The Nation Newspaper

Category: Idowu Akinlotan

Sights and sounds of the Buhari burial

It is hard to miss the scores of anecdotes that came out of the Muhammadu Buhari burial rites, which the mainstream media either glossed over or buried in the bowels of their paragraphs. Three of the anecdotes deserve special mention. The first one came innocuously from Katsina State governor Dikko Radda. He recollected an interaction he had with the late former president over the fuel subsidy controversy. According to the governor, the former president had remarked with uncommon candour: “I pity Bola (President Tinubu) for what he is doing. He is a brave man for removing the fuel subsidy. When I was president, whenever I made an attempt to remove the subsidy, a lot of people would give me too many reasons not to do so. But Bola did it immediately. If he had consulted people, he could not have removed the fuel subsidy…” Nor could former vice president Atiku Abubakar and former Anambra governor Peter Obi, both of whom ran for the presidency and pontificated insincerely on what they would have done differently about the subsidy.

The second anecdote was a Freudian slip from former head of state Abdulsalami Abubakar while paying a condolence visit to the Buharis in their London residence. Said he while recounting his relationship with the late president: “My relationship with Buhari dates back to as far back as 1962; we joined the military, and he was my senior. During the unfortunate civil war, we fought in the same sector. Buhari is a gentle man who is very quiet but exceptionally honest.” Gen. Abubakar of course meant to praise ex-president Buhari, but he managed to cast doubt on the true age of the departed leader, a constant dubiety among Nigerian leaders, judges, and footballers. Gen. Abubakar himself is officially 83 years old, so how at death could his senior be younger than he is? Of course, according to some sources, the late president was about 89 years old. After all, former president Olusegun Obasanjo is over 91 years old, though he claims to be 88, much younger than those who called him egbon (senior).

Read Also: What Nigeria’s New Betting License Means for Everyday Players

The third interesting titbit, but a little more disturbing, came from one of the late president’s former longtime associates, Buba Galadima, an engineer and fiery politician. He stated categorically that he and others recruited the late president into politics for nefarious and sectional reasons. Hear him: “General Buhari came into politics; it wasn’t his province. He never liked politicians because he believed we are fake and that we don’t mean what we say, but there was an incident that made some of us to recruit him, convince him, and use other people to convince him to join politics, even though we had our own agenda…To cut a long story short, we achieved our first purpose of putting a brake to what OPC was doing because immediately Buhari joined partisan politics, we had a very big outing in Daura to initiate him into politics. The Obasanjo government became restive and was shaking to its bone marrow and because those were some of our thinking, Obasanjo had to really checkmate the OPC. So we achieved our first purpose of bringing General Buhari into partisan politics.” In other words, the late Buhari, perhaps unknown to him, was dragged into politics to help checkmate the Odua People’s Congress (OPC) militancy.

July 20, 2025
Adeleke, Aregbesola: opportunism trumps alliance

On the eve of Osun State’s July 2022 governorship election, former governor Rauf Aregbesola’s faction of the All Progressives Congress (APC) declared that its members would remain progressives. The Osun Progressives (TOP), as they became known, neither confirmed nor denied whom they would support, Ademola Adeleke, candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), or Gboyega Oyetola, the incumbent. Mr Aregbesola’s supporters, who had endured a bitter falling out with the APC’s Mr Oyetola, were noncommittal. They eventually worked for the ‘enemy’ in order to prove that alienating their leader could be catastrophic. Two days after clinching a decisive victory, Governor Adeleke confirmed on television that Mr Aregbesola’s men worked for his victory. By insinuations and public demonstrations, the former Internal Affairs minister proved to Osun and Nigerians that he was indeed pivotal to the outcome of that July 16, 2022 poll.

That tentative alliance built on shaky foundations and subterfuge has finally collapsed. It was not an ideological alliance, for Mr Aregbesola is a pretentious socialist, and Mr Adeleke a hybrid conservative. It was also not founded on any firm convictions, for neither of the two leaders had ever demonstrated adherence to principles. Governor Adeleke is carefree and indifferent to ideas of any kind, and Mr Aregbesola is a bitter and vexatious politician who would seize upon any weapon or idea, no matter how contradictory, to execute his plans and overthrow his enemies. It was also not an alliance founded on anything enduring. Except to the excitable Mr Aregbesola, every other person in and outside Osun State knew that Mr Adeleke, as superficial as he seemed, was unsettled by his alliance partner’s politics. However, like every tactical politician, Mr Adeleke sensibly took advantage of a partner’s treachery, but recognised he would have to be on his guards against a newfound friend for whom betrayal was effortless.

The governor’s fears have finally been proved right. His former partner has sworn to oust him from the State House in next year’s governorship election. Arriving back home in Osun last week to advertise his new political affiliations, the former governor, who is also the Interim National Secretary of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), had scorned Mr Adeleke’s political moves and promised that the ADC, which is the fulcrum of the Atiku Abubakar-led mega-coalition to unseat President Bola Tinubu, would take over Osun in 2026. He had declared: “Those who know my value and worth gave me this new position, and now they (APC and PDP) are making noise. Their noise doesn’t concern me — they haven’t seen anything yet…Before we started this journey, they said there would be three political parties in Osun State. It is obvious he (Adeleke) is decamping now. We will meet in Abere — ADC will win the Osun governorship race in 2026.”

Cut to the quick, Mr Adeleke unleashed a verbal fusillade at the former governor. Speaking through his spokesman, Olawale Rasheed, the governor said: (Mr Aregbesola) is “a man who left a legacy of huge state debt, half salary, scam tablets, and several fanciful, inflated, and uncompleted projects…(His tenure was) the worst in Osun history…The empty boast of Mr Aregbesola about 2026 is a symptom of a troubled mind who sees wrong vision, who is battling his benefactor, and who is haunted by the pains and suffering he inflicted on millions of Osun people through his evil policies and programmes. A man who should be remorseful and tender public apologies for his years of maladministration has the audacity to threaten Governor Adeleke who is clearing the mess left behind by Mr Aregbesola after his eight years of anti-people, thoughtless leadership…Mr Aregbesola’s wickedness against workers, public servants, and Osun people knows no bounds while he wielded state power. A man who introduced half salary, misapplied contributory state pension fund, and misused state cooperative deductions fund should be ashamed of his temerity to attack a Governor who is now paying up the half salary affliction, clearing the unjustified debt and rehabilitating brutalised Osun workers…The Adeleke administration has paid 28 months out of the half salary left behind by Mr Aregbesola…”

Read Also: ‘Buhari, Awujale left indelible marks on Nigeria’s history’

Few Osunites saw this sustained piece of invectives coming from the dancing governor whom many believed couldn’t hold a grudge. But the suspicion is that Mr Adeleke, once he settled down into governance and weighed the enormity of Mr Aregbesola’s maladministration, waited for years to ventilate his feelings on the sordid mess he met on ground. The former Internal Affairs minister, not one to let bad enough alone, and too cocky and self-entitled to moderate his emotions or anticipate a trap, gave the governor the opportunity to disembowel him. After exhaling in that fusillade, Mr Adeleke probably felt his burden suddenly lightened. He has not demonstrated inspiring capacity in governance, but he is certain that Mr Aregbesola, of all people, can’t hold a candle to him. The governor might conceivably allow himself to play second fiddle to any other governor or former governor, but never to the preening Mr Aregbesola.

