The Likely Politicisation of the Federal Government's Ward Development Programme

There is an official State House press release dated November 25, 2025, announcing the appointment of Governor Hope Uzodimma as a “Renewed Hope Ambassador”. It reads in part:

“Ahead of the national launch of the Federal Government’s Ward Development Programme, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has appointed Governor Hope Uzodimma of Imo State as the Renewed Hope Ambassador.

In his role as ambassador, he will double as the Director-General for Party Outreach, Engagement and Mobilisation.

With the appointment, which takes immediate effect, Governor Uzodimma will be responsible, in collaboration with the All Progressives Congress leadership and the governors, for evangelising the Tinubu administration’s programme.

As Renewed Hope Ambassador, Governor Uzodimma, who also chairs the Progressive Governors Forum, will ensure harmony, inclusiveness and strategic coordination across all levels of the party. He will also be involved in mobilising and engaging people.

He will work with the APC governors, who will also be Ambassadors of Hope.”

This official State House release blatantly and alarmingly outlines a clear partisan agenda. It sends a strong signal that the Renewed Hope Ward Development Initiative which was presented to Nigerians as a broad-based inclusive programme aimed at empowering millions of recipients across almost 9,000 wards nationwide, may be a thinly-veiled partisan initiative that essentially seeks to use Federal Government Resources belonging to all Nigerians, in direct pursuit of political advantage for the APC, in the lead up to the 2027 elections. It smacks more of Politicking than Governance.

These actions, taken together with the unprecedented hostility towards the opposition that is playing out in full public view of Nigerians, are potentially lethal to our multi-party democracy.

They are also particularly inappropriate at a time when Government should be seeking, as it claims to be, to unite all Nigerians in confronting the trying challenges we are now faced with in so many areas.

Funso Doherty