₦airaland Forum

The APC gauged opinions online and probably bought into the myth that the Southeast will vote Tinubu if Obi is not on the ballot. This is why they have gone ahead to disenfranchise Obi. This may turn out to be a strategic mistake. The truth is that Tinubu has no pathway to re-election with or without Obi on the ballot. It will only get worse if Obi is not on the ballot. In the meantime, you will see more snake oil merchants attempting to sell a phantom "Southern alliance".

LegendHero:
Who are the Northerners he betrayed? Mention 2 of them.

No betrayal can be up to Buhari and his Northern cabal changing currency in the eve of election of their party presidential flagbearer?

So why then are you expecting votes from the North since the North betrayed you? Tinubu must have manufactured votes from thin air considering that he only won 4 Yoruba states out of 17 Southern states. And yes, Elrufai made Tinubu president and is set to unmake him. That's why he fearfully rushed to incarcerate him. Go build your Southern alliance.

TopBanter:
Use the brain of the South how? You guys are simply clannish. If not you'd know, as the commentator said, Obi can never ever do what Tinubu is achieving because PBAT has capacity and power to do things Obi will never have meaning he will be a lame duck President like GEJ.

I don't think you really listened to the commentary which is analytically brilliant. Essentially, the point is that the core North is regressive and happy to be backwards yet retains a sense of entitlement to power to wallow in that backwardness and disturb the entire Nigeria with it.

The region uses her population, presence in the military and even large illiterate, restive and easily radicalised youth to trouble Nigeria through terrorism and banditry.

These are existential threats that may make Nigeria descend into Rwanda-style internecine strife.

What part of that reality do you not understand to always be talking about irrelevant issues ? If you divorce your wife, should you not still host the maturity to co-parent with her for the sake of your children? That is the maturity you guys lack and it is disappointing to see.

Who is telling you to love Tinubu or Yorubas? We know you never will but if genuinely progressive, wise , critical-thinking and pragmatic you will embrace all he is doing because it is giving you the lives you always insisted you want i.e the independence to define how you live in your States and region without 'One Nigeria' nuisance preventing that.

This is what Tinubu is doing yet you guys show you were never sincere with how you always oppose what is progressive and badly required. You and the core North are the regions opposed to the inauguration of State policing yet you shout Biafra daily.

You have not evolved at all in decades. Everything is about emotions plus historical sentiments of Vendetta and envy of others. Whereas this is a simple issue, for genuinely progressive people, of looking at existential problem and recognising the solutions needed and who can deliver them.

Jonathan's presidency has proven to be better on every index compared to Tinubu's regime. From economy, to security to tolerance for democracy. Why then did Tinubu connive with the North to get Jonathan out of power? Where was Southern Alliance then? Did he know about this Southern alliance when he ran on muslim-muslim ticket in 2023 and will probably do the same in 2027? Is he trying to eat from two pots at the same time? If not, If he will stab the North after only 3 years to now attempt to build an alliance with the South, why should the South trust that he wouldn't do the same after winning his re-election?

Why is he trying to disenfranchise Obi who won virtually the entire Southern votes in 2023 from contesting? Why is he doing same to Jonathan, Seyi Makinde and even Sowore? Are they not Southern enough? Why does he have over 15 ministers from Yoruba extraction alone while the other South can only pinpoint Wike and Umahi as ministers? Why does he have a lot of projects skewed in favour of Lagos to the detriment of the other South? The South appear to be wiser and are well aware that Tinubu is only after his self-interest and there is no "Southern alliance".

I wouldn't be surprised if Tinubu has sent emissaries to Kanu. Tinubu’s strategy is simple. Disenfranchise Obi from the race, release Nnamdi kanu and then drop Shettima in favour of a Northern Christian and then attempt to make 2027 a North vs South affair. He has sampled opinions online and believes the myth that the entire South will vote for him if Obi is not on the ballot but he may be miscalculating and underestimating the level of his unpopularity. Tinubu is even more unpopular across the South than he is in the North today and disenfranchising Obi will only make it worse.

LegendHero:
But at least Buhari won the SW in both 2015 and 2019.

So if the North are not betrayers, they must repay the deed even if it’s to win by 1 vote.

Deal?

