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-about 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 through the years 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 citizens as an alternative of presenting different programmes to a few of his manifestly unpopular insurance policies.

Dream Ticket

The method issues stand in the intervening time, not one of the different presidential candidates has sufficient gravitas to unseat Tinubu. The ruling APC is the one celebration 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 fascinating is that if, as I argue later on this piece, Atiku Abubakar of the ADC and Peter Obi of the NDC workforce as much as current what Anti-Tinubu components have described as a dream ticket.

In 2023, the opposition vote was break 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 successful candidate should safe a plurality of votes and at the least 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 reveals that neither Obi nor Atiku can single-handedly attain this threshold.

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

The accepted knowledge in political circles is that 80-year-old Atiku can’t conceivably settle for being vice chairman to Obi, whereas Kwankwaso will rue being overlooked 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 not vouch for the place a number of the main gamers will ultimately forged their lot.

The latest gathering of anti-Tinubu components within the G-100 is a big 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 popular principals to not compromise.

Local Firefights

While nationwide opposition leaders negotiate a mega-coalition in Abuja, native state chapters function beneath fully completely different survival tensions. In many states, opposition events (reminiscent of factions of the PDP, SDP, and ADC) are fierce rivals on the native stage. If a nationwide coalition mandates {that a} particular celebration yield its construction in a selected state to accommodate one other coalition companion, native celebration 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 give up the All Progressives Congress (APC) in May 2026. Internal friction and ticket rivalries throughout the APC performed a central function 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 desires of many northern opposition components have been horses, Peter Obi will subordinate his ambition to Atiku and conform to 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 function of a spare tyre. Obi is probably 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 reminiscent of Atiku Abubakar and Mohammed Hayatuddeen. The South-South has Rotimi Amaechi. The North-Central and Northwest areas are but to provide 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’ve 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 excellent 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 best way in campaigning for his or her elected governors to banish the almajiri system (which hides beneath the cloak of faith to legitimise destitution), and different social drawbacks within the area are all of a sudden awake on this season of political horse-trading. Their critics are asking the place they have been when Buhari was working 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 faux 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 identify of revenging some historic indeterminate wrongs accomplished 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 identify 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 beneath the present 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 risk of an opposition victory or, at worst, triggering Nigeria’s first-ever presidential run-off.