2026 Regulations and Guidelines, unveiled by Chairman Professor Joash Ojo Amupitan at a consultative meeting with party leaders in Abuja on March 25, 2026, explicitly state that non-compliance, such as failing to follow due process or manipulating primaries, may result in the disqualification of candidates. The regulations require INEC monitors to be present, to observe accreditation and balloting, and to sign the result sheets. A primary result sheet without an INEC monitor’s signature is a document without legal standing.

The courts have applied this framework with consequences that should alarm anyone tempted to believe that a managed primary can survive a legal challenge.

In APC v. Marafa, the Supreme Court applied the predecessor provision to Section 84 and held that the APC in Zamfara State had failed to conduct valid primaries. The consequence was that the APC fielded no valid candidates, and all its supposed winners lost their seats to PDP runners-up. The Zamfara precedent remains the controlling authority on what Section 84(13) actually means in practice.

In Lawan v. Machina, a divided Supreme Court addressed an APC primary where the monitoring question was central. Justices Adamu Jauro and Emmanuel Akomaye Agim, in dissent, held that the second APC primary of June 9, 2022, was illegal because INEC did not monitor it and the statutory 21-day notice had not been given. The Federal High Court in Damaturu had earlier declared the unmonitored primary a nullity. The procedural lesson for any aspirant challenging a flawed primary is explicit: file by writ of summons rather than originating a summons where fraud is alleged, which was the procedural error that sank Machina’s case.

A Court of Appeal panel led by Justice Biobelle Georgewill, sitting in Makurdi in January 2023, held that in the Benue APC governorship primary, the appellant was able to prove that there was no gubernatorial primary election conducted by the APC on May 27, 2022, and ordered a rerun. That case is a direct precedent for the specific allegation being documented in Adamawa today – that no election was actually held.

The Federal High Court in Lafia nullified the APC Nasarawa West Senate primary that produced Shehu Tukur, ordering a fresh exercise on the INEC-certified delegate list. The Federal High Court in Port Harcourt nullified all APC primaries in Rivers State for unlawful exclusion of aspirants from delegate lists.

Each of these precedents arrived at the same point through different factual routes. A primary that does not comply with the law produces a candidate who can be stripped of that candidacy by a court. The compliance failures documented in Adamawa on May 16, 2026, the absence of balloting, the presence of underage participants, and the counting of bodies rather than the recording of votes are precisely the kinds of failures that Nigerian courts have repeatedly used as the basis for nullification orders.

The Fourteen-Day Window and What It Means

There is an urgency to this story that goes beyond the political. Section 285(9) of the 1999 Constitution as amended gives an aggrieved pre-election applicant exactly 14 days from the date of the event to file their suit at the Federal High Court. Not 14 days from when they hear about it. Not 14 days from when the results are announced. Fourteen days from the event itself.

For the House of Representatives primary that did not happen on May 16, that window closes on May 30, 2026. For the Senate primary scheduled for Monday, May 18, the window would close on June 1, 2026. These are not advisory deadlines. They are constitutional cutoffs. Miss them, and the right of challenge is gone, regardless of how compelling the evidence.

Any aspirant in any of Adamawa’s constituencies who witnessed or can document what happened on May 16, or what happens on May 18 in Adamawa Central must act with the same urgency that the constitution demands. The steps are specific. Collect contemporaneous evidence, videos, photographs, and sworn affidavits from ward agents across each of the seven Adamawa Central LGAs of Fufore, Gombi, Girei, Hong, Song, Yola North, and Yola South. Demand in writing, copied to the INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner for Adamawa, a copy of the INEC monitor’s report and the certified result sheet. File an internal appeal with the APC Election Appeal Committee within the party’s May 18 to 25 window. And file a pre-election suit at the Federal High Court in Yola or Abuja by writ of summons, citing Sections 84(1), 84(4), 84(5), and 84(13) of the Electoral Act 2026, Section 285(9) of the Constitution, APC v. Marafa, and the Lawan v. Machina dissents.

What Adamawa Central Deserves on Monday

The Adamawa Central Senatorial District covers Fufore, Gombi, Girei, Hong, Song, Yola North, and Yola South. It is where Aliyu Abbati Abdulhameed was born; where he attended primary school; where he has invested his professional career’s returns into community development; and where he submitted his senatorial forms to represent the National Assembly.

He is not the only aspirant. Engr Dr Aishatu Aliyu Umar, known as Sarauniyar Hong, has been cleared by the APC screening committee and brings her own credentials and community relationships to the contest. Dr Umar Buba Bindir, former Adamawa State Secretary to the Government and former Director-General of the National Office for Technology Acquisition and Promotion, brings institutional experience from the federal civil service and from Adamawa’s own governance history.

Any of these aspirants, and others who may enter the field, deserve the opportunity to stand before registered APC members across the seven LGAs on Monday and make their case. The members of the party in Fufore, Gombi, Girei, Hong, Song, Yola North, and Yola South deserve the opportunity to cast a ballot, not to be counted in a headcount by an operative who reports a number to a supervisory committee that transmits a predetermined name to Abuja.

The zone has never produced a governor since the return of democracy in 1999. It produces senators who then compete in a political environment where their zone’s exclusion from the highest executive office makes every Senate seat they hold more strategically important, not less. The person who represents Adamawa Central in the Senate from 2027 will be making decisions about federal agricultural budgets, about security deployment in a zone that borders active insurgency flashpoints, about infrastructure allocations for communities that still rely on rivers and dirt roads, and about the legislative oversight of agencies, including NIRSAL, the very institution that one of Monday’s aspirants built from the ground up.

The APC’s primary on Monday must be an election. Not a headcount. Not a list read from Abuja. Not a performance for INEC monitors who sign result sheets for exercises they did not actually witness.

On Saturday morning in Karewa Ward, the people came. They came because they are APC members, because they had been told a primary was being held, and because in Nigeria, even the most cynical voter still arrives hoping that this time, the process might be real. They stood in the heat. Some of them stood for hours. Some of them, including children who had no business being in a party primary, stood in the lines that the operatives were counting.

No ballot was cast. No voter card was checked. No member exercised the democratic right that the party’s constitution, the Electoral Act, and the 1999 Constitution collectively guarantee to every registered APC member in this country.

What were counted were bodies. What will be submitted to Abuja as a result are the numbers. What will be produced from those numbers is a name that was already on a list before anyone arrived at Karewa Ward.

The law says what happens to candidates produced by processes like this. Section 84(13) is not ambiguous. The Supreme Court’s Zamfara ruling is not a warning. It is a verdict waiting to be applied.

Monday is the Senate primary. Adamawa Central is watching. The law is watching. And The Gazette News will be there.