Now that the opportunistic alliance in Osun has broken down irretrievably, Mr Adeleke can move on. He has insinuated he might be defecting to the APC, from whence he came in the first instance. But he is being resisted by APC housekeepers. If they can transcend their differences and kiss and make up, they will form a formidable pair. Mr Aregbesola has boasted about his invincibility; he is merely posturing. Neither he nor his supporters, nor yet the malformed and ambitious ADC, can stand before an APC into which the PDP in Osun has collapsed its structure. Fighting an incumbent electorally is not easy; fighting an incumbent who has migrated to the national ruling party would indeed be herculean. Not even the boastful and irascible Mr Aregbesola can pull a rabbit out of that Osun hat.

July 20, 2025
The obsession with unhorsing Tinubu

In the months to come, the recently berthed political coalition assembled to unseat President Tinubu will continue to make newspaper headlines. Their strategies are simple and two-pronged. One, they will seize upon the hunger and hardship among a section of the populace to define and dismiss the administration’s economic policies as ineffective and probably counterproductive. Two, they will focus on the president and his idiosyncrasies in order to cast him as unreliable, incompetent, controversial and untrustworthy. Given the abysmal level of education in the country, especially the general inability to understand economic policies, the coalition’s campaign will garner traction in the short run. The previous administration borrowed heavily to sustain a national system and lifestyle that had become untenable; the present administration has resisted the temptation to focus on the short run, preferring instead to focus on the painful medium to long run. Consequently, the political narrative regarding 2027 will be shaped more successfully in the short term by the coalition, regardless of their individual and collective lack of credibility.

The coalition may lack credibility, cohesion and direction, but like typical predators, their eyes are fixed, not on the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) per se, but on President Tinubu. They are obsessed with him, they fear him and his mystical capacity, they know they can’t match his tactical knowhow in politics, but they know that once they successfully discredit him, their job is done. For them, it is not about ideology or reform, or even about economic development in the real and general sense of the word. It is all about office, the office of the president. It is, therefore, the goal of capturing the presidency that is binding the coalition leaders together; and they know that one person, rather than a political structure, stands in their way. So far, the administration has countered the coalition’s nascent campaign by hoisting their economic achievements for all to see. But in the absence of a before-and-after analysis for the public to appreciate how close to disaster they were pre-2023, whatever those economic achievements are will seem tame in the face of hunger and inflation. To match the coalition’s agenda and discredit it, the administration will also have to turn the floodlights on the persons of the coalition leaders. Luckily for the administration, the coalition drivers are vulnerable.

It is not hard to understand why coalition leaders like Atiku Abubakar, Nasir el-Rufai, Peter Obi, Rotimi Amaechi, David Mark, Rauf Aregbesola are bitter against the president. Nor is it hard to see why the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) leg of the APC feels alienated. Nor, in line with the constant iteration of the northern narrative of power and office, is it hard to understand why the core North is incensed. Across all political parties, these individuals and groups and regions are united in their common detestation of President Tinubu. They give the impression that once the president can be dethroned, the country would breathe easier. However, observers must have noticed already that the coalition leaders and their chorus men seldom take issue with the Tinubu administration’s economic and social and even political policies. They know they won’t and indeed can’t change a thing beyond making cosmetic changes should they win the presidency. The policies are irreversible. They won’t reinstate fuel subsidy, they won’t enthrone lower electricity tariffs, they won’t abandon naira flotation policy, and they won’t roll back the plethora of oil industry, education, health, and agriculture policies. In their campaigns, they will mince words in discussing those policies and promising modifications. Nothing more. They will privately feel fortunate that the Tinubu administration has done the heavy lifting.

But despite all this, dangerous undercurrents exist, and a powerful political undertow is pulling the country in a direction likely to be too combustible to manage. Take the example of the coalition leaders, men and women who deprecate the style and policies of the president but can still reconcile their principles with straddling other parties. Up till yesterday, former vice president Abubakar was yet to resign from the PDP. Peter Obi was even more audacious about boastfully retaining his membership of the Labour Party (LP) while asserting his dalliance with the coalition now berthed in the African Democratic Congress (ADC). Most of the other coalition leaders imperturbably engage in running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. It tells everyone that the country is dealing with a pack of irrepressible and unscrupulous political leaders unconstrained by ethics or political rules. On the one hand, they ask the country to distrust the current administration, but on the other they dispense with and despise all legal, ethical and constitutional guardrails.

There is nothing wrong with cobbling a coalition to unseat any administration, for the APC also forged a merger to unseat the last administration. But none of the chest-thumping and self-asserting coalition leaders had a great political or democratic pedigree or was ever associated with inspiring managerial and administrative acumen. As ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo’s vice president, Alhaji Atiku’s record was abysmal, leading his boss to dismiss him in a withering testimonial. Mr Obi’s governorship was a perfect example of tedium, what with his adoption of stone-age economics to undergird his public finance policy. He recently told the media how he left a carefully choreographed amount of N12bn and $50m each in three banks for his successor in Anambra. He said nothing about the debts he left, or the needs to which those funds should have been productively and timeously committed. Mr Aregbesola, former Osun State governor, had no clue how a modern society or economy should run. He left his state psychologically battered and dispirited. By all means, let a political coalition emerge to give the sitting administration a run for its money. But had Alhaji Atiku stood the chance of securing the PDP presidential nomination, and Mallam el-Rufai secured a place in the administration, and Mr Aregbesola been forgiven and accommodated in the Tinubu government, etc, there would be no coalition.

Read Also: Tinubu’s legal, regulatory reforms offer strong foundation for energy investment – Lokpobiri

Last week, Zainab Buba Galadima, an APC member and daughter of one of Nigeria’s well-known political gadflies, Buba Galadima, gave an interview in which she predicted a storm coming from the North as a result of the prevailing economic hardship. And just in case anyone thought the storm could be contained in the North, she warned that no part of the country would be spared. At various times in the interview, she sounded practical, and at other times, she sounded idealistic. She was neither progressive nor ideological, and she didn’t need to be. But she did not give the impression she understood economics enough to rationally contextualise the country’s economic challenges. She displayed nothing more than streetwise appreciation of the country’s existential problems, with President Tinubu as the bogeyman. There is, therefore, clearly a gross miscomprehension of the economic damage bequeathed by the last administration, and an even poorer miscomprehension of the drastic and painful economic policies needed to extricate the country from the jaws of disaster. It is these misconceptions, not to say significant alienation, that the administration must find ingenious ways to address.

