The combined opposition parties seeking to unseat President Bola Tinubu in the 2027 presidential election are merely displaying the usual reflex of our political culture. Hardly has any presidential election taken place in Nigeria’s history without attempts being made by the combined opposition to try this old trick, especially against an incumbent president seeking re-election. They all failed: in 1983 against President Shehu Shagari, in 2003 against President Olusegun Obasanjo, and in 2011 against President Goodluck Jonathan.
But in 2015, the All Progressives Congress (APC) became the first opposition party to crack the code, defeat an incumbent president, and take over power. If we look at what is on ground today, four months to the presidential elections, and what obtained at the same period in 2015, we’ll find that the current opposition community is far from it. Between 2013 and 2015, the parties that collapsed into the APC, and their leaderships, made unprecedented sacrifices. Bola Ahmed Tinubu, leader of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) with six South-West states plus Edo, was willing to dissolve his party into Muhammadu Buhari’s Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) to form a brand-new political party, along with other smaller political interests.
