A former Senator and human rights activist, Shehu Sani, says the opposition’s coalition targetted at unseating President Bola Tinubu in 2027 is dead on arrival.
Sani, who represented Kaduna Central Senatorial District in the Eighth Senate, stated this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria on Sunday in Abuja.
He said even though it’s within the democratic rights of Nigerians to organise themselves into a coalition, the credentials of those championing the present coalition course had shown very clearly that the move would be in a total fiasco.
\`Yes, any country or government without opposition can easily slide into a dictatorship or one-party state.
“If everyone goes into one political party and there is nobody to challenge the government or hold the government to account, our government could be run aground.
“We need a coalition and we need a credible opposition; a credible opposition should not be a canopy of frustrated and angry people, whose interest is not the country or the people, but their own selfish interest.
There are people in this coalition whose presence will give you ghost pimples. Someone like the former governor of Kaduna State, Nasiru El-Rufai.
“He is not a clean political figure that came out of the trenches; he is not someone who has never been in government.
“Nigeria just celebrated 26 years of democracy, and El-Rufai was the Director-General of the Bureau of Public Enterprises for four years, minister for four years, governor for eight years, and so why did he not achieve all those things he is saying now while in office?” he queried.
Sani said that if one had been in the office for almost 20 years and the person is in their mid-sixties, such a person should be thankful to God because millions of people wanted to get what such a person was taking for granted.
He said though former Vice-President Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, one of the opposition figures, had the constitutional right to contest, he should not contest the 2027 presidential election.
Sani said that Atiku should allow a southerner to contest and serve out the turn of the South, saying by doing that, he would have the moral right to seek the support of the South in 2031.
“As someone who has been in the political realm more than many other politicians, he should know that there are consequences for contesting elections every other time and losing.
“Atiku should not allow himself to be seen as a face of failure. He should rather be a good mathematician and a good hunter who knows when it is right to contest elections.
“When you have someone from the north who spent eight years in office and a southerner just spent four years in office, and you are in the opposition, you have to present someone from the south as your party’s candidate.
”You don’t build an opposition on the foundation of frustration and non-inclusion. All those things El-Rufai is saying about Tinubu are because he failed the ministerial test.
“If he were made a minister today, he would have been one of the vociferous attackers of anyone who says anything against Tinubu.
“Now he has reached a point whereby his utterances lack decorum, no restraint, and you can see anger, frustration, and even desperation on his face.
“He has moved away from pinpointing areas where the government is not doing well to personal attacks on Mr President, and when one has reached such a level, it is more of an exhibition of anger than playing opposition roles,” he said.
The former senator said that if Atiku ventured into contesting the 2027 presidential election, he would be greeted with a lot of controversies.
“Atiku has a lot of good political credentials. For instance, when, as activists, we were in prison in the 90s, he was in touch with us.
“I happened to share the same prison at Kirikiri, Lagos with the late Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, who was Atiku’s mentor, and Uba Sani was the contact between us and the outside world at that time,” he recalled.
According to him, the strategies being employed by the coalition cannot fetch those behind it any results.
“For instance, the coalition ought to be looking at sectoral performances of the government to win support from the masses; rather, they are attacking the government aimlessly.
“Unfortunately, El-Rufai, as a governor in Kaduna, left with a bad record.
“He treated the people from Southern Kaduna viciously, sacking thousands of teachers without paying them, sacking thousands of civil servants, disobeying court orders, and arresting journalists and activists, and imprisoning them.
“El-Rufai left a mountain of debts and a series of uncompleted projects, among other infractions, and yet, coming now to preach about good governance, sanity, and peace,” he said.
In his recent endorsement for Senate in 2027 by members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Kaduna State, he said that if local political mathematics favoured him, he would contest for the Kaduna Central senatorial district election again in 2027.
“Contesting elections, for someone who has been there and is not a novice, you will be experienced on how to navigate the landmines there.
“Such a person won’t be a poster politician who is going to paste his posters everywhere and start visiting markets and eating food in the restaurants.
“If you have been there once, you will know the truth and the deception, the falsehoods, the possibilities, and the risks.
“Whoever you see emerging as a candidate of a political party is a product of a local political mathematics, influences, and consultations.
“So if that favours me, certainly, I can offer myself for that in 2027,” Sani said.
