Why the Anti-Tinubu Coalition Isn’t Coalescing

 By Farooq A. Kperogi There is supposed to be a formidable coalition of powerful regional and national political forces working to upstage P...

 By Farooq A. Kperogi

There is supposed to be a formidable coalition of powerful regional and national political forces working to upstage President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in 2027. But this coalition isn’t coalescing and appears to be crumbling before it has even had a chance to be formed. Three major reasons account for this.

The first reason is what I call the aspirational collision of the major movers of the coalition. By that, I mean the two major power blocs behind the coalition have irreconcilably divergent ideas about who should occupy the upper end of the ticket the coalition will produce.

PDP’s Atiku Abubakar basically wants a recreation of the 2019 electoral lineup. He would be the presidential candidate, and Labor Party’s Peter Obi would be the vice-presidential candidate. It is predicated on the assumption that Atiku Abubakar, by virtue of his primordial identity, will be a magnet for northern votes.

If he is the only prominent northern candidate in 2027, he will win both Muslim and Christian votes in the region, as northern Christians trust him more than any northern Muslim politician of his generation on account of his remarkable broadmindedness, though his close association with Nasir El-Rufai, widely regarded by many northern Christians as a crass, unremorseful Christophobe because of his past actions and utterances, undermines this appeal.

Peter Obi is supposed to bring the enthusiasm and votes he got from the 2023 presidential election to the coalition. However, it appears that although Peter Obi isn’t personally ill-disposed to being Atiku’s running mate again, his support base in the South would deplete considerably should he choose to play second fiddle to a northerner this time.

The dramatic rise in his political capital in 2023 was entirely the consequence of his being the only notable Southern Christian presidential candidate in the race. Plus, the prevalent sentiment in the South is that Muhammadu Buhari’s eight-year tenure was the North’s chance to rule. The next eight years from 2023 is the South’s turn.

If Obi were to accept being Atiku’s running mate, he would be seen by people in the South, including his native Southeast, as a betrayer, as a quisling, of the region. And that would mark the irretrievable diminution of his political capital.

Yet, it is unconstitutional for Atiku to be anybody’s running mate, having been a two-term vice president before. So, there is zero possibility of Atiku agreeing to be running mate to Obi, whom he brought to national limelight by choosing him as his running mate in 2019, against the recommendation of major players in the PDP at the time.

This is an unresolvable impasse. As much as the South justifiably thinks it is its turn to produce the president until 2031, the North has been unsuccessfully calling attention to the disadvantage it has suffered as a result of Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s death, which prematurely returned power to the South for six years.

The Atiku group’s carrot to Obi—to accept being VP in exchange for Atiku serving only one term—is informed by this logic. It somehow compensates the North’s six-year loss and promises a return of power to the Southeast, which has never produced a president (or even a vice president) since the start of the Fourth Republic.

Nevertheless, if the chatter I see on social media is any guide, Obi’s support base is unpersuaded by this. Were Obi to accept being a running mate to Atiku in 2027, many Obi supporters say they would rather sit out the election or, worse, vote for Tinubu to ensure that the presidency remains in the South.

This is complicated by the reality that, were Atiku to stay out of the 2027 presidential contest and endorse Obi, it’s unlikely to improve Obi’s electoral fortunes in parts of the North that rejected him in 2023.

The second reason the coalition is unlikely to succeed is that key northern politicians who are already positioning themselves to be Tinubu’s successor in 2031 are either not part of it or are in it to undercut it from within. There are two reasons for this.

First, an Atiku presidency would mean their aspirations to be president would be deferred by more years than a Tinubu second term. Plus, even if Atiku honors his alleged pledge to serve for only one term (which is never a guarantee, given the intoxication of power), he would hand over power to the South. That counts them out.

Second, opposing Tinubu’s second term by joining a coalition would ensure that they take themselves out of consideration for Tinubu’s support in 2031. It is self-seeking political calculation that assumes the nature and form of the outlines of the future.

The third reason the coalition would have trouble taking off is Tinubu’s own determined, single-minded, well-oiled—even state-sanctioned—effort to destroy it. I’ll only talk about one effort because, while many people may be aware of it, only a few seem to be conscious of it.

Tinubu is deploying a political propaganda tactic called the bandwagon technique. This method encourages people to act or think a certain way because “everyone else is doing it.” It appeals to the human desire to be part of the majority or to avoid being left out.

It’s a powerful technique because it leverages social pressure and the fear of missing out (FOMO). The unceasing gale of political defections of prominent political actors across the country is intended to cause Tinubu’s opponents to question their judgement and give up their opposition to him.

Even Afrobeats music icon Davido—who won well-deserved plaudits and brownie points from Igbo people a few days ago for telling a Yoruba Twitter interlocutor who questioned his outward symbolic associations with Igbo that he is “Igbo by blood”—appears to be part of this bandwagon technique.

Video records of him visiting Tinubu in the Presidential Villa and introducing well-known Igbo entertainment figures as “APC members” fit the bandwagon method perfectly. Here’s a man whom the president’s media team had tackled vigorously for his criticism of Tinubu’s government, whose uncle is a PDP governor, and who publicly identifies with the Igbo (a core stronghold of opposition to Tinubu), now openly identifying with the president at the same time that major political players in opposition parties are switching to APC. That’s unlikely to be random.

When you add this to the predominant sentiment in Nigeria that incumbents don’t lose elections, even if they actually lose them (with the exception of Goodluck Jonathan), you are looking at a systematic, coordinated effort to construct the rhetoric of inevitability around Tinubu’s second term.

A coalition of politicians who don’t offer or promise anything different from Tinubu and who have irreconcilable asymmetries in their expectations of what the coalition should produce will have a hard time overcoming Tinubu’s strategies.

This is sad because, as I previously pointed out, the conditions in the country should preclude Tinubu from even being considered for a second term. A May 24, 2025, special report I read in Vanguard by Dr. Dele Sobowale titled “Tinubu at Midterm: Who are the People Gov’t is Satisfying?” was particularly striking.

Sobowale's Consultancy conducted a nationwide survey to assess public perception of the federal government's performance. The study involved a brief verbal questionnaire posed to Nigerians across all six geopolitical zones, cutting across age, ethnicity, religion, gender, and income levels.

Participants were asked two simple yes-or-no questions: whether their lives were better now compared to two years ago, and whether they expected things to improve in the next two years.

The findings were stark. Only 3 percent of respondents said their lives had improved, while an overwhelming 97 percent said they had not. Even more striking was the pessimism about the future: just 1 percent expressed hope for improvement in the next two years, while 99 percent did not.

These results reflect a deep sense of dissatisfaction and growing despair among the Nigerian populace. In a normal setting, no government that has enabled this much misery index and that is burdened by this heavy perceptual burden should even run for a second term. But this is Nigeria.