Anambra state will go to the polls in the last quarter of 2025 to elect the governor of the state. The first term of the incumbent Governor Charles Soludo will elapse on March 17, 2026.
Of all the 18 political parties in the country, three are expected to present the strongest candidates for the election. These political parties are the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) which is the party of the incumbent, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Labour Party (LP). The APGA has been ruling the state for 18 unbroken years since March 2006.
In the forthcoming gubernatorial election, the APGA will definitely field Governor Soludo. The APC will most likely field Senator Ifeanyi Ubah, the current senator representing Anambra South senatorial district in the National Assembly. Of all those who have indicated interest to be the standard bearer of the APC for the election, Senator Ubah is the most eligible and marketable for the party as I will explain presently. The candidate of the LP is still a conjecture but it’s imperative to point out that all the candidates of the three strongest political parties are likely to come from the Anambra South senatorial district where the seat is currently zoned by principle.
This writer deliberately left out the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) among the strongest contenders because the party is almost dead in the South-east geopolitical zone particularly Anambra state where the party couldn’t win a single House of Assembly seat not to talk of either senatorial or House of Representatives seat in the last general election. Any candidate from the PDP for the governorship election will just be wasting his time and resources. It will be almost impossible for the candidate to win.
Against the foregoing background, of the three strongest parties, the APC has a greater chance to win the election if the party fields Senator Ubah. Now, both Governor Soludo and Senator Ubah are from the Anambra South senatorial district.
It’s instructive to state that Senator Ubah is the only man who survived the Peter Obi hurricane in 2023. Whereas the LP swept the two senatorial districts of Anambra North and Anambra Central, it couldn’t penetrate the Anambra South senatorial district where Ubah sought reelection on the platform of a very weak Young Progressives Party (YPP) and won. It’s also to point out that the incumbent Governor Soludo couldn’t deliver his own senatorial district in the election despite the Peter Obi hurricane. How then did Ubah survive both Governor Soludo who did everything humanly possible to win his senatorial district for his party but couldn’t and also survived the Peter Obi hurricane?
Senator Ubah is not contesting the governorship election for the first time. He had contested in the past albeit unsuccessfully. This time around, he will be contesting on the platform of a very strong party, the APC, which controls the central government.
The APC may not be popular with most Nigerians particularly in the South-east due to the current economic hardship, but the antecedent of the candidate matters most. The antecedent of Senator Ubah has enabled him to win election on two consecutive times on the platform of a very weak party. Therefore, his candidacy on the platform of the APC can never be anathema to his ambition.
The forthcoming Anambra governorship election will be very tough and fierce but the track record of the candidates will make the difference. Big grammar and rhetoric will not help any candidate this time around. The incumbent will be assessed on his performance by the electorate. The candidate of the LP cannot leverage the goodwill of Peter Obi to ride into the Government House, Awka.
Of course, having defeated both Governor Soludo and Peter Obi’s candidates in the last senatorial election in spite of their efforts, Senator Ubah will spring up a powerful surprise in the coming election with the guarantee of the electoral body, INEC, that nobody can swing or rig the election. The odds favour him even though he will be contesting against the incumbent and some other untested candidates of other political parties.
Ifeanyi Maduako,
Owerri, Imo state