He has since betrayed virtually all the Northerners that made that victory possible while making his government an all-Yoruba affair. Some of these people have even been incarcerated without bail. His new found strategy is to win via the Southern route by disenfranchising Obi. He even went further to reward those who kept insulting him all through the campaigns like Reno, FFK and Bwala. Unfortunately for him, that will still not win him Southern love. Muslim-muslim ticket in 2023 and North vs South in 2027. Obi remains the Southern candidate, not Tinubu. Goodluck on your "Southern alliance".

jogojogo:
He is desperate and deceptive. He will NEVER be president

Your colleagues are preaching "Southern alliance" in the other thread and you are here pouring invectives on Obi while Tinubu is doing all he can to ensure Obi does not make the ballot. What kind of deceptive "Southern alliance" is that?

LegendHero:
His combined loss in Lagos and Osun no reach 100k.

North should also make sure he lose the North by less than 100k votes.

Deal?

Why not tell the North how many votes the SW contributed to Buhari’s victory. Buhari got less than 2.1m votes from the SW in 2015 and got exactly 2m votes in 2019 while losing Oyo and Ondo. Have you said thank you to the North for making Tinubu president with 5.6m votes in 2023? It's widely known that Obi defeated him in the South and is set to do so again, hence the attempts to disenfranchise him from being on the ballot.

The rate at which pro-APC threads keep making Nairaland frontpage is becoming comical. I don't think threads created by opposition make frontpage at equal level. Nairaland needs to protect its perceived neutrality and not make it so obvious.

madridguy:
So he's the one that ask the opposition parties not to do the right thing?

The "right thing" will be for all opposition parties to collapse their structure and work for Tinubu as PDP through Wike have been destroyed to do. E reach una turn and PDP, NNPP, SDP, LP, ADC and NDC are all not doing right thing all of a sudden. These were all viable opposition parties that fielded candidates with millions of votes until "Paul Biya wannabe" assumed power.

TopBanter:
The point the commentator is making is that Tinubu is gradually reforming Nigeria by taking the North to task.

Yet you avoid that to be talking irrelevantly because of your dislike of Yorubas.

Will Nigeria not be totally submerged under Northern retrogression if a strong and influential Southern leader like Tinubu does not balance what the commentator stated as advantages the North has used to foist their unprogressive ways on Nigeria i.e their purportedly superior population and large number in the military?

Why are some of you so emotional? Can you not even rise above sentiments now and then, as proper men should be able to do, to see the obvious?

Yorubas aren't begging you lot for any unity. Are we in your land or are we the ethnic group of the four major who remain in our States and region the most showing we don't seek to gum body with others?

This is about adults being focused on pragmatically identifying solutions to solve major problems for all Nigerians that has endured for decades so we can move towards become a developed nation.

Yet you are talking as someone ready to cut his nose to spite his face because of your historical and perennial issues with Yorubas..

Trying to work pragmatically to prevent the core North from destroying Nigeria has what to do with Southern unity ?

Is it not all of us who will benefit from a working, peaceful, safe and developed Nigeria? You guys are so petty and vindictive.

2023 was muslim-muslim ticket but 2027 will be North vs South. We know who you are. In Lagos, it's Yoruba vs Igbo. Tinubu cannot win an election without resorting to division. He supported Buhari for 8 years against Jonathan just so he can assume power and ran on muslim-muslim ticket to become president with 5.6m Northern votes. He now thinks he can use the brain of the South by pitching the South against the North. If it were really about the South, why is he trying to disenfranchise Obi from the race? Is Peter Obi not Southern enough?

ObaOfYorubaLand:
There's nothing like southern unity or alliance. Yorubas killed it long ago so it does not exist.

They are begging for unity while being clever by half. They think if they disqualify Obi from the race, they will have a "Southern alliance". Wrong calculation.

Lobby money and propaganda at work. The lived realities of Nigerians says otherwise. Terrorism and banditry has spread to other regions they previously never existed. That's what the data on ground says.

izombie:
They went for ADC while he was there. He left and joined NDC which was a party going nowhere and suddenly they're going after NDC because of PO. They have searched for what to use to discredit PO with but found nothing.
The 2 mofos above me na id11otss

Don't mind the snake oil merchants. Tinubu wants to be the only Southerner on the ballot come 2027 and will do whatever it takes to discredit other Southern candidates. He is highly unpopular even in the South and his calculation is that, if he's the only candidate on the ballot from the South, the entire South will have no option but to vote for him. No one is being spared. Even Sowore is in prison while Seyi Makinde has been seeing "fire in his state" ever since he declared his presidential ambition. They are very desperate and will stop at nothing.

fergie001:
Says who?
She is at the WTO today because of politics. No matter how brilliant she is, she can't be DG without the support of her home country. If Buhari said No, she won't be DG of any International Organisation.

