JOSHUA J. OMOJUWA argues that the main opposition is yet a unified whole
There is something almost theatrical about watching two experienced politicians sit separately with the same interviewer on consecutive days, answer largely the same questions about the same party and the same presidential ambition, and arrive at conclusions that are entirely incompatible with each other. Charles Aniagolu is a good enough interviewer to have drawn the best out of both men. What the interviews revealed is that the best of both men, in the same political space, may not have offered enough to sway the neutral and certainly appeared on a collision course. That said, we got some clarity on a few things. Not least, Atiku’s last dance is on the horizon, if he sticks to what he said during the interview.
Atiku Abubakar was direct on Arise TV. “This will be my last shot…the stakes are higher, because I believe that would be my last chance.” There is something clarifying about a man who has contested the presidency more times than most Nigerians have changed phones finally saying out loud what everyone already knew; that 2027 is the end of the road, one way or another. It strips away the pretence of strategic ambiguity and replaces it with something more useful: urgency. Whether that urgency translates into the kind of campaign that can actually unseat an incumbent is a different question. With that incumbent being a Bola Ahmed Tinubu, even more stark.
Peter Obi, on his part, has not changed his mind. He remains committed bur conspicuously light on specifics about how he intends to secure a presidential ticket in a party whose structure Atiku entered first, built most deliberately, and is not vacating. When Aniagolu asked him directly whether he could realistically secure the ADC ticket given Atiku’s presence, and whether he would step aside for a stronger coalition candidate if he could not, the answer that followed was more revealing for what it avoided than for what it said. Obi is not stepping aside. He has never stepped aside. Stepping aside is not in his political vocabulary and his supporters would not permit it even if it were. They run his show.
Which brings us to the crux of the matter.
Atiku has been equally unambiguous. “No one is stepping down,” he declared in January, adding that if anyone should step aside, it should be President Tinubu, whom he described as “a national liability.” That line played well on social media amidst his supporters but it did nothing to resolve the fundamental tension inside the ADC. Two men who both believe they should be president, operating inside the same party, with primary elections that will inevitably surface the tensions they are currently managing with careful language and public diplomacy. It’s a collision course.
The ADC held its National Convention on Tuesday, April 14, in Abuja, with delegates announcing new leadership under David Mark and expelling factional rivals. The presence of Atiku, Obi, Amaechi and Kwankwaso at the same event fuelled intensifying speculation about possible ticket combinations. The speculation is understandable. The arithmetic that produces a winning opposition ticket in Nigeria; Northern Muslim, Southern Christian, structural depth, popular appeal and it is not complicated on paper. An Atiku-Obi/Atiku-Amaechi or Obi-Kwankwaso combination solves at least part of it. The problem is that the people whose names appear in those combinations have their own views about which name goes first, and those views are not converging.
The ADC’s own spokesperson, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, acknowledged as much late last year, describing the unresolved dynamic between Atiku and Obi as “a conundrum” and “a challenge” that the party is “concerned about.” Read that again slowly. And he is right. It is looking like an ‘all or nothing’ situation over there.
The deeper issue is structural. The ADC was not built from the ground up as a coherent ideological project. It was assembled as a coalition of convenience, with prominent figures from multiple parties, multiple ambitions, united primarily by the desire to remove President Tinubu from office. That is not an illegitimate political objective. But it is a notoriously unstable foundation for a party that must survive a contested primary, manage the expectations of millions of supporters across geopolitical zones, and then mount a genuinely competitive national campaign against an incumbent with ample resources, a functioning party machine, and the advantage of having already won once and never himself lost an election. Those who underplay the challenge are either deluding themselves or pretending to be asleep.
My egbon, Chief Dele Momodu, himself an ADC chieftain, put it plainly in March: “Nobody owns the party, not Atiku, not Obi or others. My advice to ADC is that time is not on our side.” Chief Momodu has contested twice. He knows what a presidential campaign actually requires. His warning about time is not rhetorical because the logistics of running a credible national campaign, building ward-level structures in thirty-six states and the FCT, training agents, funding operations, and developing a policy platform that can survive scrutiny require lead time that is now measurable in only months.
None of that work gets done while the two most prominent figures in the party are busy managing their competing ambitions through carefully worded statements and separate television interviews.
What Nigeria’s opposition needs from the ADC is not another demonstration that prominent politicians can share a stage and avoid directly attacking each other. It is a decision. A single candidate with a clear mandate from a credible process, a running mate who adds genuine electoral value rather than simply balancing a spreadsheet, and a campaign that tells Nigerians not what is wrong with the current administration but what would specifically be different under a new one. Atiku was served an alley-oop here by Aniagolu, but he missed the basket. Obi has never been strong on specifics.
Atiku has declared his last shot whilst Obi declared his intention to go the full haul. Legal issues or not, the ADC has held its convention. Amidst everything we saw this week from the opposition, one thing was missing. A convergent plan, whether for the ADC or for the country.
Omojuwa is chief strategist, Alpha Reach/BGX Publishing
Leave a comment