President Tinubu is not infallible, and his aides and ministers must not suggest that rebuilding the infrastructure of the country would answer and pacify the bitterness and resentment some Nigerians and politicians feel towards him. Given the untenable political structure of the country, it is only natural that the unhealthy obsession with him should continue. Sadly, however, most of those who analyse the country’s crisis fail to see that one of the major reasons Nigeria is listing like a stricken ship is its misshapen political structure, a structure most regional and exclusionary leaders still hope to sustain and palliate. Worse, too, given the fierce rhetoric of Nigerian politicians and leaders, it is clear that no lessons have been learnt from other countries that have imploded, whether Sudan, Somalia, DRC, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, etc. Those who think Nigeria is too big to fail miss the point badly. The Soviet Union failed, Yugoslavia failed, and the world is dotted with empires and great kingdoms that failed thereby unleashing seismic shifts in regional and continental politics, some of it costing millions of lives.

But it is not only political leaders that behave irresponsibly, as Kenya’s youth protests are showing. Even the generally unmoored younger generation may be carelessly and foolishly triggering forces whose dynamics they may not be able to control or shape in the months and years ahead. On matters as deceptively simple as votes being made to count, many politicians and youths have threatened Armageddon. It is great for votes to count, but Vladimir Putin was validly elected for the first time in 2000 and he is still in office; and so too was Adolf Hitler in 1932. National issues are far more complex than they seem. Instead of the unhealthy obsession with a sitting president, or repudiation of the informal principle of power rotation when a person, people or region is disfavoured, it is time to rethink Nigeria away from the violent and exclusionary rhetoric of jaded politicians and stranded political leaders.

July 13, 2025
Edo verdict: Ighodalo damns courts with faint praise

Last week’s Supreme Court judgement on the Edo State governorship election petition has predictably drawn the ire of Asue Ighodalo, candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in last year’s election. The tone of his concession statement on his loss indicates that he actually expected the unfavourable judicial outcome. It was a prepared statement replete with sentiments that often suffuse American politics when political parties or candidates deal with electoral losses or bad outcomes. Once he lost at the Election Petition Tribunal, his confidence was shaken. When the Court of Appeal dealt him a follow-up blow, his confidence was all but gone. By the time he took his case to the Supreme Court, mainly to salve his troubled conscience and probably to expiate his loss before his supporters, he had already moved on beyond the poll conducted last September.

Mr Ighodalo, a lawyer, was never really a dyed-in-the-wool politician. He knows, and he insinuated it in his anguished statement on the court case, that the Supreme Court judgement probably marks the end of his political career. The party that gave him a platform to contest the governorship is also troubled, and it faces an uncertain future. The relationship between former governor Godwin Obaseki, who foisted him on the party and attempted to railroad him into the State House, and the Oba of Benin, Ewuare II, is irreparable. Mr Ighodalo was simply collateral damage, too far damaged to stand any chance of future accommodation in any and perhaps most quarters. He is in fact so idiosyncratically detached and lacking in charisma that neither he nor a significant part of his support base will contemplate a political future for him. His supporters will not see why they should man the barricades for him or risk their limbs while he plots his way back to his commercial law practice in order to cut his losses.

To put it succinctly, for Mr Ighodalo, it is the end of an era. Unfortunately, he managed to also deny himself a glorious and fitting end to a fairly humdrum political life. Sometimes defeat or death does canonise a man. Had he been less fascinated with elegant and alien compositions, he would have seized the moment and the gumption to recommend himself to the public he claimed to serve. He knew that the Supreme Court judgement was final, as he confessed, and could, therefore, not be altered or even mitigated in any form or by any means. He should have, therefore, proceeded from that point of finality to say a few lofty things about democracy, the Edo electorate, the justice system he and other election losers love to denigrate, the Benin monarchy his camp still appears to be at odds with, and long-suffering Nigerians as a whole that have had to endure insufferable politicians lacking sportsmanship. Rather than deliver these sentiments in the stirring and foreign phrases he lathered his concession statement with, he chose to damn the courts with faint praise, berate Nigeria’s democratic experiment, and paint a gloomy picture of the future.

Take a close look at Mr Ighodalo’s statement. “Though I accept the finality of its (court) judgment,” he began cautiously, “I do not and cannot pretend that what was delivered amounts to justice.” If the judgement amounted to injustice, surely he would have one or two incontrovertible proofs of their lordships’ jurisprudential truancy. Alas, what he had were nothing more than elegant phrases. “What happened in the September 2024 Governorship Election was not a contest,” he continued magisterially. “It was a robbery. Coordinated. Deliberate. And now, tragically validated by the highest court in the land. While I will not and cannot obstruct any judicial pronouncement, no matter how flawed, I must never fear to speak truth to power.” For a political leader who tried not to ‘obstruct justice’ but saw robbery and coordinated and deliberate and tragic validation of rigging by the Supreme Court, how else would he define obstruction? He was in essence saying that their lordships approved those crimes. Yet, the ‘crimes’ were not proved beyond a shadow of doubt. Edo and the rest of Nigeria were supposed to simply take his word for it, for, in his mind, he is a man of ‘courage’.

Read Also: Edo governorship dispute: Supreme Court didn’t do justice, says Ighodalo

Then the incitement followed. After establishing a highly dubious premise, and sensing the superficiality of a huge section of the electorate, not to talk of the deadly polarisation corroding the country and predisposing it to anomie, he lashed out at everyone, particularly the courts and those he alleged rigged the process. “Like you,” he baited the Edo public, “I feel a deep sense of betrayal. Not just by those who rigged the process, but by the very institutions we trusted to protect our democracy. You came out in hope. You voted for competence, for progress, for prosperity. And now, we are told that your voice does not matter. That your freely given mandate can be trampled without consequence. I feel your pain. I share your anger. And I will never forget your courage.” Not only was there nothing noble in his words, his thoughts were even more disquieting, arrogant and deplorable. Who told him he was more competent than his main opponent, or that during his desultory campaign marked by ecclesiastical rascality and personal abuse, he was able to project any admirable virtue?

The next two paragraphs were dedicated to unadulterated Americanisms, perfused with all the hooey directed at his adoring supporters to join him in continuing the struggle to ‘reclaim the soul of Edo’, a soul his principal, Mr Obaseki, traduced, betrayed, and imperiously trampled under feet for eight convoluted and antidemocratic years. Mr Ighodalo thinks his state is already enveloped in darkness; but it is unclear, for a man who revels in phantasmagoria, whether his baleful wish is not father to his gloomy thought. “Yes, dark days may lie ahead,” he concluded airily without taking pains to lead any argument to substantiate his belief. “The weight of this illegitimacy will, unfortunately, echo beyond the halls of the Supreme Court. I fear Edo will feel it in the absence of leadership, in the poverty of policy, and in the daily suffering of her people. But we are neither a fearful nor a broken people. We may be wounded. But all wounds heal.” Where on earth and by what science did he get the impression that all wounds heal?

