*Photo: Professor Kehinde Yusuf*
On 17 November, 2024, this column examined the below-par performance of Nigeria’s opposition parties in an article titled “Nigeria’s somnolent opposition.” Moreover, on 28 June, 2026, in a piece on “PDP’s legal labyrinths,” the column dwelt on the debilitating litigations of the Peoples Democratic Party.
These legal labyrinths have been linked with wrong decisions, especially by the PDP Governors’ Forum, which party chieftain Nyesom Wike, the current Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, identified as including the hijack of the party’s national structure and processes, contempt for democratic norms, sidelining key stakeholders of the PDP, taking party decisions without due consultation and in disregard of the PDP constitution, and willfully disobeying court orders.
Another PDP chieftain, Segun Sowunmi, had similarly noted as follows on 19 November, 2025, in an interview on News Central TV related with the 15 to 16 November, 2025 PDP convention in Ibadan: “People don’t go to a convention divided. They go to a convention either to go and contest or to go and affirm in a consensus manner. Before you can do a consensus in a convention, you would have followed the minimum … benchmark of transparency and fairness. You can’t withhold forms; keep them to yourself; do the zoning all by yourself; pretend as if you have control of the entire play; refuse to sell forms to those who will be willing and interested in buying.”
Sowunmi enumerated some other self-defeating PDP actions as including to “pretend as if Justice Omotosho did not give very clear judgement and orders [stopping the convention from holding until some remedial actions had been taken]; pretend as if Justice Lifu did not give [similar] clear judgement and orders; run on a forum shopping spree in Oyo where maybe you have a bit of influence; get an expert to tell you that you can continue [in spite of the court judgements and orders]; proceed to the place without being able to carry all your governors along; … and embark on a vindictive suspension and expulsion of some people you don’t like without getting all of the others to buy into the idea.”
Wike was of the view that in behaving with impunity as mentioned above, PDP was acting as if it were a ruling party and not an opposition party which had the onus of convincing the electorate to replace the APC with it. In a 14 November, 2025 interview with Channels Television, Sowunmi wondered, in the light of the hardened stance of the party’s feuding factions: “I don’t know how stubbornness is going to work in front of the law.”
Such stubbornness may have caused the party not to take the good counsel of the Appeal Court in Ibadan to settle the PDP leadership crisis out of court, since, in the widely reported advice of the court given by Justice Biobele Georgewill in a hearing on 6 March, 2026, the PDP situation was “a family affair gone sour.” More explicitly, on 11 March, 2026, the Justice Georgewill-led Appeal Court alerted the party as follows, as reported by The Cable, for example: “The court has granted leave for settlement in this matter. Also, the case has been adjourned sine die to allow all the parties to meet, either individually or collectively, to resolve the case pending before the appellate court peacefully.”
The Cable also reported the Appeal Court to have alerted: “All the parties involved should be mindful of the election timetable as released by the INEC. The counsel of the various parties being represented here are in the best position to advise the parties that they are representing. The court should be duly informed through writing of the decision reached, whether they agreed or disagreed on the terms of settlement. To this end, all the pending motions on notice in this case have been adjourned sine die.” Unfortunately, the PDP did not take advantage of this judicial goodwill. Like PDP, virtually all of the other opposition parties have been walking into legal labyrinths, as Julius Abure, factional National Chairman of Labour Party, and Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim, factional presidential aspirant of Accord Party, have noted recently.
What may also be called labyrinths of ambition – the self-defeating tendency for an unwieldy number of members of a party to be obsessed with their personal ambitions to be the presidential candidate of the party – has bedevilled the opposition. In fact, in a 31 July, 2026 Arise News interview, Salihu Lukman, an ADC chieftain, worryingly asked rhetorically: “Is the personal ambition of leaders in the opposition far more important than the destiny of the country, rescuing the country? Are the opposition leaders unable to approach this challenge with the need to make personal sacrifices in such a way that they can be united and we can confront this election? … But, the way we are going about it, I’m frustrated. I must be honest.”
One clear year ago, Dr. Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed, the vice-presidential candidate to Mr. Peter Obi of Labour Party in the 2023 elections, made a similar point about the ADC-based coalition of prominent opposition figures in a 3 July, 2025 interview with Daily Trust, when he asked rhetorically: “[Is] there anyone … 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 own candidacy. … But what did Tinubu do? … He stayed committed for 16 years and took it in 2023. Tinubu gave Atiku the ACN [presidential candidacy] in 2007. Gave it to Ribadu in 2011. Backed Buhari in 2015. And waited until 2023 to take it himself.”
