Senator Shehu Sani has predicted a sweeping victory for President Bola Tinubu in the 2027 elections if opposition parties fail to unite under a coalition.
Sani, a former lawmaker and chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), said on Thursday, May 8, that recent defections into the ruling party and internal divisions within the opposition signalled trouble ahead for Atiku Abubakar’s proposed alliance.
“There is no way you can evict a ruling party without a coalition,” Sani told journalists in Abuja. “It’s only on that basis that the opposition political parties can sacrifice their own individual and narrow political interests and ambition for the general good of democracy in the country.”
He noted that the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Labour Party, and New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) have so far distanced themselves from any alliance talks.
“If the opposition parties will go to the battle without an alliance, merger or any form of coalition, there is no doubt about it, that APC will have a landslide victory in the 2027 election,” he said.
“But if they come together, they will win many seats and will make a very strong impact in the political realm. They lost the 2023 election because of lack of unity, and they are likely to lose this election if they refuse to come together.
“If the opposition parties refuse to come together and form an alliance or coalition, it is a done deal for us (APC).”
He added that ideology plays little role in party loyalty in Nigeria, which explains the ease of defections.
“Parties are simply vehicles for people to realize their own political ambitions. If you look at all the manifestos of the party, they all look alike.
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“So, anybody can move from any party to another party without losing anything. And the only thing is that the party differs from each other by their names and not by their own ideology or philosophy,” he said.
Sani argued that the blame for mass defections does not lie with Tinubu or the APC.
“If a party is shut down against you, there’s no way you can continue to function in that party. So, it is not the problem of Asiwaju to protect opposition party and to make sure that people don’t migrate away from them, it is the opposition party themselves that need to convince and protect their members from moving to other political parties,” he said.
According to him, the implosion within the PDP, in particular, is driving its members into the APC.
“A one-party state is a state where you have a law that prescribes one party, but this is a multi party democracy, and most of the reasons why people are living in the opposition party, is not pull back factors, but push factors,” he said.
“They have been pushed away because of internal crisis, the internal crisis in the PDP, and their inability to resolve it led to the situation where we are today, because this is a party that has about two national secretaries.
“The Supreme Court gave judgment, but that judgment was neither here nor there. So if you have a party that has a leadership problem.
“The danger of you staying there is that the time for primary elections will come and you will have two factions laying claim to it. So from which of the factions are you going to collect form and fill?
“So there is a likelihood of more defections away from the PDP, because a first time governor in the PDP will not be sure whether he will be given a ticket, a senator in PDP will not also be sure whether he will get the ticket. So these are the factors that we have now, and I don’t think it’s going to change in the foreseeable future.”