2027: Splintered opposition is Tinubu Presidency, by Jack Okude

If you consider that presidential elections in Nigeria are not won by localised votes along ethnic and religious divides, you will be spared the trauma of having to figure out who takes the cake in the 2027 Presidential election. Tinubu will.

Just wondering. Why is there a debate about who will win the 2027 Presidential election? It is no brainer. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu will trounce all the splintered opposition candidates by a very wide margin. Each time I hear some people argue on this matter, I shudder at the gross lack of political acuity among some Nigerians.

For whatever reason, the same opposition that has been holding midnight meetings, organising conferences, and strategising at hurriedly arranged townhall meetings, has fallen apart. Splintered. Disintegrated. Dismembered. Like a pack of cards, the opposition has crashed with a heavy thud, and fragmented into shards of localised hegemonies. And if you consider that presidential elections in Nigeria are not won by localised votes along ethnic and religious divides, you will be spared the trauma of having to figure out who takes the cake in the 2027 Presidential election. Tinubu will.

At the moment, Tinubu is contesting against about 10 opposition candidates. Even for the purpose of realistic expectation, we apply a filter and reduce the crowd of opposition Presidential candidates to just five, it still does not appear, both mathematically and logically, that the opposition in their present state will pose any challenge. A divided camp, army, politicians, family or any group for that matter, cannot run over the enemy in a contest. Be it election, real war, or just an inter-school contest, lack of unity in one camp becomes the chink in that camp’s armour. Disunity is the chink in the armour of the opposition. And this counts in Tinubu’s advantage.

This is the current situation that the opposition now find themselves. They could not subsume their fat ego under the core duty of service to the people. Every man with his bloated ego and self-conceit came to the opposition discussion table. Ego, especially the type laced with as much as a tinge of delusion of grandeur, is the cheapest catalyst to self-destruct.  Under this circumstance, nobody yields an inch; no compromise. Every man wants it his own way. Yet, politics is about compromises, about give and take. Politics is not rigid, not in Europe, Asia or anywhere in the world. In politics, you do not only trade ideas, you trade places and positions. Such flexibility is what makes politics dynamic and evolutionary.

Back to the opposition. They could not come to a compromise. They could not trade positions or places. They came negotiating like traders in a fixed price market. They were blinded by their ego. Hardened by their bloated self-importance. At a time, they were even bickering among themselves; throwing jabs at one another and dissipating energy before the contest. Pumped up by their individual elephant-size ego and unwilling to concede to any but their individual selves, they did not just walk away from the negotiation table, they broke it to smithereens. At the moment, there is no table to hold talks; no meeting place or point. Each man to his own tent. Each to his own party. Some opposition parties even have factions, a typical house divided against itself. The implication of the ego-driven division among the opposition is clear: They have become too weak to win. They have grown too lean to make a big nationwide impression.

On both face value and merit, President Tinubu will win in 2027. His performance in infrastructure, agriculture, economic revamp, human capital development, healthcare delivery, education, and social welfare is enough to deliver electoral victory. Under Tinubu, the Nigerian security apparatchik established a collaborative synergy with the United States military. This is a great leap forward in the fight against insecurity especially considering that sometime in the past, the same United States refrained from collaborating with Nigeria, including selling military hardware to the Nigerian government.

But it has to be said. Tinubu is a lucky man. Fortune favours him. Not only because of his raw audacity to dare as they say, ‘fortune favours the brave’, but more because there seems to be an invisible hand fighting on his behalf. When he was to contest for the presidential ticket of his party, APC, huddles and spikes were thrown in his path. He scaled them. And ahead of the 2023 Presidential election, more challenges crept from different directions. There was a curiously contrived cash squeeze that created a higher level of suffering among the citizenry. Here again, Tinubu triumphed. And when the opposition gained momentum in their collective bid to oust him during the 2027 election cycle, something happened to Tinubu’s advantage. The coalition of opposition parties and men, by their own burden of diversity – religious, ethnic and unvarnished egotism – fell apart; splitting into micro units each with its own vainglorious ambition.  The disintegration of the once-united opposition was full of bad faith such that within the opposition family, other variants of opposition arose to oppose and challenge the verities of the bigger opposition. A case of opposition opposing opposition. Something akin to “wahala for dead body and the owner of dead body”, apologies to transcendental Fela Anikulapo Kuti.

Whether it happened by design or default, the current splintered opposition cannot challenge Tinubu in 2027. A divided opposition cannot overawe an incumbent President with over 30 governors out of 36 working for him. Add to that, the minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, who is a die-hard Tinubu man, though officially in an opposition party. He has also openly declared his support for the President. The last FCT council election has set the tone for the outcome of 2027 election. The prognosis is clear: Where Tinubu lost in 2023, he is primed to win in 2027, and that by very wide margin.

The fate of the opposition is doomed before the contest. They have succeeded in balkanising themselves into micro groups. Truth be told, the auguries are gloomy for the opposition. And it’s not the fault of anybody but the opposition politicians themselves. They became fractured under the weight of their own conceit. This is what happens when the motive to win election is not to serve the people but for self-aggrandisement; for selfish ego trip not for selfless public service. The selfish character manifested and still being demonstrated by the opposition should be enough red flag to Nigerians. The opposition should be individually and collectively rejected.

• Okude, a public policy analyst, writes from Abuja