I marvel at people who say the opposition will unseat President Tinubu in 2027. Wake up and smell the coffee. You are engaging in wishful thinking rather than political arithmetic. Just look at the main movers in each major opposition party.
I will start with the New Nigeria Peoples Party. Buba Galadima, a key mobiliser and leader of the party, was just on AIT, waxing lyrical about President Tinubu.
He all but told Nigerians that the President is the next best thing after sliced bread, describing the President as very approachable, unlike his successor, and one who is loyal to his friends. And then he capped it up with an anecdote about the President personally helping out his family in a way that his predecessor never did.
Is that the man you expect to work against President Tinubu’s reelection in 2027? If that is your thinking, then I salute your naïveté.
Then there is the Labour Party. Not only is that party at war with itself with the Abure faction at daggers drawn with the Obi/Otti wing, by the Supreme Court decision ousting Abure as the party Chairman, the coast appears clear the return of the other factional leader, Lamidi Apapa, to that coveted seat.
That much is evident because even Obi and Otti had to go begging CSO in hand for the Independent National Electoral Commission to make my friend, Senator Nenadi Usman, the chair. As a political vehicle, the Labour Party is more or less dead.
In the Peoples Democratic Party, Nyesom Wike has demonstrated that he is a force to be reckoned with. He has very publicly stated that that energy will be channelled into President Tinubu’s reelection.
This leads me to Nasir el-Rufai and his pipe dream of unseating President Tinubu from his fourth political party since 1999- the Social Democratic Party.
Let me now break down how futile his efforts will be.
First of all, Nasir el-Rufai has never won any election without the backing of General Buhari. That is an indisputable fact, which he admitted in a moment of candour or perhaps suffering from a Freudian slip.
And two weeks ago, General Buhari issued a public disclaimer against Mr. el-Rufai, affirming his loyalty to President Tinubu and the All Progressives Congress.
Secondly, his position within the party is shaky, as those he met there, including the Kaduna State chapter of the SDP, have rejected him.
Thirdly, there is the math. While General Buhari helped him to be elected in 2015 and 2019, the first election he faced without Buhari’s help was 2023, and it was a total disaster for him.
He lost the presidential election and only narrowly won the gubernatorial election for his anointed candidate with 11,000 votes. While Senator Uba Sani polled a total of 730,002 votes, his PDP rival, Isa Ashiru, secured 719,196 votes.
That is one of the slimmest wins in Nigeria’s gubernatorial election history. But there’s more.
The APC lost all three Senatorial seats in Kaduna to the PDP. Additionally, the PDP won ten seats out of a total of 16 seats for the House of Representatives in the state, while the Labour Party won two, leaving only four seats for the APC.
So, if, as an incumbent Governor, Malam Nasir el-Rufai performed so shabbily and lousily, why would anyone think that he can unseat President Tinubu as a politically castrated former Governor who is fighting the incumbent Governor of his state?
Moreover, he is intensely disliked by ALL current and immediate former Governors in his geopolitical zone, where he is viewed as a meddlesome interloper.
Nasir el-Rufai can’t unseat a Local Government Chairman in Kaduna, talk more of President Tinubu.
