No more empty promises. Enugu Governor Peter Mbah has told APC candidates for 2027 to ditch sloganeering and campaign with bricks, mortar, and receipts.

The governor laid down the gauntlet at a high-stakes strategic retreat for APC candidates on Monday at the International Conference Centre, Enugu.

The message was blunt: If you want to win Enugu in 2027, show the people what we have built.

From PDP Fortress to APC Battleground

For context, this is a massive political shift. Enugu has been a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) stronghold since Nigeria’s return to democracy in 1999 — never won by the APC at gubernatorial level.

That changed on 14 October 2025, when Mbah, who was elected on the PDP platform in 2023, formally defected to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) alongside his entire cabinet, 17 local government chairmen, and former Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi. Mbah cited the PDP’s “unjust treatment of the South-East” and the need to connect Enugu to the centre.

His defection left the PDP with just nine governors and handed the APC a two-thirds majority in the Senate, according to BusinessDay — a clear repositioning ahead of 2027.

Now, Mbah is trying to turn that defection into domination.

The Charge at ICC

Represented by the Secretary to the State Government, Prof Chidiebere Onyia, the governor congratulated candidates but warned them that elections are not won on election day.

“Elections are not won on election day. The process that leads to the election makes it possible for the election to be won or lost,” he said.

His blueprint for victory is three-fold:

1. Grassroots, not grandstanding: He charged candidates to go kindred-by-kindred, identify real stakeholders, and use data-driven mobilisation rather than judging strength by rally crowds.

2. Sell with evidence: Candidates must build a strong digital presence and consistently push the achievements of both his administration and President Bola Tinubu’s Federal Government with facts and verifiable records.

3. Party over personal beef: He warned against anti-party activities, saying personal grievances must never make them work against fellow APC candidates.

The APC Deputy National Chairman (South), Dr Benjamin Nwoye, hammered the same point. Speaking on the theme “Building Synergy for Effective Mobilisation, Issue-Based Campaigning and Electoral Success”, he declared the era of selective voting dead.

“The era of voting for one candidate and rejecting another is gone. We must vote from top to bottom,” Nwoye said. “A silent candidate cannot defeat a loud opposition.”

He urged candidates to blanket every community with radio jingles, town halls, posters and social media content that explains the APC’s broom symbol and educates voters.

The Talking Points: Roads, Gas and FAAC

Chief of Staff to the Governor, Victor Udeh, who said Mbah called the retreat to “prompt and energise” candidates after noticing post-primary inactivity, gave them their manifesto cheat-sheet.

He listed federal wins to campaign with, including the Federal Government’s approval for a gas pipeline to pass through the South-East and major road projects — the Enugu-Port Harcourt Road, Ninth Mile-Makurdi Expressway, Enugu-Onitsha Road and Enugu-Abakaliki Road — many of which had been abandoned for decades.

He also defended President Tinubu’s fuel subsidy removal, a policy that pushed petrol from N198 to over N600 per litre in 2023 and triggered a cost-of-living crisis. According to Udeh, the policy has increased Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) disbursements to states and local governments by “over 300 per cent”, boosting resources for state-level projects.

Enugu State APC Chairman, Dr Martin Chukwunweike, said the party would leave no stone unturned, while Senator Osita Ngwu, representing Enugu West and speaking for the candidates, admitted the retreat was a wake-up call.

Ngwu said Mbah’s projects have made campaigning easier but urged colleagues to learn from APC’s poor outing in Enugu in 2023, when despite being the ruling party at the centre, it failed to win a single National Assembly seat in the state.

“All of us want to win this election. It will be a thing of pride for us to win. So, we’re going to do more because the ball is in our court,” he said.

The bottom line from Enugu? 2027 will be fought not on promises, but on projects — and the APC wants to own every level of it.

Credit: Original report by cbinews.tv

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