Dare Babalola
Rivers State Governor, Siminalayi Fubara, has called his decision to leave the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for the All Progressives Congress (APC) an “easy choice”.
The governor made this remark while reflecting on his experience in the PDP, saying he had largely been a passive observer, watching party affairs from the “balcony”.
Addressing newsmen at the APC headquarters in Abuja on Thursday, the governor said he had always been a progressive at heart and pledged to foster unity within the APC to drive development in Rivers State and Nigeria as a whole.
He said, “When you say I am a new member of the progressive family, that is correct, but I have always been a progressive at heart. We now have a direction. Maybe before, we didn’t have a leader or a governor as the head of the party. Now that I am a member, I will ensure that I bring everybody together for more unity and progress of the party in the state. So there is nothing to worry about—you now have a direction.
“I think my transition was one of the easiest things I have done in my life. I call it easy because saying thank you is very simple. Showing appreciation and gratitude is easy. My joining the All Progressives Congress is to say thank you to Mr President and to join hands with other progressives to develop my state and Nigeria at large. It wasn’t a difficult decision; it was easy. If you know my story, you will understand that.
“If I have to be honest, was I really a member of the PDP? I wasn’t. Whatever I suffered during the political crisis, 90 per cent of it was imposed on me by the party. I was in my former party just nominally. During the crisis, you couldn’t associate me with any group. I was just—let me say—on the balcony. I wasn’t inside the house; I was outside, on the balcony.”
Former Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, had engaged in a prolonged political battle with Fubara over the control of the PDP structure and party affairs in the oil-rich state.
In a bid to ease tensions, President Bola Tinubu suspended both the governor and the Rivers State House of Assembly for six months.
Fubara, who was reinstated in September, formally defected from the PDP to the ruling APC on Tuesday, December 9, 2025—a move widely seen as a major political realignment ahead of the 2027 general elections.
His defection came shortly after several key members of the Rivers State House of Assembly also joined the APC.
With the move, Fubara severed his long-standing ties with the PDP and emerged as a leading figure of the APC in Rivers State.
