APC Primary Dispute: Aspirant Usoko Ken Supule Tells Fintiri in Open Letter “You Were Once a First-Time Aspirant” as DNL Constituency Row Deepens

The controversy surrounding the APC House of Representatives primary election for the Demsa, Numan and Lamurde Federal Constituency has deepened significantly after one of the aggrieved aspirants, Usoko Ken Supule, responded to Governor Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri’s reported characterisation of primary challengers as “inexperienced politicians” with an open letter that went to the heart of what internal democracy in the APC should mean.

Supule’s letter, circulated to journalists, was not an angry outburst. It was a structured argument addressed directly to a governor who, the letter carefully notes, was not always the man in the position he now occupies.

“You were once a first-time aspirant,” Supule wrote, in the sentence that most directly captures the letter’s central thesis. Every politician now in authority was once where Supule stands today, dependent on credible processes, transparent primaries, and a level playing ground to earn the chance to serve. Governor Fintiri built his own political career on precisely that foundation. The open letter is asking him to honour it.

Governor Fintiri’s reported description of aggrieved primary aspirants as inexperienced politicians was the specific provocation that Supule responded to, but the letter addressed something larger than a single phrase. It questioned the state of internal democracy within the APC in Adamawa and argued that the dismissal of aspirants’ concerns through a characterisation of inexperience was itself a symptom of the problem rather than an answer to it.

Supule reminded Fintiri that fairness and transparency should never be sacrificed for political convenience, and that political leaders must recognise that the standards they establish today will shape the future of democratic practice within the party and the country at large.

“The process we normalise today becomes the standard our children will inherit,” he said.

That formulation moves the argument from the personal to the institutional. It is not simply about what happened in the DNL primary on May 16. It is about what kind of political culture the outcome normalises, and whether young Nigerians watching will conclude that democratic participation is available to them or reserved for those with the right connections and the right relationship with whoever controls the process.

Supule made a specific accountability claim that the governor’s reported comment appears designed to deflect: that Fintiri himself benefitted from a political environment built on credible participation, and that having benefitted from it, he now has a particular responsibility to defend it.

“I believe you want to be remembered as the leader who strengthened the APC, not the one who weakened it from within,” Supule wrote, framing the appeal not as a threat but as an invitation to self-reflection on legacy.

The DNL constituency primary has continued to generate public debate amid allegations of irregularities and claims by party members that the exercise did not reflect the genuine wishes of APC members in the constituency. Supule’s open letter adds an institutional dimension to those allegations by connecting the specific dispute to the broader question of whether the APC’s internal processes can be trusted to produce outcomes that reflect membership preference rather than predetermined decisions.

He warned that any attempt to replace democratic elections with what he described as selection and imposition could weaken public trust in the political system and discourage young people from participating. In a country where youth exclusion from formal political participation is already documented at structural levels, the message that even party primaries are managed rather than contested is corrosive in proportion to its truth.

Supule reaffirmed his commitment to the APC and to peaceful political engagement, making clear that his challenge to the primary outcome is a democratic rather than a destabilising act. He called on party leaders to create a level playing field for all aspirants regardless of political influence or personal connections, describing this not as a demand but as the minimum that a functioning party democracy requires.

“History would ultimately judge those who stood for justice, fairness and due process,” he said.

The DNL primary dispute joins a growing list of post-primary controversies across Adamawa’s APC constituency races, each carrying its own specific allegations and its own set of voices calling for review or redress. What distinguishes Supule’s contribution to that conversation is its direct engagement with the governor himself, and its use of Fintiri’s own political history as the basis for the accountability claim.

The governor has not publicly responded to the open letter at the time of publication.