Considering the reaction of the main opposition parties’ leaders to the Independence Day speech of President Bola Tinubu, I think I’m beginning to see the lineaments of the campaign for the 2027 general election. The shape the campaigns would take is getting clear. This is why I’m returning once again to a theme I have pursued in this space and on which I have commented at least twice in the last five weeks or thereabouts. I’m talking about the nature of the 2027 presidential campaign. While the energy (so far low-key) brought to it may be different, what may not be different is the quality of the debates, which is not likely to be elevated.
The leading opposition candidates seeking to unseat the president do not look ready to stay on message. That’s if they have any message other than the ad hominem utterances they retail to their followers. I have mentioned the opposition candidates not so much because I believe the next election would be a coronation for the president or that the party in power has no need to justify its programme. It is rather because it is the opposition that is at this point claiming to sell an alternative vision and offering change to the people. The ruling party can stay on its Renewed Hope agenda and simply continue to call attention to the milestones it believes it has achieved in three and a half years.
And that was precisely what the president did in his Independence Day address by itemising the highlights of his administration’s programme and explaining to Nigerians how we got to the position where we are right now, with the key reforms of removing the subsidy on petrol, unifying the foreign exchange market, and enabling the floatation of the naira. These are the steps that have headlined the activities of the Tinubu administration since it came into office. They are the culprits Nigerians have held responsible for their immiseration and the parlous state of the economy. These policies are, not surprisingly, the target of the opposition leaders, who have in their different ways vowed to roll them back. Since they must posture as people who know the essence of politics, the address they gave in response to the president’s speech is much in line with democratic practices elsewhere. It is what the rebuttal speech of opposition parties’ leaders to the State of the Union address of an American president is all about. It is a practice that dates back to the 1960s.
In the Nigerian case, one of the opposition leaders said outright that he would restore the subsidy on petrol and was only forced to clarify (split hairs is more like what he did) his position days later when Nigerians questioned the practicality of his plan. It was then that he qualified his claim and restricted his planned subsidy restoration to a so-called production side of the oil sector. The other candidate, who initially said he would not restore the subsidy on petrol, shortly after had to over explain what he meant, perhaps after he observed what seemed like a positive response in some quarters to his counterpart’s promise. At least it generated national conversation that apparently drew attention, if not momentum, to that first candidate’s campaign. The other said he would remove the subsidy on petrol after he had fought and defeated corruption. Which is another example of his typical verbiage. In this instance, it is a time-wasting, circuitous way of saying he would not restore petrol subsidy.
Or how else, or when, does he hope to put an end to corruption in his government, not to mention ending corruption in Nigeria? In summary, therefore, the attitude of these two men and their supporters to the campaign was made clear by their responses to President Tinubu’s October 1 speech. What one of them did was to tread the same old path of issuing what basically amounts to promissory notes. He repeated the worn lines of his insanely outlandish promises. Either approach of these two opposition candidates—I won’t call it strategy, because there was none to it—smacks of desperation. The boring repetitiveness of their message at different fora is jarring. There you have the summary of the respective stance of each of these candidates. Their responses to the president’s speech were remarkable precisely for their emptiness.
In the case of the ADC presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, the only thing that many observing Nigerians came away with was the former VP’s attempt at mudslinging. He repeatedly and disrespectfully calls the president by his first name. It was unbecoming behaviour that diminished the gravity of the occasion, not his speech, which I have said was remarkable for its emptiness. Huge on grandiloquence, it offered no concrete alternative and, quite deservedly, received no praise. As were the whataboutisms of Paul Ibe, his media sidekick, who doubled down on his master’s unpresidential antics.
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