By Ambrose Amos
A split has occurred between former President Olusegun Obasanjo and key leaders of the emerging opposition coalition, G100, over the modalities for the emergence of a single presidential candidate who will slug it out with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in the January 2027 election.
The group announced last week that it was working on processes that would see to the emergence of a single presidential candidate among the opposition to face President Tinubu in the January 16 presidential and National Assembly election.
In the statement made public in Abuja, the group said that it was working on all the opposition presidential hopefuls to drop their ambition in favour of a single candidate who would be backed to tackle Tinubu in 2027.
A visit to President Olusegun Obasano on Sunday by Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State, who is the presidential candidate of the Allied People’s Movement (APM), alongside the former governor of Ekiti State, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, and his counterpart in Osun State, Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola, said to be in furtherance of the planned emergence of a single opposition candidate has however produced what sources called mixed feelings.
Though Governor Makinde, in a Facebook post after the visit to Obasanjo in Abeokuta, said that the meeting focused on a wide range of national issues, sources have said that there was a sharp split between the visitors and Obasanjo on the way forward towards achieving a single opposition candidate for the 2027 election.
According to sources, the meeting centred on strategies to bring the opposition candidates together and plans to win the January election.
It was learnt that the visiting team had briefed Obasanjo on the plans and that they were in town to solicit the former President’s support on the plan to produce a single opposition candidate to face Tinubu.
Said a source: “The visitors said that they came to solicit Obasanjo’s support to join them in the plan to bring the major opposition political parties together ahead of the 2027 election. They told Obasanjo that he should rely less on Peter Obi as the possible candidate because he may not enjoy the much-needed national spread and may no longer have the magic of patronage he had among the youths in 2023.”
Another source said that at that point, Obasanjo interjected and made it clear that he would not support the emergence of someone like Atiku AbubaAkar, his former vice president.
“At a stage, Obasanjo interrupted one of the visitors and immediately rejected the possibility of Atiku Abubakar as the opposition candidate,” the source said, while refusing to give details of Obasanjo’s refusal to back Atiku in 2027. The source, however, said that the former President was not opposed to the idea of the emergence of a single and “acceptable” presidential candidate among the opposition.
“It is not that OBJ is opposed to the idea of a single opposition candidate. He actually agreed to support the idea of a well-acceptable candidate, who could wrestle power from President Tinubu in 2027,” the source added.
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