Atiku, Obi, Kwankwaso Supporters Agree Opposition Must Unite Immediately Behind Three Different People

Nigeria’s opposition politics has entered another episode of its favourite television series: “Who Will Step Down for the Greater Good?” This time, the Igbo Heroes and Icons Foundation has entered the conversation with a straightforward suggestion: forget all the meetings, negotiations and political calculations and simply adopt Peter Obi as the consensus candidate for the 2027 presidential election. The group says Obi’s record, competence, integrity and experience make him the best person to lead the opposition into the election.

Honestly, it is a very Nigerian solution to a very Nigerian problem.

Everybody has agreed that the opposition needs one candidate. The only small issue is that everybody also appears to have a candidate they would like that one candidate to be.

Atiku has his supporters. Obi has his supporters. Kwankwaso has his people. Other politicians are also looking at the presidential seat with the kind of interest Nigerians normally reserve for the last piece of chicken at a family party.

And now somebody has walked into the room and said, “Can we just use Peter?”

The timing is particularly interesting because opposition parties have already started the process of negotiating a common candidate. Six parties recently agreed to develop a framework for selecting one presidential candidate to challenge the APC, with a four-week deadline for working groups to produce recommendations. But Atiku and Obi were notably absent from that initial summit.

Which means the people trying to decide who should become the one opposition candidate are currently doing so without two of the people Nigerians would most expect to be sitting at the table.

That is like organising a wedding meeting and discovering that the bride and groom are both unavailable.

The foundation, however, is not asking Nigerians to conduct another endless political negotiation. It believes Obi should simply be the man around whom the opposition rallies, pointing to his record as Anambra governor and arguing that his financial management and leadership experience make him suitable for the job.

There is also the familiar arithmetic behind the argument. The opposition has spent months discussing how the votes of Atiku, Obi and other candidates were divided in 2023, allowing Tinubu to emerge with a plurality.

Everybody now agrees that splitting the opposition vote is dangerous.

The problem is that agreeing on the problem has never been Nigeria’s difficult part.

It is agreeing on who gets the chair.

Because somebody will eventually have to sacrifice ambition for unity.