Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, former governor of Anambra State, Peter Obi and former governor of Kano State, Rabiu Kwankwaso have been urged to tame their presidential ambitions and focus more on building a viable political party that can unseat President Bola Tinubu and the All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2027.
Atiku, Obi and Kwankwaso were candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Labour Party (LP) and All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), respectively, in the 203 presidential elections, which they all lost to Tinubu.
A former National Vice Chairman (Northwest) of the APC, Dr Salihu Lukman, made the call on Sunday amid ongoing discussions by the trio and other politicians to form a strong coalition to challenge Tinubu in 2027.
However, Lukman, in a statement on Sunday, observed that Atiku, Obi, Kwankwaso and others in the alliance talks, are only focused on playing up the North/South dichotomy to get the presidential ticket of the envisaged party, rather than helping to build a viable political party that is governed by rules.
According to him, “The discomforting reality is that while all opposition and displaced politicians agree on the need to work together to defeat the APC and President Tinubu, many want to do so on the conditions that they will emerge as the successor to President Tinubu.
“The question of building a functional party that can have the capacity of subordinating them is never part of their consideration. Instead, the same issues about North/South permutations are the focus. Across the North/South divide, many of the leading politicians, especially those with ambitions, both expressed and implied, use the issue of where the most likely candidate will come from as the primary consideration.
“The worrying reality is that many of these opposition and displaced politicians with ambitions are highly complicit and have little or no evidential credentials of emerging as better political leaders. Based on laypersons’ legal knowledge, many of these politicians would be adjudged to be accessories, whether before or after, our current political travesty.
“Given their records of service, they are most likely to be worse than former Presidents Goodluck Jonathan, Muhammadu Buhari and now President Tinubu. Based on their records, they exhibit intolerant dispositions and poor relationships on accounts of which they have mismanaged their transitions and are today hardly in control of political structures in their states.
“Some of them, on account of their influential roles in past administrations and the failures of those administrations, should be humble enough to take a backseat in an effort to build a strong coalition to strengthen Nigerian politics. Instead, it is more like a case of an unrepentant show of shame.
“Once that remains the case, it should be clear to all that even when opposition and displaced politicians unite to defeat APC and President Tinubu in 2027, the country may end up with another bad, if not worse, leader. Given that in terms of guaranteeing political competition, the situation we are confronting as a nation today is worse than what we had in 2015. We must summon the courage to go beyond the sentiment of just defeating APC and President Tinubu in 2027.”
Lukman emphasised that permutations for 2027 must address the big challenge of what must be done to ensure that whoever emerges as President in 2027 must work towards meeting the expectations of citizens.
He noted that the teeming population of masses from the Southwest and Northwest where former Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Muhammadu Buhari hailed from, had nothing to show for having them as president, asking, “What has the Southwest got to show for having Tinubu as president.”
“Even in the context of power shift, what use is power shift to any region if in the end citizens of the same region where the President comes from are shortchanged? What has South-West got to show for the tenure of former President Olusegun Obasanjo? What has South-South got to show for the tenure of former President Jonathan? The same could be said in relation to the North and the tenure of both former Presidents Umaru Yar’Adua and Buhari.
“What will be different if another President emerged whether from the North or South in 2027 to succeed President Tinubu? Many of us are engaging in these issues with the objective of changing the reality of our democracy. Of course, we must also acknowledge that many leading opposition and displaced politicians are engaging the issues with the old mindset of power grab.
“So long as that is the case, we may succeed in producing a new party and end up with a dysfunctional party, which will be reduced to being a platform for aspiring candidates. The first indicator will be that the new party will be handed to preferred aspirants who will proceed to appoint leaders of the party and emerge as candidates for 2027.
“Already, one of the tendencies among the displaced politicians, which is closely associated with former President Buhari, is working to impose itself as the leader of the new opposition party. That tendency is already syndicating media reports about the new party. Painfully, the tendency lacks the needed humility to have the required self-appreciation and recognition of its poor electoral prospects.
“Some of the opposition and displaced leaders are also similarly restlessly positioning themselves to control any emerging party that could be the platform for the contest against APC and President Tinubu without humbly recognising their poor electoral prospects.”
Lukman doubted if Atiku, Obi, Kwankwaso and other opposition figures could be magnanimous enough to sacrifice their personal ambitions for the stability of any political party that may emerge from their ongoing discussions.
According to him, President Tinubu and former President Buhari only used the platform of the APC to achieve their personal ambitions of becoming president, stressing that the two leaders exhibit anti-democratic tendencies
“Inability to make sacrifices reduces many political leaders in Nigeria to the status of former President Buhari and President Tinubu. It is not by accident that neither former President Buhari nor President Tinubu considered it important to lead the APC in 2015 and subordinated the party to only serving their ambitions to become Presidents of the Federal Republic.
“Now that they have achieved their ambitions, they have exhibited their true undemocratic credentials and have taken the APC to its political grave. The big challenge is whether the funeral rites of APC in 2027 will be reduced to a celebration of new leaders with similar credentials.”
