There is a political strategy capable of destroying a ruling party without openly declaring war on it. It does not begin with rebellion. It begins with infiltration. It does not reject the leadership. It praises it. It does not immediately challenge the party. It quietly builds an alternative political machine beside it. I call this strategy “Operation Internal Capture”. This, in my assessment, is the cancerous method being deployed by the Rainbow Coalition led by the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Barr. Nyesom Wike, against the All Progressives Congress (APC).
The design is subtle but in the end devastating. Build structures outside the APC. Raise candidates on other platforms. Mobilise supporters for opposition parties. Then, at the appropriate moment, rally them and unleash the network against the APC itself. It is a strategy of weakening a house from within while pretending to protect it from outsiders.
The brilliance, if one may call it that, lies in the camouflage. The public message is support for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. The political activity, however, must be judged by what it produces on the ground. Genuine political loyalty is not established by speeches, photographs or public declarations. In short, the louder the speeches, the more suspicious is the loyalty. To be clear, loyalty in politics established by structures. If people operating within the governing establishment are simultaneously building political structures outside the APC and raising candidates to ferociously challenge APC candidates, the party has every reason to be worried about the end game. This is not an argument against political alliances. Parties form alliances every day. The question is different. Can an alliance be genuinely pro-Tinubu while systematically strengthening political forces that may weaken the APC where President Tinubu is the National Leader? That contradiction deserves an answer.
Osun State governorship election, few weeks ago, provides a particularly instructive warning. The leader of the Rainbow Coalition publicly acknowledged that his group worked against the APC and supported the Accord Party’s candidate, Governor Ademola Adeleke. That admission should not be treated as an ordinary disagreement between politicians. It exposes the deeper problem. A politician can disagree with a party on a particular issue. That is normal. But when a parallel political network deliberately mobilises against the party’s candidates, a line has been crossed. The APC must ask whether it is accommodating allies or permitting the construction of an alternative power centre under the protection of the very government whose ruling party is being weakened.
The Southeast makes the question even more urgent. Structures associated with the Rainbow Coalition are emerging. At some of these gatherings, members have openly expressed support for PDP candidates for legislative offices and for Peter Obi of the NDC for President. That is not a minor detail. It goes to the heart of the political architecture. If a network associated with actors who publicly profess support for President Tinubu is building structures whose members are encouraged to vote for candidates of other parties, then the APC cannot simply look away. What is being built? For whom is it being built? And what happens to the APC when the structure is fully established? These are not questions of sentiment. They are questions of political survival of the APC.
President Tinubu should care about this beyond the immediate calculations of 2027. His political legacy cannot be reduced to the number of years he spends in office. A truly enduring legacy would include a political party strong enough to survive his presidency and produce future presidents on its platform. That requires institution building. It requires loyalty to the party. It requires preventing the emergence of powerful parallel structures whose ultimate interest may lie elsewhere. External opposition is easy to identify. Internal capture is much more dangerous. It enters through the front door. It enjoys access. It speaks the language of loyalty. It uses the protection of political proximity to construct an alternative. By the time the danger becomes obvious, the network may already be too deeply embedded.
The APC must therefore confront this Operation before it becomes irreversible. The party should demand political clarity and institutional self-preservation. Nobody should be punished for belonging to another party and supporting President Tinubu. But political arrangements must have boundaries. You cannot simultaneously benefit from the authority and influence of a governing party while building a political structure designed to defeat that party.
The APC leadership must examine the Rainbow Coalition without fear or sentiment, and direct it to immediately drop its non-APC candidates, dismantle its structures and strictly follow the structure of the ruling party right from the ward level. The party leadership should ask the uncomfortable question: Are these people really building the APC with us, or are they quietly building its replacement? If they fail to ask that question today, the party may be forced to answer it when the alternative machine is already standing at its gates.
