As South-East Progressively Aligns With The Tinubu Administration

By Stanley Nkwocha

The political ground is shifting beneath Nigeria’s most historically assertive and politically independent region: the South-East. Since 2015, when the All Progressive Congress ( APC) took over governance the region became the home of opposition politics and often the dissenting conscience of the federation. However, it is rife to state that the region is now undergoing a profound realignment.

What seemed impossible a decade ago is now the new political reality, with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), once hegemonic across the entire South-East geopolitical zone, being completely uprooted from all five states. In its stead, the All Progressives Congress (APC) is progressively emerging as the new centre of gravity.

This transformation did not happen overnight. It is the outcome of long-term structural grievances, shifting political incentives, generational changes in Igbo political strategy, and the deliberate alignment of the region with the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

The South-East Vision 2050 Regional Stakeholders’ Forum in Enugu last Wednesday, which was organised by the South-East Development Commission (SEDC) and attended by the governors from the region, federal representatives, regional elites, and diaspora technocrats, provided the clearest symbolic marker yet that a new chapter is unfolding. The speech delivered by Vice President Kashim Shettima, and the reception it received, captured the undeniable truth that the South-East is no longer positioning itself outside the national structure. The region is seeking to co-author its future within it.

The region’s movement away from the PDP began slowly but decisively. The first major rupture came in Ebonyi in 2020, when Governor David Umahi defected to the APC, citing the PDP’s unwillingness to treat the South-East with fairness and its persistent refusal to consider a presidential ticket for the region. His argument resonated with an electorate that had long supported the PDP but gained little in exchange.

Far from being a mere personal political manoeuvre, Umahi’s decision exposed the simmering disenchantment many Igbo elites felt toward a party they believed had taken their loyalty for granted. His successor’s eventual victory under the APC in 2023 confirmed the permanence of the shift and, in hindsight, marked the beginning of the end of PDP dominance.

Earlier that year, the Supreme Court’s decision that replaced Emeka Ihedioha (PDP) with Senator Hope Uzodimma (APC) reconfigured Imo overnight. Since then, Uzodinma has become one of the most strategic political actors in the region, using his office to build the APC’s regional infrastructure and eventually chairing the Progressive Governors’ Forum.

But the most symbolic collapse of the PDP occurred in Enugu in 2025. For twenty-six years, Enugu had remained a PDP citadel and a state where the party had never lost a governorship election and where its political machinery was so deeply entrenched that change seemed unimaginable.

Yet when Governor Peter Mbah defected to the APC alongside nearly all members of the State House of Assembly and over two hundred local government officials, the PDP’s fate was sealed. His explanation that it was impossible for Enugu to remain in opposition and still hope to secure meaningful development echoed a sentiment increasingly shared across the region, which is that the politics of perceived regional isolation had become too costly to sustain.

Elsewhere, the transition of Abia State to Labour Party control under Alex Otti in 2023 and Anambra’s steadfast allegiance to APGA meant that by early 2026, the PDP no longer held a single governorship in the South-East. A party that once thrived on the emotional loyalty and historic grievances of Ndi Igbo has found itself displaced not by a single alternative, but by a coalition of political forces, in particular, the APC, that recognised the region’s desire for relevance and inclusion.

To understand why this shift occurred, one must consider the deep historical backdrop. The South-East’s political identity has long been shaped by post-war marginalisation, structural inequities, and the undercurrents of resentment that followed the federal policies of the 1970s, including the economic dislocations that left many Igbo communities struggling to rebuild.

This opinionated sense of betrayal fed seamlessly into the Peter Obi wave that swept through the region in the 2023 general elections. For decades, the PDP had enjoyed a grassroots monopoly in the South-East, but the emotional resonance of Obi’s candidacy broke that monopoly in a single election cycle. People who had voted for the PDP generation after generation now shifted their allegiance to the Labour Party. Although the movement did not translate into gubernatorial wins for the LP across all states, it decisively fractured the PDP’s foundational base. The heart had left the party, even if the structures remained. By the time Mbah defected in 2025, there was no ideological resistance left strong enough to stop him.

