The leader of the G100 political pressure group and chieftain of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Salihu Lukman, has acknowledged that convincing opposition presidential hopefuls, including Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar, to work together ahead of the 2027 general election will be challenging.
Lukman made the disclosure on Arise Television’s Morning Show on Tuesday while discussing the group’s efforts to bring opposition parties and their presidential candidates together under a common political platform.
According to him, the major obstacle remains the presidential ambitions of the leading opposition figures, as each candidate and their supporters are determined to secure the ticket for their preferred contender.
“The point you raise is really a very serious issue, and all that we keep saying, which we emphasise, each one of them wants to be president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, but only one of them can be president,” Lukman said.
He described the task of managing the competing interests and loyalties within the opposition as “a very difficult task”, but said the G100 was encouraging the candidates and their supporters to put the broader objective of challenging the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) ahead of individual ambitions.
Lukman warned that allowing the opposition to remain divided could produce a similar outcome to the 2023 presidential election.
“If we encourage them to go in this divided way, we will repeat what happened in 2023 and come back to square one,” he said.
The ADC chieftain maintained that opposition parties needed to build a strong political force capable of giving Nigerians an alternative and mounting a serious challenge to President Bola Tinubu and the APC.
“The main opponent is the APC and President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. That is the main opponent. If we encourage them to continue to contest against each other, it will strengthen the main opponent,” he said.
Lukman explained that the G100 was pursuing discussions with opposition leaders on two key fronts: encouraging them to negotiate a common presidential platform and developing a shared governance agenda should they defeat the APC in 2027.
“The second level when they win the election, what are they going to work on? These are the two issues that we are pushing,” Lukman said.
He stressed that any proposed opposition alliance should not be limited to replacing those currently in government, but should also provide Nigerians with clear solutions to the country’s challenges.
“It’s not about changing faces in government. It’s about also coming up to say, look, at the end of the day, we acknowledge Nigeria is faced with this problem, and this is how we intend to tackle it,” he said.
Lukman added that the group had received “encouraging signals” from some opposition leaders but acknowledged that time was running out ahead of the 2027 election.