Duke: A Divided Opposition Cannot Defeat Tinubu

Donald Duke delivered a blunt warning to Nigeria’s opposition parties: replacing Bola Tinubu is not enough to win the 2027 presidential election. Unless the parties agree on what they want to do with power, he said, their effort will remain divided and ineffective.

Duke, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Redemption Party, spoke in Abuja during a media interaction as opposition parties opened fresh negotiations on a possible common front. The meeting was convened by the G-100 political pressure group and included representatives of six parties: the African Democratic Congress, Allied Peoples Movement, Nigeria Democratic Congress, Peoples Democratic Party, Social Democratic Party and PRP.

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If that were the common objective, just taking the president out of office, I won’t be part of it.

Duke said the opposition first needed to agree on a shared vision, then determine how to communicate it and choose the strongest leader to present it. “If that were the common objective, just taking the president out of office, I won’t be part of it,” he said. “The objective must be a vision that all of us can key and identify with.”

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The objective must be a vision that all of us can key and identify with.

He argued that simply replacing Tinubu with another candidate would not put Nigeria on a path of progress. “Someone will get elected, and if the only thing is to replace Bola Tinubu with X Y Z, we’re not moving anywhere,” Duke said.

Duke also pointed to the opposition’s performance in 2023. He said Tinubu won because his challengers were divided, adding that Atiku Abubakar’s 6.9 million votes and Peter Obi’s 6.2 million votes would have exceeded Tinubu’s eight million if combined. In his view, Nigeria’s presidential system requires a major opposition capable of checking the power of the president.

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Someone will get elected, and if the only thing is to replace Bola Tinubu with X Y Z, we’re not moving anywhere.