These, in short, are the sentimental drivel of a disillusioned politician who has lost touch with Edo Staste realities and with the country’s justice system. Mr Ighodalo took casuistic delight in pummeling the courts for his own inadequacies, and he displayed neither shame nor remorse in his party’s gross inability to prove their case in court. Instead, he declaimed upon medical and metaphorical wounds his magic wand told him would ineluctably respond to his lexical medications. And for a man and his principal so inured to profiting from their own counsels, he even deigned to advise the victorious governor, whom he described as ‘undeserving of holding power’, to ‘lead with conscience and govern with humility’. He ended his pained concession statement by invoking history to deliver judgement which Nigerian courts, perhaps in his view suffering from astigmatism, could not. For a man who lacks both the humility and nobility to accept or acknowledge losses and setbacks, he will be shocked what that verdict would be.

July 13, 2025
Deflated, coalition returns to ADC

Not too long after they were defeated in the last presidential poll, Nigeria’s self-styled coalition leaders began their rigmarole to retake the presidency they claimed they were entitled to. They had at first hoped to use the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as the battering ram to destroy the All Progressives Congress (APC) fortifications and win the exalted office, but the leading opposition party was tired of their shenanigans. Then they half-heartedly leapt upon the Social Democratic Party (SDP) bandwagon, but were disquieted to find out that the party had some honour left in its internal politics and affars. Thereafter the coalition leaders briefly detoured to the African Democratic Congress (ADC), which was used sometime in 2018 by ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo and his aggrieved cohorts to try and rob ex-president Muhammadu Buhari of re-election, only to discover that the courted leaders of the fringe party were not impressed by their resumes.

Puzzled and angry, they left in a huff and determined to form their own brand new political party to which they could imbue their nature and character. The only problem, however, was that they were unsure just what that character or nature looked like. In any case, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) quickly put them out of their misery by spelling out the long list of conditions they must fulfill to merit registration. Now evidently incensed and desperate, and knowing full well that they did not have the patience or money to fulfill all INEC conditions, they returned shamefaced to the overused ADC still reportedly immersed in legal and factional issues. They had finally berthed, they announced last week to a mystified public in Abuja, and would stay in that party until the next presidential poll. It is good that the nomads have returned home, but those who nurtured the ADC through its tempestuous and litigious years are wary of the new lovers and fair-weather friends.

After many months of denying the obvious, former vice president Atiku Abubakar, his former running mate in the 2019 presidential poll, Peter Obi, former Kaduna State governor Nasir el-Rufai, former Sokoto State governor Aminu Tambuwal, and a host of other political journeymen are staking their future and reputations on the creaky special purpose vehicle. Most of the coalition leaders are either wearied by age or worn out by years of brutal infighting in their former parties, the PDP and Labour Party (LP). They are not connected by ideology, but by their common resentment for President Tinubu. They have no state governor on their side, but they are hoping they could strike a deal with a few. Some of their former parties are, however, facing their own existential crises, and it is uncertain they are disposed to throwing their lot with the coalition leaders. For, at every turn, the coalition leaders will remind the public that their personal fame outshines the ADC as a party.

Last week, when the coalition leaders announced their adoption of the ADC for the next poll, they were of course more concerned with the presidential election than state and local polls. Their single-minded goal is to unseat the president, believing that once that is accomplished, they can always lure many unmoored politicians, legislators, and governors into the resistance. During the adoption exercise, coalition leaders as well as their supporters whipped themselves into frenzy, supposing that the elections were all but won already. They ignored the abrupt and unprecedented manner the ADC’s leadership change was effected, nor was it clear that they apprised themselves of the legal miasma in which the adopted party is embroiled with no immediate hope of resolution. Yes, money answers all things, but there are still many in that party who detest ‘hostile takeovers’, who love small is beautiful, who loath the politics, swagger, and condescension of coalition leaders, and who sense that they would be used just as the PDP and LP were used and dumped two years ago.

Read Also: FBI moves to arrest Lagos fraudster over N460m Trump inauguration crypto scam

The real face of the adopted ADC is neither the ageing and anti-democratic David Mark, a former army general and later senate president, nor the unprincipled and egotistic Rauf Aregbesola, a former Osun State governor and later Interior minister. Sen. Mark, who has been gifted the chairmanship position on an interim basis, is useful to the extent that the new party leaders think he cannot be pushed around. And Mr Aregbesola is also useful due to his betrayal of President Tinubu. The real leaders in the final analysis will be the ones who can spend the most, and who probably already broke the bank to persuade former and disputed ADC chairman, Ralph Nwosu, to drink hemlock. They will show their faces not too long from now, and they will bare their fangs when they begin to fight for nomination tickets. If they can find their way round the legal thicket choking the ADC, they will face the inexorable battle of superannuated politicians jostling for influence and positions before and after their congresses and convention. All the theoretical postulations by Mr Aregbesola in his acceptance speech as interim national secretary will soon collapse in the face of the heightened spending by heavy political lifters in the coming weeks.

Analysts who have begun to permute the chances of the party and its potential nominees in the next presidential poll miss the point very badly. Unlike the APC at its founding when it already knew where it was headed and who would lead the charge, the ADC must necessarily go through a period of sifting to produce those whose voices must be heard and obeyed. No factor would mediate or resolve that exercise like money. Once that stage is transcended, the party would be on cruise control, and any analysis on the future and prospects of the party might stand the chance of being fairly well regarded. More importantly, once someone or a group of allies has emerged with unquestionable power, no matter how temporary it is, the dynamics of party nominations can be safely predicted. The party has not pretended to any ideological posturing, nor assumed it already has full control of the circumstances around it. The situation is still in a state of flux. Indeed, if care is not taken, the coalition might become trapped in legal and political quicksand from which extrication would be impossible. But money answers all things.

As the short piece below demonstrates, there are still too many things better left unsaid. One of them is the tenure matter, indicating that what is uppermost in the minds of the coalition leaders is the goal of taking the presidency at any cost. But one thing that can be safely and sensibly addressed even now is the fate of the two acknowledged parties from which coalition leaders emerged, the PDP and LP. The LP was never really a party. It came into some renown because of the toxic ethnic and religious politics Mr Obi implanted in it. Even though he is still engaged in delicate straddling, unsure whether to fully disengage from the cantankerous LP, Mr Obi will keep the public guessing for as long as possible, intending to have his cake and eat it. It is not just principles that Mr Obi lacks, he also lacks courage and decisiveness. But for now he still has enough people in LP to keep the doors and windows open for a possible retreat from the heat of battle. His former running mate, Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed, who is also not too convinced about the coalition, insinuates as much. The bigger dilemma Mr Obi will, however, confront is that even if he crawls back to the LP, he cannot in 2027 make the impression he made in 2023.

