Opposition coalition against Tinubu doomed to fail - Yakasai
The Director-General of the Tinubu Support Group (TSG), Dr. Umar Tanko Yakasai, has declared that the emerging opposition coalition aiming to unseat President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in the 2027 general elections is bound to collapse, citing a lack of public trust and credibility among its promoters.
Addressing journalists in Abuja over the weekend, Yakasai said the coalition, made up of political actors with questionable records, would not gain traction with Nigerians, many of whom remember the failures of the opposition when they held power.
“In Nigeria, we have seen that after every election, the losers tend to cry the loudest even when they performed abysmally when given the opportunity to serve the people.
“What APC has come to do is to clear the mess of past misgovernance by the Peoples Democratic Party for 16 years,”Yakasai said.
He pointed to past scandals during the PDP era to bolster his argument, including the disappearance of $16 billion earmarked for power infrastructure and the Halliburton bribery scandal, which led to a conviction in the United States but no major prosecutions in Nigeria.
“You can remember that it was in this country that $16 billion meant for power infrastructure went missing, it was in this country that we had the Halliburton scandal for which an American senator was jailed but collaborators in Nigeria have not faced the law,” Yakasai stated.
He warned that the opposition’s lack of a unifying agenda beyond their shared desire for power would ultimately doom any attempted alliance.
“It is easy for coalitions to meet because of their interests but when it comes to time to agree, they will naturally disagree because that is in their character. In any case, when coalition meets, many of their members have been moving into APC in droves,” he said.
Yakasai dismissed fears that Nigeria was slipping into a one-party system amid a flurry of defections to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), noting that party-switching occurs in all directions in a democracy.
He argued that President Tinubu’s administration has made bold economic reforms that demonstrate a seriousness of purpose absent in previous governments.
Chief among these, he said, was the removal of the fuel subsidy and the unification of foreign exchange windows.
“The first major achievement of this administration is to do away with the unsustainable fuel subsidy that became a monster consuming resources, billions of Naira, that would have been used for national development but ended up in the pockets of a few individuals.
“The second thing is that streamlining of the parallel foreign exchange market which hitherto saw a few connected persons doing round-tripping—getting foreign currency from the Central Bank and instead of using it for manufacturing or industry, they go and sell to forex dealers in the black market”, Yakasai noted.
According to Yakasai, these measures were crucial in halting what he described as the “destruction” of Nigeria’s economic system and have laid the foundation for sustainable growth.
Looking ahead, the TSG Director-General urged Nigerians to be patient and continue supporting the administration, assuring them of significant improvements in infrastructure, healthcare, education, and the economy as Tinubu’s reforms take full effect.
“They should exercise patience and continue to support President Tinubu. I can guarantee them that by the time the various policies take full effect, there will be a lot of benefits that will come to Nigerians in terms of road network, health infrastructure, education, security, and significant improvement in the economy,” he said.
He also emphasized the importance of continuity, stating that the true fruits of the reforms would only be visible if Tinubu is re-elected.
“You can’t start reforms and stop them midway, some of them require continuity for them to fully mature. Nigerians should remember that even other presidential candidates had equally promised to remove petrol subsidy, but the problem is that they would not have managed the consequences as professionally as President Tinubu is doing.
“As such, Nigerians should be patient and Insha Allah, there will be more progress and it is only when you guarantee continuity that you will see full results and manifest success in the next two years; moreso when President Bola Tinubu comes back for a second term”, Yakasai said.
Yakasai, who oversees various pro-Tinubu support groups across the country, reiterated his confidence that Nigerians would ultimately choose stability and continuity over recycled political figures who, according to him, squandered their chance at governance in the past.
