For weeks on end, Nigerians have been inundated with reports of an impending coalition that will oust President Bola Tinubu-led government in the 2027 general elections. Public discourse about a coalition started gaining momentum after former Kaduna State governor Nasir El-Rufai dumped the All Progressives Congress (APC), citing the party’s deviation from the principles and ideals of its founding members. He also vowed to lead a coalition that would unseat his former party. Despite his public posturing and unusual bad blood between him and Tinubu, whom he played a key role in his emergence as president, many Nigerians are not convinced that El-Rufai’s switch of allegiance and newfound sympathy for the plight of the suffering Nigerians are rooted in altruism and have continued to view him with a prism of distrust as they keep him at arm’s length.
The number of opinions, postulations, speculations and arguments as to what form and shape the coalition will or should take is as many as the avalanche of Nigerians making them. However, one particular argument appears to be gaining more traction and receiving an aggressive push from certain elements. This particular argument hinges on the certainty of defeating Tinubu at the polls in 2027 on an Atiku Abubakar presidential candidacy and Peter Obi as his running mate. The proponents of this arrangement are exceedingly confident that this ticket will free Nigerians from the APC, at least at the federal level. They are largely banking on the popularity of Obi and the goodwill he enjoys among many Nigerians.
This permutation rests precariously on certain contingencies, chief of which is Obi’s willingness to be a running mate to Atiku and his readiness to rally his supporters—the majority of whom are vehemently opposed to him being a vice presidential candidate in the next general election— and convince them to support his obvious downgrade in political fortunes. Many of Obi’s supporters feel that accepting to be Atiku’s running mate will hurt his brand and damage his political career. Also, many of them are not willing to approach a ticket where Obi is not the flag bearer with the same zeal, vigour, enthusiasm and passion that they did in 2023 when Obi was the presidential candidate.
The truth is, Atiku needs Obi more than Obi needs him, that is, if Obi needs him all. Obi holds all the cards in this proposed coalition. He has a massive cult-like following. His antecedent, records, personality, character and message make his brand sellable. Atiku, on the other hand, has grown weaker with each election cycle. And he’s at his weakest because more factors are now mitigating against the realisation of his dream to lead the country. More forces are now standing in the way of actualising his lifelong presidential ambition. His party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), is in perennial disarray and floundering like a ship lost at sea. Age is not on his side. He does not have the personality and brand that appeal to certain Nigerians, especially upwardly mobile youths. Nigeria’s peculiar political dynamics do not also favour him, many Nigerians believe power should remain in the south after eight years of former president Muhammadu Buhari. Many Southerners see Atiku’s decision to contest the presidency in 2023 and again in 2027 not only as upending this arrangement but also as an affront to their sensibility.
Obi’s comment in public has not shown he’s truly committed to a coalition, as he has made it clear that he’s only interested in addressing the myriad of challenges Nigerians are facing and will not entertain the idea of a coalition cobbled up just to gain power. Obi knows the massive following he enjoys is largely due to his own conviction and ideology and his fiery and passionate supporters will dump him in a twinkle of an eye if he were to make a move that they view as antithetical to why they support him in the first place and coalesce with the very people who plunge the nation into its depressing and troubling state. If the coalition materialises, it will do more harm to Obi’s brand if he decides to settle for a vice presidential candidate, a position that many deem ceremonial and inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.
There is so much talk about Obi needing the northern votes to become president. The quiet part those advancing this argument are not saying out loud is that the coalition will only see the light of the day if a northerner is not spearheading it, what they are saying is that, while Obi is good enough to play a second fiddle to a spent politician like Atiku and be used to garner southern votes, he is not seen as the type of politician the north can throw their weight behind if he contested as president. This type of reasoning is rooted in the usual ethnic politicking and age-long resentment and condescension towards the Igbo. Why does Obi have to shrink himself for the actualisation of the lifelong ambition of a man? The frightening aspect of this discourse is that a ticket with Obi as a running mate to Atiku has a higher chance of losing to Tinubu than a ticket with Obi as a presidential candidate. Losing while vying separately is dignifying, but losing on a joint ticket will be humiliating and damaging for both men, especially for Obi.
It will be a cold day in hell before many staunch Obidients, as Obi’s followers and supporters are fondly called, vote for a ticket that has Obi as a running mate to Atiku, a man many of them see as an entrenched part of the old order they are trying to retire from the political arena. And those who will vote for the ticket will be doing so in the performance of their civic duty, but they won’t commit their money, resources and time to such an arrangement as they did in 2023. Obi’s accepting the vice presidential position will undermine his goodwill and political leverage, contaminate his ideological appeal, and shrink his popularity. Atiku does not have enough political clout and popularity to carry both men to Aso Rock.
The 2027 presidential election is still some eighteen months away but the caravan of coalition many forlorn Nigerians are hitching their hopes to and praying will move them away from the suffering and despair that beset them under APC to the land of joy and place of happiness appears to be wobbling and floundering. But there is still time for the apostles of the coalition to put their house in order.
If all parties involved in the coalition talks are genuinely interested in saving Nigeria and its people from the clutch of criminal misgovernance and addressing the many challenges facing the nation, then they must lend themselves to reason and posterity and come up with a presidential candidate that is altruistic, inspiring, widely acceptable and is nationalistic in his socio-economic and political thought and approach to issues. They can’t afford to become a vehicle that self-serving, power-hungry, money-hungry politicians, who see the presidency as their birthright, will use to grab power. 2015 must not repeat itself.
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