In a 23 May, 2026 interview with Seun Okinbaloye of Channels Television, U.S.-based Professor of Communication, Farooq Kperogi, noted about Nigeria’s opposition conundrum: “[If] not for the indwelling optimism of politicians, why would you think that Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi, Kwankwaso, Goodluck Jonathan and all these other people who belong to the same political tendency [but] are now splintered and are fighting each other more fiercely than they are fighting Tinubu [can win]? … They are more trenchant in their strikes against each other than they are [against Tinubu].” So, Kperogi predicts wittily: “Tinubu won’t win; the opposition would lose. So, it’s the loss of the opposition by default [that will give] victory to Tinubu.”
The opposition have also veered into a series of credibility labyrinths manifested by the lack of a coordinated joint manifesto or even individual party or presidential-candidate-specific manifestoes worthy of being taken serious. For example, flipflopping, Peter Obi told Rufai Oseni in a 20 July, 2026 Nevon HQ interview: “In 4 years, we will generate, transmit and distribute at least 10,000 megawatts of electricity …;” but in another interview with Seun Okinbaloye on Channels Television on 26 July, 2026, Obi said: “I will not tell them [Nigerians] I’m going to give them reliable, stable 24-hour [electricity] within 4 years. It’s impossible.”
The opposition’s credibility deficit has also been shown in the acrimonious primary elections conducted by the different parties towards the 2027 general elections. In particular, in the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), Aisha Yesufu, the fiery Peter Obi supporter who contested in the senatorial primaries, lamented that the process lacked transparency, did not follow due process and witnessed gross manipulation. Another aspirant, Hon. Ehiozuwa Agbonayinma, noted, in a 5 June, 2026 Channels Television interview, that he thought APC was bad, but that from what he experienced in the NDC primaries, his defection from APC and joining NDC was “like leaving from frying pan to hellfire.”
Furthermore, the credibility labyrinths within which the opposition parties have walked are in acting in ways which question whether they set much store by sovereign pride. For example, on 31 August, 2025, the presidential candidate of ADC, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, called on the international community to intervene in the country regarding the 30 August, 2025 Local Government elections in Rivers State. Moreover, on 18 November, 2025, the factional National Chairman of PDP, Kabiru Tanimu Turaki (SAN) invited President Trump to intervene in the internal dispute of the party to resolve the question of who the rightful Chairman of the party was.
In addition, on 5 March, 2026, the National Chairman of Allied Peoples Movement (APM), Alhaji Yusuf Mamman Dantalle, acting in his capacity as the Chairman of the Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC), threatened to report Nigeria to the international community over the group’s dissatisfaction with some aspects of the 2026 electoral act. Most recently, on 13 July, 2026, APM’s presidential candidate for the 2027 elections, Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State, invited the United Nations to investigate the abduction of over forty students and teachers in the Oriire Local Government Area of the state which he insinuated had been planned to undermine his presidential ambition. The successful rescue of the surviving victims, as coordinated by federal agencies, unfortunately resulted in the deaths of some security personnel.
The above-mentioned sovereignty-undermining actions were coupled with the tendency by some of the members of the opposition and their supporters to go overseas to de-market Nigeria, as Peter Obi of NDC and former President Olusegun Obasanjo have done a number of times. In other words, significant sections of the Nigerian opposition have been actively, internationally denigrating a country they have been paradoxically striving to govern through democratic elections.
Quite recently, between 15 and 27 July, 2026, the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), the INEC-recognised faction of the PDP and the national leadership of Accord Party (including its gubernatorial candidate, the incumbent Governor Ademola Adeleke of Osun State), among other opposition parties, have been reported to have endorsed or adopted President Bola Ahmed Tinubu as their candidate for the 2027 presidential election. Among other reasons for their decision, these parties have cited the overall interest of the country, the recognition of talent across political parties by the president and the need to ensure the completion of life-changing infrastructural developments such as the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Road and the Sokoto-Badagry Highway.
In response to concerns raised about INEC by a delegation of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria on 29 July, 2026, President Tinubu remarked: “INEC … are neutral. They’ve never, never intimidated anybody. If political opponents are crying wolves, maybe they’re afraid of their own shadows and the uncertainty in the companies they keep. Not me.”
The opposition, to be sure, have consistently walked into legal labyrinths, have persistently got stuck in labyrinths of ambition and have kept veering detrimentally into unforced labyrinths of credibility.
This state of affairs, aggravated by the overwhelming defection of opposition party governors to the ruling APC, made Dr. Reuben Abati to remark as far back as 19 December, 2025 in an analysis on Arise News: “[The] 2027 election has already been won and lost.”