2027: Opposition to name single presidential candidate before polls – Lukman

The convener of the G100 political pressure group, Salihu Lukman, has said opposition parties working in alliance with the group will announce a single presidential candidate for the 2027 general elections, possibly only days before the poll.

Lukman, a former National Vice Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), spoke on Channels Television’s programme, Hard Copy.

“I can tell you categorically, and my confidence about that comes from what I see in the leadership of the parties: they are committed and they are working, taking all the steps necessary.

“So it could be two months, some weeks to the election, or a few days to the election; they will come out and tell Nigerians this is the direction, and everybody will queue”, he said.

According to him, the effort has gone beyond the six parties currently involved. “They are also working to expand; they are reaching out to other parties,” he said.

The G100 was formed to push the opposition towards a united front after an all-opposition summit in Ibadan in April 2026 resolved to field a consensus candidate against the ruling APC.

Lukman said the parties and their candidates have since taken over the process from the group.

“When the parties owned the process we had started and took it beyond, took it out of our hands and began to engage each other based on the need to develop the kind of confidence they need to trust one another,” he said.

He identified the biggest obstacle as “the trust deficit among even the parties and the candidates.”

He explained that a summit on August 31 “agreed to have five working groups, and one of the working groups is the one that will work on that single consensus candidate.”

Each party, he said, will nominate members into the group, either through its candidate or through the party itself, under agreed terms of reference.

“The collegiate is basically about ensuring that both the parties and their candidates are the ones taking the decisions, and at the same time the people doing the work are people who have the mandate of both the parties and the candidates, not anybody from outside,” he said.

Asked how the group would handle supporters of Peter Obi, Atiku Abubakar and the Kwankwasiyya movement, who have shown no sign of yielding, Lukman said rigid positions help the ruling party.

“Taking a hardline position, a rigid position, is almost like working for the APC and the Tinubu government at this point,” he said.

He said many signatories to the G100’s open letter support Obi or Atiku, but that the group has told them “the country is superior to any individual.”

Lukman said John Cardinal Onaiyekan recently made the same point on Channels Television, that opposition candidates cannot split votes five ways and expect one of them to defeat a ruling party.

“The arithmetic is simple: you can’t split votes five ways and expect victory in one of you,” Lukman said.

On the differing manifestos of the parties, including the Social Democratic Party (SDP) candidate’s pledge of a 300 naira starting pump price for petrol, Lukman said the group would not merge documents.

“It’s not harmonising manifestos; it’s basically to come up with a minimum programme of action which the government to be produced post-2027 will prioritise implementing,” he said.

He said all candidates would subscribe to the programme in advance, so that “in the event that any of them emerge as the candidate there is no debate.”

Lukman said much of the groundwork already exists, since the candidates’ campaigns have developed their own positions.

“I’m sure the Peter Obi campaign has also done some work; I am also sure Prince Adewole Adebayo and all the other candidates have also done their own work,” he said.

He said the outcome could be “ADC, it could be any other party, or it could be an alliance that will produce a new party,” and added: “I don’t have ambition to contest election and I don’t have ambition to hold any appointive or elective office.”

Warning candidates against clinging to their tickets, Lukman said: “Politicians can lie to themselves, and at the end of the day let the candidates continue to hang on to their candidature; at the end of the day only one person will be president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”

Lukman also addressed his withdrawal of membership of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), which he attributed to internal issues in Kaduna and said he has now resumed membership of the party.

He said he feared the party was “shifting to a direction where we will end up reproducing the old parties we have left.”