The PDP will survive, despite the antics of Federal Capital Territory (FCT) minister Nyesom Wike. The party has a large number of governors, state assembly seats, and national legislators. It will not fizzle out. Moreover, one of the reasons it had been unable find its way out of its self-imposed maze is because of the pertinacity of the discredited Alhaji Atiku and his co-travellers, men and women the party was already sick and tired of, politicians who had brought the party more bad luck than it could manage or endure. With their exit, the party can begin to reset itself and plan for the future. In short, the ‘founding’ of the ADC will ensure that in 2027, the presidential election will again be a three-horse race. The coalition leaders were too blinded by rage and resentment to anticipate the consequences of their actions.

July 6, 2025
Coalition: Datti Baba-Ahmed surprisingly talks sense

The former presidential running mate to Labour Party’s Peter Obi, and founder of Baze University, Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed, appears to have experienced a political and psychological metamorphosis. He does not seem any longer to be the rabid revolutionary and ethnicist of the last presidential campaign. Some two years after the election, and perhaps having cured himself of the pains of defeat and the radical polemics he acquired in the process, he seems to have become a realist, even a thinker. During the election, and especially immediately after, there was nothing he did or said that made anyone associate him with anything university. Few years after the din of election and the anguish of defeat had dissipated, he seems more rational than anyone thought possible, prticularly judging from his fanatical antecedents. In a recent interview with Trust TV, he passed a verdict on the political coalition that had just taken over the African Democratic Congress (ADC), pouring cold water on their expectations, and ridiculing their oversimplifications.

His mind is with the coalition, he says, reflecting the bonding with his presidential candidate, Mr Obi, but he seems dreadfully uneasy about the party’s prospects and methods. A coalition is, in theory, a fine thing, he acknowledges, but if it cannot even disguise its trenchancy nor mitigate its obsession with seizing the presidency, it might be opening itself to a worse drubbing than it should deserve. This is surprising, that the sometimes agitated and caustic Mr Baba-Ahmed can summon the calmness to dissect the coalition and project its weaknesses and defeat should their self-centred leaders prove incapable of carefully curating their tentative platform. Mr Obi equally appears unsure about the coalition, but his sixth sense tells him that striking out alone with the lame feet of LP would condemn him to a shattering defeat a second time. That Mr Baba-Ahmed does not feel discomfited by the presence of his leader in the coalition to ventilate his heartfelt opinion and suspicion on television must be truly noteworthy.

Read Also: NLC opposes plan to remove minimum wage from Exclusive List – Ajaero

Mr Baba-Ahmed anchors his suspicion of the coalition on two grounds. One is that the victory of the APC in 2015 does not permit the unlimited extrapolations which the Atiku Abubakar-led coalition is clinging to. There are many hidden details in the 2015 coalition – more accurately a merger – that made victory possible for the APC. He does not mince words referencing President Bola Tinubu whom the amorphous coalition strives to overthrow: “I don’t yet see anyone in this coalition who can scheme and plan over 16 years. With all due respect to Atiku, he has contested consistently—this will be the seventh time. But tell me: is there anyone else in the coalition who will say, ‘Let it be the other person, and I will support them’? I’m yet to see that. Everyone seems only interested in their candidacy…He (Tinubu) stayed committed for 16 years and took it in 2023. Tinubu gave Atiku the ACN in 2007; gave it to Ribadu in 2011; backed Buhari in 2015; and waited until 2023 to take it himself. I’m saying: to defeat this phenomenon called Tinubu, you must do the unthinkable. If this coalition—which I recognise—thinks it’s business as usual, it won’t work. It has to be less about individual ambition and more about Nigeria. More action, less talk. Because talk is cheap.”

Second, he suggests that for a coalition to have meaning and appeal it ought to have a unifying figure, the kind Muhammadu Buhari represented for the APC at least a year before the 2015 poll. The coalition, Mr Baba-Ahmed muses, has no such unifier. He is respectful of Alhaji Atiku, and perhaps too of Mr Obi, but he is adamant that the coalition does not have a centralising man of heft and stature around whom the main opposition can coalesce. This is probably why the former running mate says comparing the dynamics of 2027 to the reality of 2015 may amount to oversimplification. Mr Obi is unlikely to be offended by his former running mate’s remonstration. He also has his misgivings, and is probably being propelled along for now because of the uncertainties in his own party and the pianissimo doubts that make him feel queasy.

Mr Baba-Ahmed’s transformation is, however, neither fundamental nor ideological. He has caught his breath, after the stridency of the 2023 electioneering, thus explaining his seeming moderation, calmness, and logical effusions. This new orientation may, however, not last beyond the next provocation, for the real Datti Baba-Ahmed is not pleasant at all. His party had absolutely no pathway to victory in the 2023 presidential election, especially with their inability to produce, before the election tribunal, results in about 54,000 polling units out of 189,000 polling units, according to an official of the party. The party also politicised ethnicity and religion, and divided the country along other primordial lines. But no sooner the election results were announced than Mr Baba-Ahmed began calling for revolution, threatening fire and brimstone should the winner be sworn in, and calling for the cancellation of the results. He then embarked on a long spell of incitement capable of causing chaos and fracturing the country. His real self emerged before, during and after that election. He might be sophistic today concerning a political coalition that makes him uneasy, especially sensing that he would understandably be dwarfed by the rhetoric and image of the big names and bigwigs in the adopted ADC party, but there is nothing to suggest that the sensible arguments he has begun to make very robustly reflect his enduring and essential self. The country must still be wary of him.

July 6, 2025
ADC’s one-term ‘presidents’

Nearly every presidential aspirant in the newly adopted African Democratic Congress (ADC) is promising to do only one term if elected. This promise, each aspirant hopes, will help secure nomination. Would their fellow travelers believe them? It is unlikely. Would the country as a whole also believe them? It is even more unlikely. Power is an aphrodisiac, and its charm difficult to resist. The public may already see insincerity in the one-term promise, but the aspirants will make it anyway, for to do otherwise is to doom their aspirations even before they get off the ground.

Former vice president Atiku Abubakar was the first to make that promise in other to snag Labour Party’s Peter Obi. If nominated and goes on to win the presidency, he vowed, he would hand over to the former Anambra governor at the end of his first term. He presumes to have the power to hand over the presidency to his running mate or vice president regardless of what the voters think. More, Alhaji Atiku hopes not only to snag Mr Obi but also to corral the Igbo Southeast because they must believe that it could be their surest path to the presidency.