Again, Atiku was instrumental in bringing her to Nigeria from the World Bank and then introduced her to OBJ. So, it's listen to them and politely say NO.

The truth is that an Atiku presidency will assemble the best minds to administer this country. Under the Obasanjo presidency, he and Obasanjo had a young and formidable team comprising of Charles Chukwuma Soludo, Nasir El-Rufai, Oby Ezekwesili and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as the engine room of their presidency. Even Nuhu Ribadu was later scouted and brought in to run the newly created EFCC. Many of us thought a Tinubu presidency will replicate that given the team he put together in Lagos but it ended up being an all-Lagos affair with politics and cronyism taking the place of competence and capacity.

Cars for APC women leaders and other chieftains. Akara, Kuli kuli and roasted corn grants for the serfs. Politics over impactful governance.

LegendHero:
If North don’t vote Tinubu in 2027, they still ow SW a debt and that shows that are betrayals.

Tinubu did them favor two times and the north only paid back one part of the debt. Even so, they still snitched because Tinubu only won few states in the NW/NE in 2023 elections which shows North no too do well in paying back debt.

It’s simple, in 2027, the North MUST vote Bola Tinubu. They have no choice, that is the only way they can take power back in 2031 because with or without some of them, Tinubu will still be re-elected president.

Why not start with the "betrayals" in his own backyard in Lagos and Osun that rejected him in 2023? Can any Northerner love him more than Lagosians that he governed for 8 years and the indigenes of Osun where he came from?

Fiscus105:
If If Rufai is to be power minister today, the same Rufai would be going up and down, attacking anybody going against Tinubu, telling Nigerians and international community that,bTinubu is best thing to happen to naija.

Meanwhile, for the comments first lady made, she is supposed to know better, that, urchins and rats would take advantage of it and used it for political gains and to trend, vast majority of Nigerians are hypocritic populists.

No president will come, in which every citizen will work in banks or in oil companies. Even in America, significant of residents are lower level people, who are surviving on small scale businesses.

Then you know nothing about Elrufai. Even as Minister of FCT under Obasanjo, he was known to challenge Obasanjo on some of his policies and that was one of the qualities Obasanjo loved about him. He also publicly disagreed with Obasanjo on his quest for third term.

Under Buhari, Elrufai wrote several memos and letters to Buhari disagreeing with him on some of his direction and policies (check the dates). Some are public. As a matter of fact, it is on record that Shehu Sani, then a Senator under APC, asked the party to discipline Elrufai for challenging Buhari.

There's no evidence that Elrufai would have kept quiet even as a minister under Tinubu. In hindsight, it is that fear of being challenged that made Tinubu drop him as a minister. This is because he knows Elrufai would never have held back in disagreeing with him no matter the consequences and Tinubu hates being challenged. He dropped Wale Edun as Minister for countering him on revenue target. Elrufai kept saying towards the end of his tenure that he wanted to take a rest, it was Tinubu who publicly begged him and made him promise in public to stay behind and work with him and the videos are publicly available. Elrufai is not your regular.

Newsmills:
El-rufai collected tens of millions of dollars blood money,followed him to Chatham house in London to do explanation on how power sector will be run,and he is in Chatham house of Yoruba ICPC,northern delegates collected bribes in dollars to vote during APC's party presidential primaries,thanks for unifying the Forex market no more round tripping by the Abokis,everybody is enjoying what the wicked first family is doing.
Long live feudal republic of Nigeria
Long live wicked first family of the hegemonic republic of Nigeria
Long live for Abokis for delegate bribes they collected in dollars.

False. El-Rufai received no dime from Tinubu and that is why he was bold enough to openly go against Tinubu, having seen the direction he was heading. The reason the North voted for Tinubu is well documented. Northerners always pay their debts. Tinubu would have been a hero and somewhat of a false god today had the North not voted for him after supporting Buhari against Jonathan in 2015. Some things are beyond money but not everyone understands that. It's a good thing he is allowed to demystify himself. Nigeria will always be here and history will outlast us all.

MAJOR THROWBACK!

