2027 polls: How Tinubu’s long reach unsettling opposition

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s grip on the political landscape and strategy of absorption ahead of the 2027 polls has sent confusion into the camps of opposition parties. KEHINDE OSASONA, in this report, examines the incredible strategy.

With only a few months to the 2027 general elections, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) are already shaping the political firmament of the country.

Investigations by this reporter have revealed that the president may have adopted the strategy to nail a final coffin on the opposition onslaught ahead of the 2027 polls.

Blueprint Weekend also gathered that without the usual campaign posters and carnival usually associated with previous elections, the president’s reach is felt across the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Labour Party (LP), Accord Party, All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), and the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP).

With defections by governors and lawmakers, including opposition leaders, and the subsequent endorsement of the president, political commentators and analysts are wondering if the new move is merely a political strategy, incumbency power, or a return to the old art of co-option.

While deconstructing the dynamics in the political sphere, the analysts say the long-time tactician from Lagos is no doubt unsettling the opposition before the actual contest begins.

The opposition’s dilemma

In Nigerian politics, there are politicians who wait for the whistle, and there are those who blow the whistle by themselves. 

As soon as the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) lifted the ban on campaigns for 2027 in August this year, the game took a leap in places like Abuja, Lagos, Kano, Enugu, and Port Harcourt. From Alliance for Democracy in 1999, to Action Congress, to ACN, to APC Tinubu has survived every opposition merger and every ruling party collapse for 25 years. Analysts say his politics has never been about noise, but about reach.

In the last 12 months alone, his party, the APC, has received several federal lawmakers, sitting governors, and a couple of state assembly members from the opposition parties.

Take the PDP, for instance; the party that ruled the country for 16 years is today a shadow of itself. Two factions have continued to lay claim to its national secretariat at Wadata Plaza. 

While Nyesom Wike, a PDP member, yet a minister serving in the APC government, still controls the soul of the party, a senior advocate, Tanimu Turaki, and other old horses from the party are still holding on to what remains of the party after the highest court in the land stripped the faction of what is left of it.

The last straw that broke the camel’s back was the nullification of its much-touted national convention in Ibadan; a situation that threw the party into total confusion that it is yet to recover from.

Days after, its governors’ forum split, the question afterwards has been: who benefits? Not Atiku. Not Obi. The beneficiary is the man in Aso Rock watching his political enemies fight themselves.

In the Labour Party, the story is similar. The party that gave Peter Obi 6.1 million votes in 2023 is now in three pieces. Not only that, the party is still in court over intra-party wrangling.

There is the Julius Abure faction, the Lamidi Apapa faction, and the Obi’s Obidient movement operating independently before they eventually ported to the Nigeria Democratic Party (NDC) to pitch their tent with Obi, their principal.

What played out a few months ago, when National Assembly members who won on LP tickets defected to the APC, made one of the party’s members to confess thus: “We have no structure in Abuja. The Presidency has structures everywhere.”

The NNPP is not spared either. Kano, its only state, is in a court battling over emirship and governorship legitimacy.

After its national leader, Senator Rabiu Kwankwaso, and Governor Abba Yusuf parted ways, Kwakwanso ran to the NDC to grab a running mate ticket in Obi’s party.

The move, which analysts have since described as a “political masterstroke” ahead the 2031 political battle, is expected to be tested when power is expected to shift to the North.

2027 and the politicking

Unlike the late former President Muhammadu Buhari, who fought opposition, Tinubu absorbs them. He invites them for dinner, offers a soft landing, ministerial slots, and board appointments. In the last few months, a lot of them have made private visits to Bourdillon in Lagos, Aso Villa in Abuja, France, in last six months, to either pay political homage or cement existing relationships ahead of 2027.

An APC chieftain put it bluntly, “Tinubu is stooping to conquer and his strategy has not only stabilised the party, it is also working for him. He knows what he wants and the right strategy to deploy.

“Although the party is not without its own challenges, it appears the situation is under control when compared with other parties waiting to upstage us.”

In an exclusive chat, a political commentator, Kolade Suraju, described Tinubu as the “only politician who has started 2027 mobilisation openly.”

“His men and core loyalists are everywhere inaugurating ward structures, reconciling aggrieved APC members, while the opposition is still arguing over coalitions,” he said.

A stalwart of one of the main opposition parties who asked not to be named in print, said: “Tinubu has no opposition. He has spectators. But if you ask me, I will say it is dangerous for democracy.”

But countering, a Labour Party senior member said: “It is not Tinubu that is strong. It is the opposition that is weak. After the 2023 loss, we went to sleep. Obi went to the courts, Atiku went to Dubai, and Kwankwaso went to Kano. Tinubu went to work. Politics does not wait.”

Giving a stern warning, some political commentators have warned against drifting towards a one-party state, like what the country witnessed under Former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s second term when AD and ANPP collapsed, saying “if every politician is in APC, who will check APC?”

Obasanjo, it would be recalled, swallowed AD governors and won 28 states. 

In 2007 and 2015, former President Goodluck Jonathan attempted the same move to absorb opposition, but it failed because the APC merger was ideologically stronger than PDP’s patronage.

According to keen watchers of the nation’s political firmament, for now, the scoreboard is clear, and Tinubu’s long reach has destabilised the opposition.

In the words of Tirimisiyu Habideen, another political analyst, Tinubu, has done his homework very well.

“In the quiet of Aso Villa, the old tactician from Bourdillon is watching and smiling. The opposition, on the other hand, is unsettled. And that is exactly how he wants it,” Habideen said.