A former national vice chairman, North-west of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Salihu Lukman has said any analysis of permutations for 2027 must address the big challenge of what to do to ensure that anybody who succeeds President Bola Tinubu in 2027 works to meet the expectations of the citizens.
He said it should be clear to all that even when opposition and displaced politicians unite to defeat APC and Tinubu in 2027, the country may end up with another bad, if not worse, leader.
Lukman in a statement released in Abuja on Sunday, said given that in terms of guaranteeing political competition, the situation Nigerians are confronting as a nation today is worse than what they had in 2015, the people must summon the courage to go beyond the sentiment of just defeating APC and Tinubu in 2027.
The former APC leader said fully agreed with the Labour Party President candidate at the 2023 polls, Peter Obi when he addressed the press after the opening session of the strengthening Nigeria’s democracy conference last week that he will not support any coalition of opposition to APC if it is just for power grab.
“Even in the context of power shift, of what use is power shift to any region if in the end citizens of the same region where the President comes from are shortchanged? What has South-West got to show for the tenure of former President Olusegun Obasanjo? What has South-South got to show for the tenure former President Jonathan? The same could be asked in relation to the North and the tenure of both former Presidents Umaru Yar’Adua and Buhari.
“What will be different if another president emerged whether from the North or South in 2027 to succeed President Tinubu? Many of us are engaging these issues with the objective of changing the reality of our democracy. Of course, we must also acknowledge that many leading opposition and displaced politicians are engaging the issues with the old mindset of power grab.
“So long as that is the case, we may succeed in producing a new party and end up with a dysfunctional party, which will be reduced to being a platform for aspiring candidates. The first indicator will be that the new party will be handed to preferred aspirants who will proceed to appoint leaders of the party and emerge as candidates for 2027.
“Already, one of the tendencies among the displaced politicians, which is closely associated with former President Buhari is working to impose itself as the leaders of the new opposition party. That tendency is already syndicating media reports about the new party. Painfully, the tendency lacks the needed humility to have the required self-appreciation and recognition of its poor electoral prospects.
“Some of the opposition and displaced leaders are also similarly restlessly positioning themselves to control any emerging party that could be the platform for the contest against APC and President Tinubu without humbly recognising their poor electoral prospects,” he noted.
The former director general of the Progressive Governors Forum, called on Nigerians to stand up to the politicians, especially opposition and displaced ones and tell them enough is enough.
He said: “notwithstanding the fact that, thanks to the civil society organisations that organised last week’s conference, there are renewed public agitations towards strengthening Nigerian democracy to ensure it meets the expectations of citizens, we must not allow Nigerians to be hoodwinked by the narrow ambitions of politicians to grab power and use it to advance personal ambitions.
“To achieve that is to push the frontiers of public debate about challenges facing Nigerian democracy beyond the narrow prism of political ambitions of opposition and displaced politicians.
“Now that the consensus about uniting opposition and displaced politicians has been achieved, we must insist that the negotiations to produce a new political reality should require them to substitute their ambition to emerge as candidates with becoming leaders of the new party.
“Just imagine Alh. Atiku Abubakar, or Mr. Peter Obi, or Mr. Rotimi Amaechi, or or Dr. Kayode Fayemi, or Sen. Aminu Waziri Tambuwal or Mal. Nasir El-Rufai, or other opposition and displaced leaders with ambitions to contest becoming leaders of the new party.
Imagine all these people decide that in order to lay a solid foundation for the emergence of strong party, all of them or majority of them will instead aspire to become part of the leaders of the new party.
‘Certainly, if that happens, the new party can guarantee collegiate leadership similar to what we had in second republic political parties especially the NPN. Failure to have that could simply mean that the new party risked being oriented in old ways with political culture of imposition becoming dominant.”