Read Also: FBI moves to arrest Lagos fraudster over N460m Trump inauguration crypto scam

But in a different way too, former Rivers State governor Rotimi Amaechi is making the same promise to spend only one term in office if elected in order to complete the second term they hope the electorate would deny President Bola Tinubu in 2027. The presumptuousness does not end there. Mr Obi himself has declared magisterially that anyone who plans to contest the presidency against President Tinubu must know for a certainty that he would spend only one term. Even if the electorate would be dumb enough to believe Alhaji Atiku because of his age – he is 78 years old already – they would not believe both Mr Amaechi and Mr Obi.

Expect potential running mates, like former Kaduna governor Nasir el-Rufai, to join the one-term boondoggle. They stand to gain from a southerner spending one term in office should the ADC win the next presidential poll. The campaign, they have signaled, will not be about issues or ideologies or Nigeria’s political dynamics; it will be about one term or two terms. For now, however, that still leaves the advantage with the APC.

July 6, 2025
Iran had it coming

Twelve days after Israel began its air offensive against Iran, the war ended as suddenly as it began, almost without notice. In Israel, apart from the 28 persons who died as a result of Iran’s missile barrage, scores of apartments lie in ruins mainly in Haifa and Tel Aviv. In Iran, apart from the shocking degradation of its top security brass that saw the killing of 30 high-ranking security personnel and three senior commanders, not to say surrendering to total and embarrassing Israeli air dominance, its nuclear and missile facilities were badly damaged. For the United States, whose president Donald Trump continues to hanker after a Nobel Peace prize, it displayed air razzmatazz that led to the bombing of three Iranian nuclear facilities in Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan using 30,000-pound GBU-57 bunker-buster bombs of disputed efficacy. The war ended because all sides to the conflict declared victory and ceased hostilities.

The US was the quickest to declare victory after bombing the nuclear facilities, particularly Fordow, and announcing the facilities’ obliteration. Israel also declared that it had achieved nearly all its military and psychological operation objectives. After decapitating Iran’s proxy militias in Labanon (Hezbollah) and Gaza (Hamas), in the recent war, it instantly controlled and dominated Iranian air space unchallenged, eliminated senior Iranian military commanders by a combination of commando raids and stunning espionage operations undertaken by their spy agency, MOSSAD, did not lose one combat aircraft, and set Iran’s development of a nuclear bomb back by an undetermined number of years. But Iran was also quick to declare victory despite suffering more than 600 military and civilian casualties by pointing at the apocalyptic photographs of ruined buildings in some Israeli cities, and boasting about the efficacy of its ballistic missiles and drones capacity to the delight of Iranians who took to the streets to celebrate Israeli citizens cowering in bomb shelters. The readiness with which Israel and Iran embraced ceasefire was, however, probably due more to US bullying tactics than anything else. Because of national pride, neither Israel nor Iran had seemed eager or able to stop hostilities.

Other than the speed with which Israel exposed the vulnerabilities of Iran, the country of less than 10 million people also exposed the illusion of those who seemed convinced that the Israel-Iran conflict was, broadly speaking, a religious or racial war. The conflict may be couched in religious terms, but the way it was fought, its antecedents, and how the supporters’ clubs were arrayed showed that it was more than anything else a regional power play. Some analysts may be taken in by Iran’s reasons for seizing upon the Palestinian cause to project power, but it is significant that Arab countries raised only a feeble voice against Israeli aggression. The latter understood what the whole war was all about. They understand that Iran is strictly speaking not Arab, and had for decades been bellicose towards its neighbours. Hardly any country in the region escaped Iran’s intrusions, whether Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Saudi Arabia or the Gulf states. They view Iran’s proxy militias as a ploy to undermine and subjugate them. And they know that unlike Iran, Israel has no territorial ambition beyond its biblical enclave. They, therefore, pined for a military power capable of stifling the reincarnation of Persian hegemony, and they saw in Israel an equalizer. There was no time in those 12 humbling days the war lasted that any Arab country robustly denounced Israel’s attacks. The message was clear: they distrust Iran more than they despise Israel. For them it was all politics, not religion.

Read Also: Joining APC was to align with centre for greater benefits — Delta Govt

Arab states have legitimate concerns about the rising profile of Iran under the rule of the Ayatollahs. But sensing a regional power vacuum after the humiliation and deposition of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, and with no Arab country willing to bravely shoulder the Palestinian cause in the aggressive and proactive manner former Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser had done, the Ayatollahs presumed to represent both the Arab and Islamic causes as well as make both causes one and the same. This fundamentally harked back to the theocratic basis of their rule: to deploy religion as a governing tool and imbue it with a combative and resonating regional ambition. The Iranian regional ambition is not an accident. But after the humiliation of the 12-Day war, that ambition may be in danger, if not in tatters. The US bombs may not have ‘obliterated’ what many tagged the ‘Islamic bomb’, but they have probably set Iran’s nuclear bomb project back by a few years. There are suggestions among Iran’s many regional supporters that the US-Israeli attacks may paradoxically stiffen the Middle Eastern country’s resolve to build a bomb, having enriched Uranium to weapons grade years earlier. Unquestionably, however, Iran will have to re-imagine its’ Persian empire’ dreams, modify or temper its rhetoric, carefully consider whether anchoring its political and regional ambitions on theocratic foundations as it has done successfully for many decades is as tenable in this century as it was considered normal in the distant past.

Iran’s aggressiveness and meddlesomeness in international relations led to the US and Israel, both nuclear powers themselves, swearing to ensure that Iran does not have the bomb. It may be arrogant and inequitable, but that oath probably reassures Iran’s regional competitors and tangentially dampens the morale of Palestinian freedom fighters. After the 12-Day war, Iranian proxies are unlikely to be revived on the scale they were before the punishing campaigns of the last few months. In the near future, the heavily degraded Hezbollah may be unable to recover its strength or relevance in the region, or in Lebanon in particular. Hamas, having observed the dissonance between Iran’s hype and its shocking performance in the 12-Day war, may enter into a face-saving deal in Gaza or allow itself to go down noisily. Whatever hppens, Iran’s imperial (Persian) dream may take much longer to revive, especially seeing how religion has been either incapable of driving that dream or ennobling it, as the Ayatollahs have started to suspect during the drafting of the ceasefire deal when they were sidelined. The Six-Day war of 1967 changed the face of the Middle East in a substantial way that has lasted till today; the 12-Day war that ended early last week may also fundamentally redefine power relations in the region.

