Heavyweight Loyalist Camp of Former IGP Backs Labaran Maku for Crucial Nasarawa Senatorial By-Election

The upcoming legislative battle for Nasarawa North’s senatorial seat has recorded a high-intensity political shift after the influential, well-networked campaign camp of a former Inspector General of Police formally threw its weight behind former Minister of Information, Mr. Labaran Maku.

The high-stakes political realignment unzipped during an emergency joint stakeholders’ assembly held in Akwanga on Friday morning, June 19, 2026. The unexpected strategic alliance lands as a defining moment on the state’s 2026 electoral calendar, arriving precisely as top-tier political platforms initialize their primary screening codes following the sudden resignation of the district’s former representative at the Red Chamber, who stepped down to accept an international diplomatic posting from the presidency.

The endorsement manual, signed and unzipped by prominent regional youth leaders, retired law enforcement administrators, and core political tacticians within the ex-IGP’s dominant machinery, has effectively bypassed traditional partisan gridlocks.

The coalition declared that after a comprehensive audit of all frontline aspirants angling for the legislative ticket, Labaran Maku stands out as a tested statesman capable of providing an unyielding legislative defensive shield for the zone at the federal level.

Maku, an experienced political heavyweight who has previously served as the Deputy Governor of Nasarawa State and the National Secretary of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) before returning to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) folders, brings massive administrative pedigree to the table. His local popularity fields, particularly across the volatile Nasarawa-Eggon, Wamba, and Akwanga municipal clusters, have instantly been supercharged by this fresh institutional backing.

“We are not making this decision based on surface-level sentiment, but on cold, data-driven political parameters,” Aliyu Eggon, a frontline coordinator for the ex-IGP’s grassroots structure, declared with absolute candor during the press brief. “Nasarawa North cannot afford to dispatch a novice or an administrative lightweight to the Senate trenches at this critical hour. Labaran Maku’s historical manual as an outspoken advocate for equity, his vast connections within the federal cabinet, and his deep grasp of internal subnational governance make him uniquely fit. Our entire network—spanning every ward and polling unit across the three local government areas—is fully initialized to build a bulletproof mobilization shield around his aspiration to ensure his absolute victory.”

The sudden convergence has triggered intense internal friction within competing campaign headquarters. Rival aspirants inside both the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and opposition networks are frantically reworking their delegate calculation fields, fearing that the ex-IGP camp’s massive logistical and intelligence-gathering infrastructure could heavily skew the upcoming party primaries in Maku’s favor.

Concurrently, civil society election watchdogs have highly urged all participating groups to lower the geopolitical temperature.

With the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) expected to release its official structural timeline for the by-election within the month, the massive wave of elite alignments proves that the race to secure Nasarawa North’s voice in Abuja will be one of the most aggressively contested subnational transitions of the 2026 legislative year.