September 02, (THEWILL) – Nigeria’s three leading opposition figures, Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi, and Rabiu Kwankwaso, have reactivated talks about a potential merger to unseat President Bola Tinubu, in the 2027 presidential election.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) deputy national spokesperson, Ibrahim Abdullahi, disclosed this on Monday when he was featured on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily programme.
Abdullahi said the opposition candidates from the last election, Atiku Abubakar of the PDP, Peter Obi of the Labour Party, and Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP), are considering setting aside personal interests to form a united front capable of challenging the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), in 2027.
He recalled that had the PDP leadership managed differences and party conflicts well, high-ranking chieftains like former Rivers State governor Nyesom Wike, Kwankwaso, and Peter Obi, would still be full-blooded members of the PDP and the party would have defeated Bola Tinubu and the APC in the last election.
“We’ve lost Kwankwaso, we’ve lost Peter Obi, all of these people, imagine if they are in the party, we will have gone to win the elections.
“This APC said they defeated us with one million plus (votes), just one of these names that I mentioned would have covered that gap for us and we would have been in power today and certainly Nigerians would not have been confronted with this despair and despondency in the land”, said Abdullahi.
Asked if the PDP is trying to get Obi, Kwankwaso, Wike, and others back into the party, Abdullahi said:
“Sure, the discussion is ongoing. You will see Peter Obi discussing with Atiku, you will see Peter Obi meeting with (Nasir) El-Rufai. Party management is a very difficult thing and we are doing the best in the quagmire that we have found ourselves in. Rest assured, there would be light at the end of the tunnel. We have learnt our lessons in a bitter way.”
When asked what would happen if Obi and the others returned to the PDP, he said:
‘’One of them would concede to the other and then we would have a direction. Our concern as a party and to these people that I have mentioned is to ensure that we salvage Nigerians from this despair and despondency, between maladies of hunger and frightening insecurity in the land. You could see cluelessness and ineptitude on the part of these people managing this country.”
Meanwhile, the African Action Congress presidential candidate in the 2023 general election, Omoyele Sowore, had said he would not join any alliance proposed by Atiku, Obi and Kwankwaso.
