•All political parties believe their candidates can solve Nigeria’s problems —APP National Chairman
•Opposition leaders and candidates are enthusiastic; we will set up technical committees —Sergius Ogun
•They must form a front of consensus around three main political trajectories of the current administration —Aigbe
The G100’s ongoing efforts to rally opposition political parties and other stakeholders around a consensus presidential candidate ahead of the 2027 general elections may suffer a major setback, as prominent political actors raised serious concerns about the timing of the initiative, the emergence of candidates from different political parties, competing political ambitions and regional considerations.
While proponents of the initiative believe that opposition parties must work together to challenge President Bola Tinubu and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), critics argued that time may have passed to produce a consensus candidate, particularly since the political parties have already selected their presidential candidates and conveyed their names and running mates to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
However, all three respondents who spoke during separate interviews with Nigerian Tribune agreed that the opposition needs a strategy capable of avoiding the fragmentation of its votes, although they differed significantly on whether it is still possible to achieve a single presidential candidate.
While the APP National Chairman, Chief Uche Nnadi, described the proposal as difficult to realise, Hon. Sergius Ogun said the objective of the G100 goes beyond producing a candidate, while the Senior Program Officer of the Center for Democracy and Development (CDD), Comrade Austin Aigbe, urged the opposition to focus on a few important issues rather than simply seeking a consensus candidate.
Speaking exclusively to the Nigerian Tribune, the National Chairman of the People’s Action Party (APP), Chief Uche Nnadi, said the legal and political realities surrounding the 2027 elections would make the G100 proposal extremely difficult to achieve.
Nnadi noted that the G100 was not a political party recognized by law and could therefore not independently sponsor a presidential candidate, and stressed that its role could only be that of a pressure group involving registered political parties and their leaders.
“That is the beauty of democracy. Democracy is an opportunity for people to freely elect their leaders. But the group you just mentioned, the G100, unfortunately, is not one of the political parties recognized by law. We have 21 political parties in Nigeria,” he said.
According to him, only registered political parties can nominate candidates for the elections, meaning that the G100 would have to persuade existing political parties to harmonize their positions and adopt one of the already nominated candidates.
But he said such an agreement would be difficult because all parties had already concluded their presidential selection processes.
“But by any calendar, the time to finalize that consensus candidate has already passed. All the presidential candidates have emerged in different political parties. So it will be something very, very difficult to achieve because the political parties have already chosen their candidates at this point,” Nnadi said. He explained that the main obstacle was the confidence that each political party had in its own candidate, saying that the parties would not have nominated people if they did not believe that those candidates had the capacity to address Nigeria’s challenges.
“As of now, every political party that fielded its presidential candidates believes in the ability of its presidential candidates to solve Nigeria’s problem,” he said.
Nnadi also questioned the practical outcome of the previous opposition summit in Ibadan, noting that some prominent participants were already presidential candidates of different political parties. He said the fact that the candidates had their own platforms and political structures made it more complicated for a consensus candidate to emerge.
“The G100 is, first and foremost, rallying the opposition. Yes, perhaps the main reason would be to rally a presidential candidate, but even if we fail to do that, we want them to pool their resources to challenge the government in power today,” Ogun said.
While noting that the G100 was already making progress in uniting opposition parties, the Hon. Ogun, a member of the 9th House of Representatives, said the objective was not necessarily to force political parties to abandon their identities, but to create a mechanism by which they could jointly challenge the ruling administration while maintaining their separate structures for legislative elections.
For his part, Austin Aigbe, program manager at the Center for Democracy and Development (CDD), expressed greater reservations about the G100 strategy, stating that the opposition had lost the most favorable period to build a consensual presidential candidacy.
He argued that the opposition should have started the process much earlier, comparing it to the formation of the APC, which ultimately defeated the then ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2015 presidential election.
“The time for the G100 to meet has passed. You cannot wait until the candidates have moved on to pursue their ambitions and there it is, we are talking about the G100 to try to have a front of opposition to governance,” Aigbe said.
According to him, the opposition had previously missed opportunities to create a new political platform and subsequently adopted the African Democratic Congress (ADC), but controversies around the emerging opposition agreement had complicated efforts to build a genuinely independent front.
Aigbe argued that the strategy could replicate the approach taken by APC in 2015, when it built its campaign around a limited number of issues, including insecurity, the economy and corruption.
He also warned that regional considerations could complicate the emergence of a consensus candidate, particularly given the debate over whether power should remain in the South or return to the North after the current administration.
According to him, the large number of presidential candidates from the South, compared to the number from the North, could lead to a fragmented vote in the South and strengthen the position of the strongest candidate from the North.
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He therefore advised the G100 to be strategic and focus on the most electorally viable opposition candidates rather than trying to unite all presidential candidates.
“They know the opposition. They are only about five. They don’t need the 17. They only need about five. Because this race will end up becoming a three-horse race,” Aigbe said.
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