POACHING PRINCELINGS: Atiku, El-Rufai… Tinubu’s defection drive reaches into rivals’ families

When Abba Atiku Abubakar – son of former vice-president Atiku Abubakar – walked into Nigeria’s National Assembly in Abuja on 15 January to announce he was quitting the opposition PDP for President Bola Tinubu’s APC, he tried to bring a ready-made political “structure” with him.

He told coordinators of the Atiku Haske Organisation to follow him into the ruling party and even urged them to rename the group after Tinubu.

Within days, the support group publicly rejected the directive, said Abba had “no authority” to speak for it, and announced his expulsion.

The episode is small in electoral arithmetic but rich in symbolism – and it lands in a Nigeria already campaigning for an election due in early 2027.

Tinubu’s party formally endorsed him for a second term in May 2025, as defections and endorsements became a running theme of his mid-term politics.

Opposition leaders, warning of a slide towards a “one-party state”, responded by adopting the African Democratic Congress (ADC) as a coalition vehicle in July 2025, with former Senate president David Mark installed as interim chairman.

‘Humiliated by son’s action’

The defection drama has now acquired a family dimension. Children of some of Tinubu’s best-known rivals have, in different ways, ended up inside the APC orbit – a trend Nigerian analysts say is less about youthful ideology than the gravitational pull of incumbency and access.

“I believe Atiku feels humiliated by his son’s action,” says Oluwafemi Olaniyan, an Ilorin-based political journalist and writer, arguing that Abba has joined “a growing list of children of Tinubu’s rivals” who are aligning with the president’s camp.

Olaniyan cites Mohammed Bello El-Rufai, son of former Kaduna governor Nasir El-Rufai, and Blessing Onuh, daughter of David Mark.

He adds that opposition leaders risk being asked: if their own households are split, can they really hold a coalition together?

That question matters because Nigeria’s political class has started treating 2027 like a referendum on Tinubu’s governing coalition – and on the opposition’s ability to prevent another fragmented contest.

Tinubu won the 2023 presidency with under 40% of the vote in a three-way race, with a historically low turnout.

The opposition argues that only a unified platform can plausibly unseat an incumbent who is already pulling politicians across party lines.

How much ‘vote’ sits behind these defections?

The clearest case of a political heir converting a family name into ballots is Blessing Onuh.

First elected to the House of Representatives on another ticket and later defecting to the APC, she won reelection in 2023 in Otukpo/Ohimini, a Benue constituency long associated with her father’s local influence.

She also chairs the House committee on land transport, giving her a visible perch within the governing party’s parliamentary machinery.

But even here, the reach is mostly local. Onuh’s value to the APC is in consolidating a competitive Middle Belt seat and signalling elite buy-in, rather than redrawing the national map.

That distinction helps explain why the APC can welcome these names while the opposition dismisses them as “optics” – and why the story keeps returning to morale and narrative rather than raw numbers.

The El-Rufai split as a case study

If Abba Atiku’s move felt like a personal rebellion, the El-Rufai case reads like a political parable.

Nasir El-Rufai quit the APC for the SDP in March 2025, presenting his switch as part of an effort to rally opposition forces ahead of 2027.

Yet his son, Bello – a House member – has remained in the APC orbit. Bello is chair of the House committee on banking regulations, and Nigerian outlets reported that he endorsed Tinubu’s second-term bid at the APC’s 2025 summit, days after the party formally backed the president for 2027.

For APC strategists, the split is useful theatre: it lets them frame an opposition figure as unable to “carry” even his immediate political household. A pro-Tinubu activist, Reno Omokri, made that point on social media at the time.

For northern elite politics, analysts say, it also hints at something deeper: a generational and strategic fracture between older power-brokers and younger office-holders making pragmatic bets on where influence sits now.

Abba’s failed ‘rebrand’ and what it revealed

Abba’s attempt to rename the Haske Atiku Organisation was not made at a party congress or board meeting but during his defection announcement.

The backlash was swift because the group’s organisers said he was an invited member, not its founder, and had not built the machinery he was trying to redirect.

In other words, the episode underlined a recurring Nigerian reality: “structures” are not brand assets that can simply be re-labelled – they are networks of local patrons, funders and organisers who can refuse a political heir as easily as they can follow one.

Is the APC deliberately recruiting political heirs?

There is no on-record confirmation that “recruiting heirs” is a formal APC strategy.

What is easier to substantiate is a broad, active defection push – one that the party itself has framed as normal politics and one Tinubu has publicly welcomed.

In that context, family defections function as high-value optics: they can rattle opponents, feed headlines and reinforce the message that the centre of gravity is shifting towards the incumbent.

Tinubu’s own political heir, and the politics of visibility

The other side of the story is how the ruling party presents its own next generation.

The growing visibility of Seyi Tinubu, the president’s son, has become part of that projection, through youth-facing appearances and pro-government messaging.

In late 2025, videos circulated online from Morocco (hosting AFCON) showing posters welcoming Nigeria’s team that featured Seyi Tinubu, prompting commentary about his informal clout. (The Africa Report)