Yet the story of the South-East’s alignment with the Tinubu administration is not simply a reaction to PDP failures. The movement is equally shaped by what the APC-led federal government has done to court the region at a moment when Nigeria is experiencing meaningful macroeconomic repositioning. Under President Tinubu, the economy has witnessed a notable shift in direction.

International institutions such as the World Bank have upgraded Nigeria’s growth prospects, estimating GDP expansion at 4.4% for 2026—far higher than global projections. Inflation, once spiralling at crisis levels, has begun a steady decline, dropping from over 21% in 2025 to a projected 12.94% this year, while foreign reserves and FX turnover have surged to their strongest levels in recent years. These indicators have strengthened the region’s perception that federal economic stewardship is stabilising, making political alignment more attractive.

This is especially relevant for the South-East because the region thrives on private enterprise, trade, manufacturing, and diaspora remittances, which are, in fact, sectors that benefit from macroeconomic stability.

At the same time, the government’s push for refining independence, which has allowed Nigeria to transition into a net exporter of refined petroleum products, has reduced pressure on the naira, bolstered reserves, and improved trade balances. These economic shifts are not abstract technocratic achievements; they are tangible developments that resonate with the everyday realities of traders in Onitsha, importers in Aba, manufacturers in Nnewi, and transport entrepreneurs across the region.

But perhaps the most profound factor in the South-East’s realignment is President Tinubu’s deliberate political strategy toward the region. Rather than relying on rhetoric or symbolic gestures, the administration has taken concrete steps that respond to longstanding Igbo demands for structural economic inclusion.

One such step is the establishment of the South East Investment Company Limited, a federally supported vehicle designed to mobilise diaspora capital, attract development finance, and channel private investment into the region’s infrastructure and industrial base. This mirrors the calls within academic and policy circles for a modern equivalent of the defunct Eastern Nigeria Development Corporation, which was once responsible for some of the region’s most impressive economic achievements in the pre-war era. President Tinubu’s approval of this initiative signalled not only recognition of the region’s unique entrepreneurial strengths but also a willingness to anchor long-term federal policy on the region’s aspirations for economic integration.

This strategic engagement was on full display at the Enugu Vision 2050 Summit. Vice President Shettima’s remarks, emphasising that the South-East is a central pillar of Nigeria’s economic future, carried special significance in a region where historical memory of exclusion is deep and often painful. His acknowledgement of the region’s global diaspora networks, its tradition of innovation under pressure, and its role in shaping Nigeria’s economic imagination tapped into a broader intellectual history that sees the Igbo as a migrant race, resilient, adaptive, and global in orientation.

The audience’s response to VP Shettima’s speech was not merely polite; it was markedly receptive. It reflected a regional elite increasingly interested in the language of development, investment, and long-term planning, and less committed to the confrontational political posture of previous decades. The symbolism of the moment was unmistakable: the federal government came not as a paternalistic overseer or political conqueror, but as an engaged partner offering a platform for integration into Nigeria’s long-term economic framework. This shift is not driven by naivety. The South-East’s political class understands that genuine alignment with the centre must translate into tangible gains.

In effect, the South-East is recalibrating; not abandoning its identity, grievances, or aspirations, but repositioning itself within the Nigerian power structure to negotiate those aspirations more effectively. The PDP’s downfall is merely the political expression of this deeper transformation. What is emerging is not blind loyalty to the APC but a regional strategy rooted in the understanding that power must be engaged directly if economic and political development is to be massively achieved.

The Vision 2050 Summit has, perhaps, demonstrated that the South-East has looked beyond its grievances. The region is not merely aligning with the President Tinubu administration out of weakness or opportunism. It is doing so out of a recognition that political relevance and economic transformation are best secured not from the margins but from the centre of national decision-making.

Nkwocha is the Senior Special Assistant on Media and Communications to The President (Office of the Vice President) and wrote in from Abuja.

As South-East Progressively Aligns With The Tinubu Administration