In Naija politics, the moment you know democracy is in serious trouble is not when opposition parties lose elections.

It is when the ruling party's chairman starts singing the praises of a man who is supposed to be his opponent.

That moment arrived yesterday, June 23, 2026, at the flag-off of construction of Collector Road C01, Nile University Area to Ring Road 3, in the Federal Capital Territory.

Professor Nentawe Yilwatda, National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, the ruling party, stood before cameras and said he wished he could poach Nyesom Wike from the Peoples Democratic Party into the APC.

He described Wike as "tireless" and praised the FCT minister for the remarkable feats he had achieved since being appointed by President Tinubu in 2023.

Tireless. From the APC chairman. About a PDP member.

A PDP member who is commissioning APC government projects. A PDP member who the APC chairman wants to recruit. A PDP member whose Rainbow Coalition in Rivers State has united PDP, APC, Labour Party and Action Alliance under one operational roof. A PDP member whose faction is fighting the legitimate Turaki-led PDP in three different courts. A PDP member whose most recent political act was to install a former PDP Minority Leader as the APC governorship candidate in Rivers State.

This man is the PDP's most prominent face in national politics.

And the APC chairman wants to poach him.

Not because Wike is infiltrating the APC.

Because the APC and Wike's PDP have, for all practical purposes, already merged in every way that matters.

How It Started: The Betrayal That Opened Every Door

Let us trace the full sequence. Because this death did not happen overnight. It was a slow dissolution built from individual acts of political calculation that each seemed reasonable in isolation and catastrophic in aggregate.

In 2023, the PDP approached its presidential primary with Atiku as its candidate. Several PDP governors, including Wike, felt sidelined. They resented the outcome of the primaries. They resented what they described as Atiku's unilateral decision-making. They organised into the G-5 governors and refused to campaign for the PDP presidential candidate.

Wike went further. He did not just refuse to campaign. He actively worked against Atiku. And he was not subtle about it.

The Rivers State result in the 2023 presidential election told the full story. Tinubu polled 280,762 votes in Rivers. Atiku polled 175,467. In a state that was PDP's most valuable asset in the South-South for sixteen years, the PDP presidential candidate came second to the APC because the man controlling the PDP machinery in that state wanted a different outcome.

Tinubu won Rivers. Tinubu won the presidency. And Tinubu did not forget who helped.

The FCT Minister position that Wike received was not a reward for competence alone, though his project delivery record is genuinely exceptional. It was also the price Tinubu paid for the votes Wike helped deliver. It was a political transaction dressed in a cabinet appointment.

And that transaction, completed in 2023, has been producing compounding returns for the ruling party ever since.

The Rainbow Coalition: When Opposition and Government Sat at the Same Table

If the 2023 deal was the seed, the Rainbow Coalition was the tree it grew into.

On May 30, 2026, Wike convened a luncheon in Port Harcourt where PDP, APC, Labour Party and Action Alliance sat together, ate together, and signed on to a common agenda. The common agenda included joint selection of governorship candidates, active support for President Tinubu's administration, and a collective declaration that any politician seeking a position in Rivers State must join the Rainbow team.

At a separate event that same week, Tinubu described Wike as "Mr Projects" and praised his "exceptional leadership and commitment to delivering infrastructure projects," saying Nigerians were seeing the transformation and feeling its impact.

The ruling party's president calling the opposition's most prominent member "Mr Projects" and saying Nigerians can feel his impact.

The ruling party's chairman saying yesterday he wishes he could poach the same man into his party.

This is not political rivalry. This is not healthy competition between government and opposition. This is a public merger that has not yet been announced in a press release.

And the reason it has not been announced is that Wike is more valuable to the APC as a PDP member than as an APC convert. If he crosses formally, he becomes just another APC minister. As a PDP member who operates like an APC minister, he is living proof that even the opposition agrees the APC is the better option.

That message, delivered through his continued PDP membership, is worth more to Tinubu's 2027 campaign than any formal defection.

What By-Election Results Confirmed About the Opposition's Actual Strength

The political symbolism of Nentawe's comments about Wike becomes most devastating when placed alongside the by-election results from Saturday June 20.

APC swept the by-elections in Enugu, Nasarawa, Kebbi, Kano and Ondo on the same weekend. In Enugu North, APC's Ikeje Asogwa won with 162,360 votes. PDP's closest rival got 9,299. NDC got 3,129. ADC got 1,676. Labour Party got 1,027.

The PDP that is supposed to be the main institutional opposition to the APC polled 9,299 votes in a senatorial district with 727,340 registered voters.

But which PDP was contesting that seat?

The Wike-backed PDP faction, whose caretaker committee has been ruled against by the Court of Appeal. The faction whose legal foundation was described by the appellate court as having exceeded the reliefs sought by any party in the suit. The faction whose most prominent member was being praised as "tireless" by the APC national chairman on the same day these results were being celebrated.

A PDP that dines with the APC cannot be the opposition to the APC.

A PDP whose chairman is being praised by the APC's chairman cannot scrutinise the APC's governance excesses.

A PDP whose most powerful member is commissioning APC government projects in the federal capital territory and receiving presidential commendation for it cannot hold that same president accountable for N1,400 petrol, collapsed power supply, or soldiers dying in unmaintained armoured vehicles.

