Tinubu will be difficult to dislodge in 2027, Sule Lamido admits
A former governor of Jigawa State, Alhaji Sule Lamido, has admitted that the effort to unseat President Bola Tinubu in the 2027 general elections is a challenging and difficult one.
Lamido, a founding member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and ex-minister of Foreign Affairs, said with President Tinubu’s firm grip on power among other factors, the chances of the main opposition party to wrest power from the incumbent are slim.
The former governor described President Tinubu as a very daring, self-made man, who owes his emergence to nobody in Nigeria. He said Tinubu ‘was adept at studying the system, manipulating it. He exploited it and he did it well’.
He told the Nigerian Tribune that the PDP is making the effort to win the 2027 elections, despite the challenges facing the party: “We are working hard, but it is a huge task. It is going to be difficult with Tinubu, with his hold on the country, on the economy, and his audacity to say this is where I stand against Nigeria’s interest. It is something else. Tinubu is very daring; he is his own creation, he is a self-made man, right from Chicago, what he went through on the streets.
“Look at how he was able to fight the Alliance for Democracy and Afenifere and then Obasanjo. At the APC convention, Buhari was against him but he defeated Buhari. What are you talking about? Don’t underestimate a man like that. Look at how he made it in life. He confronted all obstacles to get to where he is today, at the apex. There is no Nigerian like Tinubu who has been there on his own. Every established political arrangement, every institution, he demolished them. Now that he is in charge, he is not going to be easy to deal with. With Tinubu, Nigeria is a fiefdom, Tinubu is the emperor. And if you watch him closely, he doesn’t care,” Lamido stated.
Alhaji Lamido berated former President Muhammadu Buhari, describing him as naive for his inability to apply the right political calculation to pick his successor.
He went on: “Prior to the convention, he (Tinubu) was in Abeokuta, Ogun State, where he boasted that it was his turn to rule Nigeria. And Buhari, very naive, was watching. He never liked Tinubu. There was somebody he wanted. He didn’t even trust his own vice president, Professor (Yemi) Osinbajo; he wanted Ahmed Lawan, but his calculation was absurd. You have done eight years for the North and you wanted another Northerner for another eight years?! No. Maybe later but there are some dynamics which you can’t alter, not in Nigeria of today.
“The president of Nigeria, after being in office for eight years, lacked the courage to push through his anointed choice. He was there at the convention and Tinubu that he never liked, he never believed in emerged. Tinubu knows that his victory wasn’t from Buhari, therefore, he owes him nothing. He wasn’t the choice of Afenifere, Obasanjo never liked him, but he became president. All the other groups, including the governors, were there but he won. He was determined to demolish all obstacles and he crushed them”.
Lamido lamented that the PDP’s problem is compounded by its members, who are working for the APC.
“We have people who are anti-PDP. Imagine people like Ortom (former Benue State governor) saying ‘our leader, Wike, has said we will vote Tinubu in 2027’. Imagine someone in the PDP saying he is going to take a cue from Wike to vote Tinubu in 2027. People who are in the PDP are also working for the APC and Tinubu. So, it is a very difficult thing. We are working hard to find people who share a similar concern because those in the party who are now in government are not on the same frequency with us.
“If you have those in government who share same frequency with us, we can confidently say yes, but it depends on who you can you identify and we are doing that,” he emphasized.
