The presidential candidates of these parties have gone through the nomination processes of their parties and won. Many see themselves already as presidents in waiting. It is difficult for them to step down for one person. The problem in Nigeria is that political power is so concentrated in the presidency that no ambitious person at that level can feel adequately compensated by anything other than the top job. Some of the candidates are old and believe this is their last chance to fulfil their political ambition. The feasibility question is a tough one for the opposition to solve.
The ruling APC knows something about how opposition parties can come together, overcome their differences, create synergy around a single candidate, mobilise and defeat an incumbent president. They know the process very well because they did this between 2013 and 2015, when they came together, negotiated, agreed on how the candidate would emerge, and then went ahead to agree on a consensus candidate. The said candidate, Muhammadu Buhari, was in a sense an easy candidate to agree on, because the other leading contenders could see possibilities for themselves in the post-Buhari era. The outcome of the consensus position that emerged was that for the first time in the history of this country, a sitting president was defeated at the polls and he handed over power peacefully in 2015. Precisely because they know the script, the APC is not going to sit and watch what it did to others be done to it.
There was therefore no surprise with the alarm, indeed panic, within the APC in June 2025 when the platform of the opposition coalition, the African Democratic Congress (ADC), was to be launched. A few hours before the event, the organisers got a rude shock when the hotel they were to use abruptly cancelled a fully paid reservation. The Wells Carlton Hotel and Apartments in Asokoro, Abuja, said they had to cancel the event due to an unspecified “internal compliance matter.” The very late cancellation could only have meant some powerful people wanted to stop the inauguration of the coalition because they were afraid.
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On numerous occasions before that time, the then major opposition, the Peoples Democratic Party, had been under sustained state sponsored harassment. The judicial machinery was effectively used by friends of the presidency to create legal impediments to party operations through the instrumentalisation of factionalism. In addition, the Nigeria Police Force was used to stop Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) meetings or occupy their offices. It was essentially the concern of opposition parties that the government was crossing red lines in interfering with opposition structures, which created the impetus for unity and the establishment of the ADC.
The greatest challenge to a unified opposition party is not the antics of the ruling party. It is the fact that many of the leaders of the opposition parties have presidential ambitions themselves and are not ready to step down for anyone. The emergence of a consensus candidate becomes impossible and the coalition then tends to breaks down. That scenario has been played repeatedly in Nigeria’s political history.
The Tinubu political strategy since 2023 has been to apply slash-and-absorb tactics to opposition parties by actively encouraging factional crises within them and enticing key members to abandon ship and join the ruling party. This was not a sustainable tactic because there are limited positions within the ruling party, and giving the new entrants many goodies would mean depriving those within the party of these, which would become a crisis generating mechanism for the ruling party itself. This was indeed the context that encouraged opposition parties to strategise towards the establishment of a unified mega opposition platform, the African Democratic Congress (ADC), to face the APC in the 2027 elections. By making opposition parties ungovernable, the ruling party has created the need within them to opt out and seek unity in another platform.
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The greatest challenge to a unified opposition party is not the antics of the ruling party. It is the fact that many of the leaders of the opposition parties have presidential ambitions themselves and are not ready to step down for anyone. The emergence of a consensus candidate becomes impossible and the coalition then tends to breaks down. That scenario has been played repeatedly in Nigeria’s political history. APC, in 2015, was the exception, rather than the rule. It was no surprise when one of the hopefuls for the presidential candidate of the coalition, Peter Obi, stepped out and joined the NDC. Other opposition parties believed it was wiser to try their luck separately. The coalition lost its strength by removing the threat of a unified front against the sitting president. The story had come to the end.
But then, my good friend and political mobiliser, Dr Salihu Lukman never gives up on a good idea. He decided to resuscitate the coalition movement by setting up the group of 100 to revive the idea. This week, they convened the National Chairmen, presidential and vice-presidential candidates of the leading opposition parties – the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Allied Peoples Movement (APM), Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) and Social Democratic Party (SDP) – to revive the idea of a unified coalition. Salihu warned them that they must avoid the errors of 2003, 2007 and 2011, when the opposition went into elections divided and the ruling party found it easy to come out victorious. He reminded them that in 2023, the winning APC had just under nine million votes. One opposition candidate took close to seven million. Another took just over six million. Thirteen million votes on one side of the argument, under nine million on the other. And the side with fewer votes formed the government, lawfully, constitutionally, and entirely predictably.
In Kenya in 2002, a party that had governed for thirty-nine years was removed, not by a new idea, but by an opposition that finally agreed to be one. In Malaysia in 2018, a coalition that had governed for sixty-one years was removed in much the same way, by people who had been each other’s prosecutors and each other’s prisoners. In neither case did the opposition win because it had become more virtuous. It won because it had become one.
He added that it was not only a Nigerian lesson. In Kenya in 2002, a party that had governed for thirty-nine years was removed, not by a new idea, but by an opposition that finally agreed to be one. In Malaysia in 2018, a coalition that had governed for sixty-one years was removed in much the same way, by people who had been each other’s prosecutors and each other’s prisoners. In neither case did the opposition win because it had become more virtuous. It won because it had become one. The lesson, he concluded, was not a moral one, it is an arithmetical one. Will they listen to him? More importantly, can they act on good advice?
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The presidential candidates of these parties have gone through the nomination processes of their parties and won. Many see themselves already as presidents in waiting. It is difficult for them to step down for one person. The problem in Nigeria is that political power is so concentrated in the presidency that no ambitious person at that level can feel adequately compensated by anything other than the top job. Some of the candidates are old and believe this is their last chance to fulfil their political ambition. The feasibility question is a tough one for the opposition to solve.
A professor of Political Science and development consultant/expert, Jibrin Ibrahim is a Senior Fellow of the Centre for Democracy and Development, and Chair of the Editorial Board of PREMIUM TIMES.
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