Iran’s supporters are reluctant to acknowledge the real reason for its expansionary ambitions, a fact keenly understood by its neighbours, thus accounting for their indifference to its plight and humiliation. Iran’s religious leaders, it is obvious, are trapped in the past and have failed to learn lessons from the failure of Islamic State (or ISIL) and the caliphate Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi attempted to establish after the collapse of Saddam Hussein and the chaos that enveloped Iraq. Leaders have a responsibility to study history and draw the right lessons in respect of ideologies, time, policies and associations. Few in the turbulent region saw Iran’s pursuit of the Palestinian cause as a strong reason for the creation and arming of proxy militias. All they saw was an attempt to create an empire or carve a large sphere of influence comparable in ideology and geographical scope to the Sunni Umayyad Caliphate (661-750 CE), the second caliphate after Prophet Muhammad. But the Umayyads presided over a large multiethnic and multicultural population, majority of whom were Christians. Iran under the mullahs exemplifies intolerance, irrational rhetoric, and genocidal fantasies, and does not even structurally and ideologically resemble their kindred Shi’a Abbasid Caliphate (750-1258). The Abbasids, who formed the third caliphate of the Islamic empire, were ironically more Sunni than they publicly acknowledged, but were destroyed by the Mongols in 1258. During their rule, they downplayed Arabism, espoused internationalism, and ensured that the caliphate was more political than Islamic. But once they ensured that religion no longer formed the core of their unity, the empire began to crack.

It is not clear why some of Iran’s fanatical supporters appear ready to singe the feathers of critics, especially citing religious reasons. Iranian mullahs have a clearer sense of history and understanding of power politics than their many impressionable supporters. Iran knows it is posturing in the Middle East and that war with Israel is all about politics and power. The Ayatollahs also know that it cannot sustain a repressive rule without deploying religion and military adventurism as tools and ideological propellant. Iran’s neighbours also know the name of the game, and are equally adamant about sustaining their independence and spurning subordination. They remember that the last person to attempt expansionism, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, came to grief in 2006 during the Second Gulf War (2003-2011). Saddam also seized upon the Palestinian cause to fire some 42 Scud missiles in 1991 into the same cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa which the Iranians attacked in the recent 12-Day war. Saddam had earlier rolled his army into Kuwait in August 1990. The regional power playbook is not new, except to those ignorant of history. Admittedly, there is nothing morally offensive about expansionism, or the deployment of Islamic ideology to birth or promote empire building. Equally, if Israel deploys its military to counter Iran’s imperial appetite, receives help from the US, and benefits from the connivance of Arab countries suspicious of Iranian expansionism, it is fair game. The combatants know the name of the game. More, they know the rules of the game.

For now, much more than Israel and US deflting Iran’s nuclear development programme, and regardless of the beleaguered country’s bluff and bluster, it knows that its imperial ambitions have become comatose. Having spent billions, if not trillions, of dollars on its nuclear programme and the funding of proxy militias, Iran’s mullahs must now contend with angry and hungry but repressed populace thinking warily of challenging their rulers. It is a prospect far more galling to the clerics than the humiliation it received in the hands of the combined forces that pummeled its nuclear and missile facilities. Whether Iran emerges from this humiliation or not will depend not on the choreographed street demonstrations carried out in support of the regime, but on how smartly the ambitious mullahs can rediscover Iran’s Persian roots and learn the appropriate lessons from the rise and fall of previous caliphates. There is, however, little to suggest they can, just like the incompetent and anachronistic Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of Islamic State who died at the age of 48 fantasising about the past. The Iranian mullahs lack the capacity, tact, tolerance and guile to appreciate the political and ideological nuances of their region. Indeed, under the mullahs, Iran has begun to resemble the Abbasids in their encounters with the Seljuqs in 1050, and, more apocalyptically, before the Mongol invasion of 1258.

June 29, 2025
Again, the Fubara-Wike rapprochement

Last Friday, President Bola Tinubu brokered another peace deal between Rivers State governor Siminalayi Fubara and Federal Capital Territory (FCT) minister Nyesom Wike. The deal, which some of the governor’s supporters have described as wholesale capitulation, appeared potent enough to restore the state to some normality. Mr Wike described the deal as one designed to favour everybody, that is, everybody gains something and everybody loses something, with neither side unduly favoured. He is entitled to his opinion. On the other hand Mr Fubara described the deal as a divine intervention. He promised to do everything in his power to sustain it. He is also entitled to his optimism. The peace meeting was reportedly inspired by the president, but he left the combatants to hammer out a deal by themselves, untrammeled by his office. After the first round, in which the elements of the deal were chiseled without the involvement of the president, a second stage was convened in the presence of the president for ratification.

One of the key elements of the deal is that the governor would not go for a second term, probably one of the terms that drove the governor’s supporters to suggest that he had been had. Without doubt, that term seems imperious and inequitable. But if that was what they decided, for reasons best known to the combatants, who can begrudge them? It is suspected that the governor accepted that provision to enable his opponents endure him for a little longer until the next poll. It could also be because the governor’s determination to return to office after his suspension in March trumps the surrender some of his supporters accused him of. Nevertheless, from all indications, the combatants appear ready to let the deal work. Regardless of what he has had to sacrifice in order to provoke an end to the state of emergency declared in the state more than three months ago, the state needs peace.

After the president has had to facilitate two peace meetings on the Rivers imbroglio, with the first repudiated after the governor returned to Rivers and regained his wits, it is doubtful whether any of the combatants will let this latest deal go to waste, particularly when the second deal has been entirely at the behest of the combatants. Mr Fubra will have a number of misgivings, but he will do his best to uphold the integrity of the process that culminated in the deal. Clearly, he desperately wants his office back. And though he seems perfectly suited to reneging on agreements, giving the way he lets himself soar at public events, he now appears eager to bridle his tongue. Since he has invoked God into the deal, and he has repeatedly sworn to fear God, he might approach subsequent quarrels in the months ahead more maturely. He didn’t say it directly, but his somber look last Friday seems to be that of a man cornered and fearing for his future.

Read Also: Top five African Central Banks with largest gold reserves in Q1 2025

Mr Wike on the other hand has spoken more expansively and enthusiastically about the deal, suggesting that he got much of what he wanted. He will be unenthusiastic in provoking the president into fury by again fanning the embers of war. Reasons for disagreement will persist, but with a little more effort, all the combatants should be able to paper over the cracks. No one expects them to return to perfect normality, or to reset relationships in such a manner that the frictions between the governor and his opponents would automatically disappear. But as both sides to the conflict have said, they would do their best to uphold the integrity of the deal. Nigerians wish them good luck.

Sceptics, however, have reasons to doubt the capacity of the two sides to sustain and nurture the new peace they have just fashioned. First is that the terms of the deal seem eerily reminiscent of the June 28, 1919 Treaty of Versailles. While Mr Fubara might wish to return to his mild-mannered ways and ignore the scabrous feel of the deal, it is unlikely his supporters will be so accommodating. They would wonder, like the Germans did after World War I, whether they really lost the war or were to blame for the conflict in the first instance. However, unlike before, President Tinubu wisely stayed out of the way of the Rivers peacemakers until they reached a deal. He only lent his imprimatur to it after it was concluded. And the second is that neither Mr Fubara nor Mr Wike is fundamentally amenable to peace or even have an impeccable understanding of what the concept means.