The watchdog has moved into the house it was supposed to be watching.

The Turaki Faction: The Last Standing PDP and Why It Matters

There is one dimension of this story that deserves proper attention.

The legitimate PDP, as determined by the Court of Appeal which set aside the Federal High Court judgment recognising Wike's caretaker committee, is the Turaki-led faction. The court held that the trial court had gone beyond the reliefs sought by any party in producing its ruling that recognised Wike's faction.

In Rivers State's by-election for the South-East Senatorial District, PDP's Olaka Nwogu comfortably retained the seat, defeating his APC challenger by a wide margin.

That Rivers result happened in Turaki PDP territory. The real PDP. Not Wike's faction. The faction that has consistently refused to compromise with the APC's agenda. The faction that went to court because they believed the party's internal processes were being manipulated.

But here is the tragedy of the Turaki faction's situation.

They are the legitimate opposition. They have a Supreme Court case pending. They have institutional standing. They have the correct reading of the PDP constitution. They are the PDP that can actually challenge the ruling party without conflict of interest.

And they have almost no money, almost no media coverage, almost no political heavyweights, and almost no national presence compared to Wike's faction which has a federal minister, a Rainbow Coalition, the commissioning ceremonies, and the APC chairman's public admiration.

In Naija politics, legitimacy and power are not the same currency. And right now, the faction with legitimacy has very little power, while the faction with power has a diminishing claim to legitimacy.

Professor Kperogi's Warning: Even Wike's Position Is Fragile

One dissenting voice in this narrative deserves acknowledgement.

Professor Farooq Kperogi, the media scholar and public intellectual, warned earlier this year that Wike may be overplaying his hand.

Kperogi stated that Wike risks being sidelined by the APC-led administration and could fall out with Tinubu. He cautioned that the FCT minister may face a stunning political setback.

The warning is worth noting because it introduces the possibility that Wike's strategy, brilliant as it looks in June 2026, contains a vulnerability.

The APC does not actually need Wike in perpetuity. They needed him in 2023 to win Rivers. They need him now to manage the FCT and maintain the South-South appearance of broad-based support. But after 2027, if Tinubu wins comfortably, the utility calculation changes. A politician who has crossed every line to be useful to the incumbent loses leverage the moment the incumbent no longer needs the crossing.

Tinubu created Wike's relevance outside PDP. Tinubu can reduce it the same way. And a man who has burned his opposition bridges, whose PDP faction's court cases are going badly, whose godson's political career he ended, and whose Rainbow Coalition is built entirely on the assumption that federal access continues, is a man with no safe harbour if the wind changes in Aso Rock.

In Naija politics, the minister who is indispensable today is the liability that requires managing tomorrow.

The Deepest Question: Does Nigeria Still Have a Functioning Opposition?

Here is the honest answer that all of this demands.

Nigeria's constitutional democracy requires two things to function. A government that governs. And an opposition that holds it accountable.

The APC is governing. With all its failures on petrol prices, security, power supply, and economic management, the machinery of government is operational.

The opposition is not opposing.

PDP's most powerful figure is a federal minister in the government he is supposed to oppose. His faction's court cases are being lost at the appellate level. His Rainbow Coalition has absorbed APC, LP and AA under a single operational umbrella with a stated mandate to support Tinubu.

ADC polled 1,676 votes in a senatorial by-election. Its presidential ticket is credible in theory and invisible in practice.

NDC polled 3,129 votes in the same election in Peter Obi's own South-East. Its presidential candidate recently told a national television interviewer that it is not for Nigerians to know how he will generate 10,000 megawatts.

Labour Party got 1,027 votes in the same Enugu election where it won the seat in 2023.

The by-election of June 20, 2026 is not just a data point. It is a verdict. It says that the opposition infrastructure that produced the closest presidential contest since 2015 in 2023 has not been maintained, built upon, or consolidated in the three years since.

It has been allowed to decay while opposition leaders spent their energy fighting each other over presidential tickets, party structures, and VP slots.

And the APC chairman, standing at a project commissioned by a PDP member yesterday, confirmed what the election results already showed.

He said he wishes he could poach Wike.

In Naija politics, you only publicly express a desire to poach a man when you have already concluded that his current party cannot stop you from doing anything he might otherwise have prevented.

The ruling party's chairman is singing the praises of the opposition's most powerful face. And the opposition's most powerful face is building roads in Abuja for a government he is not a formal member of.

That is not democracy functioning normally.

That is democracy functioning abnormally in favour of one party. And the alarm about what January 14, 2027 will produce if this trajectory continues should be ringing across every opposition headquarters in Nigeria right now.

Loudly. Urgently. Without pause.

What do you think? Has the Wike-Tinubu axis formally killed meaningful opposition politics in Nigeria, or does the Turaki PDP faction's legal battles and the Atiku-Amaechi ticket still represent a genuine democratic alternative that can hold the APC accountable? And is the APC chairman's public admiration for Wike the clearest sign yet that Nigerian political competition is being replaced by political accommodation? Drop your thoughts in the comments section. Today is June 24, 2026. This Naija politics collapse of opposition is the most important democratic story Nigeria is not paying enough attention to and seven months from now it will determine whether 2027 is an election or a ceremony.