The desperate effort by opposition parties to wrest the presidency from the All Progressives Congress (APC) has repeatedly faltered. Twice or thrice they had unsuccessfully explored the possibility of presenting a common front. They have not given up, and have been reminded by their main spiritual counsellor, John Cardinal Onaiyekan, that their only chance of winning the top prize lies with opposition unity. A former APC national vice chairman in charge of the Northwest, Salihu Lukman, has worked tirelessly in the past few weeks to see how a theoretical 100 opposition leaders could cobble together a single front to confront the APC behemoth. They have made heavy weather of forging that unity, but somehow, they seemed convinced that a miracle might still occur. Together with the cardinal and some starry-eyed political leaders across opposition parties, they predicate their 2027 hope on that single front. But that united front is a fantasy.
Firstly, the two opposition leaders expected to drive the united front – former vice president Atiku Abubakar of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) and former Anambra State governor Peter Obi of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) – had months ago, and on multiple occasions, failed to wave a hypothetical magic wand to dethrone the ruling party. Personal ambition, lack of ideological drive and focus, not to say the absence of vision and strategy, deprived them of that possibility. It is not known by what magical enchantment Dr Lukman, notwithstanding his deployment of phantom 100 opposition political leaders, hopes to conjure that united front.
Alhaji Atiku sees 2027 as his last chance to bid for the throne and, in the opinion of his scorners, actualise the predictions of his long-standing marabouts who swore he would one day occupy the highest office in the land. Mr. Obi, too, sees the next poll as his last chance to make hay while the sun shines. The more detached former vice president is an electoral iconoclast who revels in breaking Nigeria’s rotational presidency formula. He has thus contested nearly every presidential election since 2003. The more hesitant Mr. Obi, on the other hand, will not dare contest in 2031 when power is expected to rotate back to the North. He could cock a snook at the Southwest; he does not have the stomach to bait the North. NigerianNews Updates
Secondly, Dr Lukman had surreptitiously inspired many traditional and social media reports to suggest that a deal between opposition leaders was in the offing, even tantalising the public that that purported deal lurked in the shadows, was kept strategically hidden, and was as good as certain. The often hyperbolic and quarrelsome Dr Lukman is accustomed to exaggerating hopes as he frequently hypes disagreements. But indications are that there may be no deal in sight as he insinuates. None; for the fact before the public is that both the ADC and NDC presidential candidates, unfortunately the only two opposition contestants with enough heft in the 2027 presidential poll, are very well set in their ways – rigid, ambitious, hifalutin, and wistful.
Except in Dr Lukman’s chessboard, neither man is minded to step down for the other. Most adversarial media analysts in the country and the opposition’s spiritual counsellors repose confidence in a supposed single-front deal, but for the 2027 voters, particularly opposition supporters, they are unlikely to get that united front reassurance.
Thirdly, should the presumptuous opposition leaders get their wish, and a deal is forged to present a common candidate, no matter how tentative, they will still have to contend with the cruellest dilemma of this election cycle in managing perceptions about, and sustaining the integrity and electability of, that single front. Should Alhaji Atiku step down – and there is not a cat in hell’s chance he would – there is absolutely nothing to suggest his supporters would flock behind the ephemeral Mr Obi. If as Anambra governor for eight years Mr. Obi drove a wedge between Catholics and Anglicans and lied about it and pretended it didn’t happen, and was even eager to drive a far more implacable wedge between Christians and Muslims during the 2023 poll, and has again lied that his declaration of war statement was the abominable contrivance of his enemies, he would be overly optimistic to expect that the North would unquestioningly rally behind his stained banner. The northern electorate may sometimes act irrationally, violently, and insularly, but they are not so foolish as not to recognise their haters.
And should Mr. Obi step down for Alhaji Atiku, which the ADC romantics hope he would do, the considerably shrunken support base of the NDC candidate, regardless of the political sagacity of his chief backers such as former president Olusegun Obasanjo and Cardinal Onaiyekan, would not necessarily all rally behind the former vice president. They would be hurt that their champion, for whom they had alienated the civilised world, had betrayed their fanatical loyalty, but they won’t head in the same direction as the Gadarene swine. It is true that most of Mr Obi’s supporters resent President Bola Tinubu, and by implication the Southwest, but they are unlikely to draw a neat dividing line between candidate Atiku and President Tinubu. For the Obi supporters, should their man drop out, it would be a struggle between voting for one of two Muslims on the one hand and voter apathy on the other hand. What is certain overall is that neither Alhaji Atiku nor Mr. Obi would inherit the entirety of the votes and supporters of whoever dropped out.
This is indeed a testy time for the opposition. They are damned if they go into the elections united, and damned much more if they go divided. Their supporters will, therefore, hedge their bets by staking their reputations and image to wage an honourable electoral war. They suspect they would lose either individually or in combination, and reason that it is far better to lose gallantly with their reputations intact or die in harness if drinking hemlock became unavoidable. It is significant that the opposition appears obsessed with only the presidential poll, just as they have virtually limited their campaigns to finding fault in, and casting aspersions on, the person of President Tinubu. Their electoral logic is that the presidential contest is like a domino: win it and every other election might follow to their advantage; or lose it, and the consequences would be both punishing and encompassing.