There is nothing the governor has done or said since the conflict started that gives the impression he possesses enough leadership capacity in all its nuances to appreciate the magnitude of what he faces. His consolation must, however, be that Mr Wike himself has no clue what noblesse oblige means. The FCT minister has seized upon two or three provocations he alleged Mr Fubara was guilty of, including ingratitude to his mentor and disloyalty to the party structure, to justify his opposition. But he forgets he is dealing with a whole state. Worse, he forgets that he foisted the governor on the state impervious to the qualities his successor should possess to merit the governorship. But since both of them have promised to keep the peace and work together, Nigerians must take them at their word, keep their fingers crossed, and hope that their scepticism would not be proved right.

June 29, 2025
Atiku, el-Rufai, Amaechi and All Democratic Alliance

After waiting for months for the other shoe to drop, the opposition coalition movement has finally proposed a new party altogether in their iron determination to dethrone President Bola Tinubu. He is their main target. Led by the implacable former vice president Atiku Abubakar and seconded by the equally agitated former governors Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State and Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State, what was initially planned as a merger or coalition of parties has become an independent, stand-alone, political organisation, the All Democratic Alliance (ADA). Last month, they had been undecided whether to throw in their lot with an existing party, which would have been less burdensome to their finances and their suspect organisational skills, or to bite the bullet and start afresh, a tantalising but nervy prospect. They toyed with the idea of committing to the Social Democratic Party (SDP), in which the feisty Mallam el-Rufai briefly cavorted and beckoned on his mates to join, or attaching themselves to the African Democratic Congress (ADC), which they saw as less controversial and more amenable to their designs. None seemed to fit the bill, it turned out. And given the fact that they had all along flirted with a Plan B, they have now decided to burn their bridges. It is henceforth forward march into the unknown.

The main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was the natural and special purpose vehicle choice for the brains behind the aborted coalition to execute their 2027 goals. But that former ruling behemoth saw through their schemes and was loth to be turned into an appendage by the footloose Alhaji Atiku. Angry and impatient, Alhaji Atiku and company stormed out and began fishing for new lovers, first trying out the SDP, and then the ADC, before finally berthing at the unregistered ADA. But ADA and its leaders are not in the clear yet. The party will probably be registered, especially going by how toxic the new party’s leaders have turned Nigerian politics and preemptively accused the electoral commission and other agencies of government of bias and conspiracy against the opposition. After registration, the party’s leadership structure will have to be resolved amongst dozens of potential leaders and rhetoricians with large egos. And finally, the leaders must confront and surmount the main hurdle almost certain to shake the party to its core, to wit, the contest to pick the standard-bearers for the next presidential election.

Read Also: 600 stranded Nigerians expected from Iran

The new party, when registered, will boast the presence of political heavyweights and flyweights like former Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate and ex-Anambra governor, Peter Obi, former House of Representatives speaker and ex-Sokoto State governor, Aminu Tambuwal; former All Progressives Congress (APC) national chairman and ex-Edo State governor, John Oyegun; former Internal Affairs minister and ex-Osun State governor, Rauf Aregbesola; former Justice minister Abubakar Malami; former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) Babachir David Lawal; former PDP chairman Uche Secondus; and Osita Chidoka and Nnenna Ukeje. As notable as these gentlemen are, they certainly do not possess the numerical strength or ideological force to win any presidential election. They will of course hope that they could constitute the seed of the party, and that more recognisable names and aggrieved politicians will eventually defect to the party once the coast seems clear. But if at any time they see that ADA seemed to have been conceived only to drive the presidential ambition of Alhaji Atiku, they will think twice. Some defectors may already seem committed to the ADA idea, seeing how much they loath President Tinubu and are willing to sacrifice anything to see the president deposed, but others may become extremely wary of being used as tools to drive Alhaji Atiku’s obsessive agenda. Their reluctance will appear to be well-founded. For, at the moment, the general consensus is that a southerner must contest the next presidential election against President Tinubu, if it came to that, since the election might quickly transform into a North-South struggle in the face of what many fear is the looming imposition of northern hegemony driven partly by herdsmen attacks.

The new party will also contend with how to determine its financial and administrative fulcrum. If Alhaji Atiku is not convinced beyond a shadow of doubt that he is the potential and undisputed candidate of the party in the next poll, he will be chary of spending as much as is needed to turn the party into an immovable force. Party leaders will then have to decide how to raise funds from external forces, perhaps businessmen with a grudge against the government. But even here, given how some top business leaders miscalculated in the 2023 poll and have gone the extra mile to rectify their errors, few moneymen will be eager to put the wrong foot forward again. If Alhaji Atiku hedges his financial bet, Mr Obi, who is naturally stingy, will do worse. No one of any heft in the new party will be so forward in frittering away his funds on a gamble they cannot quite convince themselves would be worth their while. Alhaji Atiku may have mooted the idea of a joint ticket with Mr Obi, but the new party will face the horrible conundrum of determining whether the vacillating Mr Obi as running mate, assuming he really joins and remains in the party, would pull as much weight as he did in 2023. Despite the reigning permutations centred on Atiku/Obi, the opportunistic duo of Mr Amaechi and Mallam el-Rufai will wait in the wings and hope that circumstances and political exigencies will force ADA to rethink their presidential ticket away from the anticipated serial contender.

The PDP may have survived the Alhaji Atiku scare, for he had at first seemed determined to once again foist himself on the party’s presidential ticket, with all the attendant drawbacks and unworkable permutations, but it may face the fresh danger of being overtaken in terms of ranking by ADA. The new party will, however, make heavy weather of beating the PDP to the tape, considering that it is neither a coalition nor a merger, and so does not have any state under its control. Mallam el-Rufai may have boasted that the next election is not about which party has the highest number of governors in its kitty, insisting that the poll is about the electorate, but he knows in his heart that he is simply posturing. APC stood a chance of winning in 2015 because it had a number of governors on its side and also attracted a few more before the polls. More, it was truly a coalition of powerful parties and individuals, a prospect ADA can only dream of. It is unlikely that in the months ahead ADA will really become a coalition of parties. Its newness, which is strictly limited to its name and structure and organs, not its old and jaded leaders, will, therefore, be a disadvantage. Worse, if its presidential ticket is what they think it already appears to be, there will be no excitement anywhere, not even among voters.

In the end, ADA may very well turn out to be a damp squib. It has so many things going against it than for it. It will be delusional to hope it can really compete with the ruling behemoth, or outpace the second ranked and still solid PDP. It can hope to be the new LP in 2027, for the old LP has become a hors de combat; but to aspire to be more when they are encumbered by bitter and vengeful leaders instead of ideological puritans and savvy, altruistic administrators is pure hallucination. ADA is starting on an old and dirty slate; once they are registered as expected, they must produce altruists and ideologues and nationalists capable of rethinking and rebranding Nigeria. So far, the names associated with the party reflect ethnic opportunists and promoters of religious and regional exceptionalism more than anything else. Such an amalgam will not win a presidential election; they will foul it.

June 22, 2025