Why coalition against Tinubu will fail, by Yakassai
Opposition coalition against President Bola Ahmed Tinubu would fail due to lack of credibility among the promoters and public distrust, the Director-General of the Tinubu Support Group (TSG), Dr. Umar Tanko Yakasai, said yesterday.
Yakasai, son of the 99-year old elderstatesman Alhaji Tanko Yakassai, 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.
The TSG leader told reporters in Abuja that those mooting the idea of coalition once disappointed Nigerians when they had the opportunities to govern.
Yakasai said: “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.”
He highlighted the scandals that characterised the PDP era, including the disappearance of $16 billion earmarked for power infrastructure and the Halliburton bribery, which led to a conviction in the United States.
Yakasai stressed: “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.”
He said the opposition’s lack of a unifying agenda beyond their shared desire for power would ultimately doom any attempted alliance.
The TSG leader added: “It is easy for coalitions to meet because of their interests, but when it comes to the 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.”
Yakasai dismissed fears that Nigeria is slipping into a one-party system due to the gale of defections to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), noting that party-switching occurs in all directions in a democracy.
He said President Tinubu’s administration has made bold economic reforms that demonstrate the seriousness of purpose absent in previous governments.
Yakasai praised the president over the removal of the fuel subsidy and the unification of foreign exchange windows.
He stressed: “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.”
