The Odds Against Tinubu

Candidate Bola Ahmed Tinubu is formidable sufficient with out the presidential halo. Now, with all presidential powers at his command, he must be thought of a frontrunner within the forthcoming elections. But there are headwinds signalling the truth that though he’s redoubtable, he’s not unbeatable.

The drawback with lots of his opponents over time is that they took him without any consideration. Part of that mindset is demonstrated when the opposition depends on rehashed tales of Tinubu’s failings to sway the voters as a substitute of presenting various programmes to a few of his manifestly unpopular insurance policies.

Dream Ticket

The means issues stand in the meanwhile, not one of the different presidential candidates has sufficient gravitas to unseat Tinubu. The ruling APC is the one get together that has unveiled its marketing campaign construction and rolled out its vote-catching machine. All the opposition events have barely 83 days to overhaul the present order.

Where the sport will start to seem attention-grabbing is that if, as I argue later on this piece, Atiku Abubakar of the ADC and Peter Obi of the NDC staff as much as current what Anti-Tinubu components have described as a dream ticket.

In 2023, the opposition vote was cut up among the many PDP, Labour Party (LP), and NNPP. A unified ticket between Obi and Atiku may pool their substantial voting bases—bringing collectively Obi’s robust momentum within the Southeast, South-South, and concrete youth demographics alongside Atiku’s established political equipment and affect throughout elements of the North.

Under the Nigerian Constitution, a profitable candidate should safe a plurality of votes and no less than 25% of the votes in two-thirds of the states (24 out of 36) plus the Federal Capital Territory. A dispassionate evaluation of the present state of affairs exhibits that neither Obi nor Atiku can single-handedly attain this threshold.

The most vital hurdle in any merger could be deciding who takes the presidential slot. If Atiku heads the ticket, it’d alienate Obi’s supporters within the Southeast and plenty of reform-minded voters who view Obi as a logo of structural political change. If Obi heads the ticket, it may face friction from impatient conventional northern political elites who can’t watch for energy to return to the North.

The accepted knowledge in political circles is that 80-year-old Atiku can not conceivably settle for being vp to Obi, whereas Kwankwaso will rue being ignored within the chilly within the occasion of an Atiku/Obi ticket. It’s all about self-interest. Until the elections come and go, you can’t vouch for the place a few of the main gamers will ultimately forged their lot.

The current gathering of anti-Tinubu components within the G-100 is a major improvement. The coalition has tried to bypass direct ego clashes by organising joint authorized and media committees to handle expectations, however particular person loyalists usually stress their most well-liked principals to not compromise.

Local Firefights

While nationwide opposition leaders negotiate a mega-coalition in Abuja, native state chapters function below completely totally different survival tensions. In many states, opposition events (akin to factions of the PDP, SDP, and ADC) are fierce rivals on the native degree. If a nationwide coalition mandates {that a} particular get together yield its construction in a selected state to accommodate one other coalition accomplice, native get together executives usually insurgent, resulting in localised anti-coalition friction or secret parallel alignments.

An instance of how native politics and private ambition have an effect on loyalty may be seen within the case of the previous deputy senate president, Ovie Omo-Agege, who defected to the National Democratic Congress (NDC) after he formally stop the All Progressives Congress (APC) in May 2026. Internal friction and ticket rivalries throughout the APC performed a central position in his defection to NDC, whose flag he can be flying within the race for the Delta Central Senatorial District in 2027.

The looming ghost of tribal/geopolitical manoeuvres can’t be discountenanced within the calculus. If the needs of many northern opposition components have been horses, Peter Obi will subordinate his ambition to Atiku and comply with play second fiddle. As already acknowledged, an alliance of the 2 leaders would essentially reshape the political panorama, presenting a formidable problem to President Tinubu and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

But die-hard Obi supporters is not going to be receptive to their hero reverting to the position of a spare tyre. Obi is essentially the most credible face of the Southeast within the present electoral race. The Southwest has a number of notable aspirants, together with President Bola Tinubu, Prince Adewole Adebayo and Governor Seyi Makinde, whereas the Northeast options figures akin to Atiku Abubakar and Mohammed Hayatuddeen. The South-South has Rotimi Amaechi. The North-Central and Northwest areas are but to supply robust frontline contenders.

Perhaps the three areas within the North are strategically avoiding a number of aspirants to forestall vote splitting?

Northern Wind

There are different strategic machinations within the combine. If you may have your ears to the bottom, you’ll hear the whispering marketing campaign within the north of a plan to encourage political attrition between the southwest and southeast in order that whereas the Yoruba and Igbo Turks of the south are at one another’s throats, the northern elite can good their plan of putting in certainly one of their very own in energy.

It sounds so childishly pedestrian at first till you re-analyse the verbal effusions of one of many perennial appointees whose definition of the ‘North’ is “I, Me and Myself”.

The Northern Elders’ Forum and different such our bodies who may have led the way in which in campaigning for his or her elected governors to banish the almajiri system (which hides below the cloak of faith to legitimise destitution), and different social drawbacks within the area are instantly awake on this season of political horse-trading. Their critics are asking the place they have been when Buhari was operating for a second time period after his uneventful first leg.

There will at all times be jostling for elbow room between numerous ethnic nationalities, however I believe the Yoruba and Igbo wouldn’t be silly sufficient to swallow the bait of seasoned provocateurs decided to drive a wedge between them. Elections will come and go. People will stay.

The identical admonition goes to the pretend reprisalists within the north, who’re at all times able to justify ethnic cleaning and forceful takeover of different folks’s ancestral lands within the title of revenging some historic indeterminate wrongs achieved by the routed victims. In this season of electioneering, we’re seeing how some individuals are digging up their demons from infernal depths within the title of political technique.

Difficult as it might appear, the opposition ought to both come collectively to place their greatest mixture ahead or be ready to lick their wounds as disparate vanquished wannabes.

Outcome

There are two potential outcomes:

(a) If the election have been contested below the prevailing multi-candidate dynamic (APC, PDP, LP, NNPP), regardless of financial headwinds, President Tinubu and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) can safe a nationwide plurality even with a decreased vote share, depdepending state unfold necessities.

(b) If main opposition figures (Obi, Atiku, Kwankwaso, Adebayo, or a broader coalition platform) efficiently current a single consolidated ticket, they might have aggregated core voting blocs throughout the South-East, South-South, city centres, and northern strongholds, making a direct head-to-head race with an actual chance of an opposition victory or, at worst, triggering Nigeria’s first-ever presidential run-off.