The first major crack in Bauchi APC came in 2019.

Despite having an elected APC Governor in M.A.

Abubakar, SAN, certain individuals within the party refused to rally behind him.

They prioritized personal ambition over the collective interest of the party.

Instead of closing ranks to win, they opened multiple fronts of internal war.

That self-sabotage cost the APC the governorship seat.

The votes were there.

Abubakar, SAN, polled over 500,000 votes, a figure that wins elections in most states.

But when your own house fights against you, even 500,000 votes are not enough.

The opposition did not defeat the APC in 2019; self-saboteurs within the APC did.

The primary tool of these self-saboteurs is simple: reject any primary they do not win.

It happened in 2019 and the scars are still visible.

Some actors act and claim ownership of the APC.

They hardly accept the outcome of party primaries, nor do they believe that the APC is supreme to their personal and self-imposed ambitions.

Once the delegates spoke for M.A.

Abubakar, SAN, in the just-concluded governorship primaries, the same playbook returned.

Social media was flooded with speculations, not to build the party, but to delegitimize the candidate.

That is how elections are lost before the ballot is even printed.

In 2019, late President Muhammadu Buhari recognized Mallam Adamu Adamu as the party leader in Bauchi State despite M.A.

Abubakar, SAN, being an elected APC Governor.

Self-saboteurs twisted that recognition to claim the Governor had no base.

That precedent is instructive.

Today, APC has no seating Governor in Bauchi, and Professor Muhammad Ali Pate is the leader of the party in the state.

The party that made these stakeholders and discovered them is supreme, and its leadership structure determines authority, not individual ambition.

Today, they deploy the same strategy against Professor Muhammad Ali Pate, Honourable Minister of Health and Social Welfare.

Rather than see his role as leader of the APC in Bauchi State as stabilizing in a period when the party does not control the state government, they paint it as a parallel structure.

The goal is the same: divide the party so it cannot win.

Bauchi State has 20 local governments and 212 wards.

The Constitution gives an Executive Governor power to appoint Commissioners, work with 20 Local Government Chairmen, and elected councilors across the wards.

That is structure.

Abubakar, SAN, understands it.

He won in 2015 with around five hundred and fifty-four thousand votes because he connected ward to ward, local government to local government.

The Self-saboteurs ignore that structure.

They prefer social media politicians and political entrepreneurs who survive amid divisions.

In 2019, they abandoned the structure for noise and lost.

After the recent primaries, the noise machine started again, attacking both the candidate and the Minister instead of mobilizing the 212 wards.

To justify working against their own party, self-saboteurs must erase the record.

That is why they avoid hard questions.

Why are they afraid to tell the world how M.A.

Abubakar, SAN, governed from 2015 to 2019 without borrowing? Can anyone deny that the agricultural sector and education were his priorities? Why are they not talking about the health sector and human development, where the sons and daughters of nobody became the sons and daughters of somebody? Why hide his merit-based appointments and youth-driven policies? In 2019, they buried these facts and convinced some voters that change was needed.

The result was defeat.

The same erasure is happening now.

Self-saboteurs thrive on a lie: that the APC candidate is weak.

In 2019, they said M.A.

Abubakar, SAN, could not win, despite his over 500,000 votes when the claim party owners were nowhere to be found.

They sold that fiction until the party believed it and lost.

After the just-concluded primaries, the rhetoric returned.

Seven other aspirants contested, yet the the party chose M.A.

That choice was not a mistake but the best bet, given the voting patterns of Bauchi State.

But the saboteurs say otherwise, hoping that if they repeat it enough, the party will again doubt its strongest hand.

After losing in 2019, these same actors blamed everyone except themselves.

They did not admit that ganging up against their own Governor was the....