Yet some ingrates say…………… 🤣 pic.twitter.com/Y2KrfifaUp

— Mal. Imran U. Wakili (PULLO) 👑 #iSTANDWITHELRUFAI (@IU_Wakilii) April 17, 2026

seunmsg:
Can a judge withdraw or set aside his own judgment? Can someone provide a precedent to this?




Well, if the judge can withdrew its judgement based on the grounds you’ve stated, then I think the judge acted legally. Again, withdrawing the judgement simply means there is going to be a retrial. So technically, there is no judgement to even appeal not to talk of stay of execution. It will be very very inappropriate for the appeal court to even hear the appeal not to talk of staying the decision. At best, an accelerated retrial should be ordered.

We are witnessing a lot of dangerous precedents under your tin-god. That's what happens when you have a paranoid man in power who out of fear and desperation, has threatened, cajoled and coerced all governors and senators to decamp to his party and is now armtwisting the judiciary via proxies to procure favourable judgements that will ensure he has no opposition come 2027. I know that deep down, some of you with a mustard seed of conscience are getting concerned and will genuinely like to see a competitive election and not just a coronation by an aspiring dictator.

TopBanter:
It is the core North that is "bleeding" and this is because the people of the region and the leaders (religious, political, military, cultural etc) are allies of bandits and terrorists when they should be their nemesis.

Meaning banditry and terrorism has now become a way of life in the NE and NW.

What the core North don't understand is that they can never achieve a takeover of the South which is what I believe they want.

Simply impossible because the South has far more value and important people. Nigeria is heading for separation for sure. Like Sudan.

Kindly specify where the core North is and which of the South? Tinubu has Matawalle whom as governor, pioneered negotiations with bandits as his Minister of Defence but you're still fixated on North and South. The joke is on you.

vanitybutiwanti:
Nothing will happen if Tinubu runs unopposed, is it Tinubu’s fault that some insiders in the party agreed to work with him to balkanize the party for financial aggrandisement? Has today come out to tell you that he is an Imam or a pope? You guys should rest and stop making empty noise on social media. Politics is a game and Tinubu is playing his game with novel and wonderful strategies. In any case AAC, PRP, PDP, APM and other parties I can't remember will be on the ballot, you are free to vote for them.

Time and tide has proven that you cannot govern a people against their will unless you're prepared to do so via brute force. That's what democracy guarantees. He is too unpopular for the games he's playing but time shall tell.

Unless Tinubu will end up using court orders to declare himself re-elected, he has no pathway to re-election via the ballots. All I see is fear and carwardice.

vanitybutiwanti:
Nothing will happen Oga, people should stop making noise on social media. This is politics and not a religious or moral affair, you see a flaw in your opponents strategy, you go ahead to destroy your opponents. Its a game and you guys should stop overheating the polity with violent and empty rhetoric.

The only person overheating the polity are the ones hell-bent on running unopposed by basterdizing our hard-fought democracy. By your warped logic, the PDP, LP, NNPP, ADC, SDP and now NDC all have flaws that has resulted into them being unable to field candidates against Tinubu and these flaws emanated barely 3 years after Tinubu became president. Continue to play the "game".

Macphenson:
Agbada don hang for barb wire. Obviously Mexico rejected this clown, he is cooking up propaganda for his redeployment. The World cup excuse he gave will soon cast.

Yeye dey smell.

You get it. They are lobbying for him and hawking him around across 4 countries like an expired product just to see the one that will finally agree to have him as an ambassador.

seunmsg:
NDC was registered by court order. INEC made it very clear on their website. Now that another court has ruled otherwise, it is for INEC to obey and NDC to comply. It has nothing to do with Tinubu.

It has nothing to do with Tinubu indeed. I just wish you all can be bold to own up to what you do with your full chest instead of attempting to hide behind a finger. It smacks of carwardice. It happened to LP, PDP, NNPP, SDP, ADC and now NDC but it has nothing to do with Tinubu. These were all viable opposition parties that produced candidates barely 3 years ago, some with millions of votes. INEC just declared today that they are yet to get funding for the elections. Maybe Tinubu should just save us the stress and declare himself re-elected since he's too afraid to face his opponents at the polls.

LibertyRep:
Nooooo! That's too risky.

Even though everyone knows the party has a case before they moved there but still emotion will fly high.

The supreme court would settle the matter and allow NDC partake in the election.

We don't want a coronation in 2027, we want a contest.
A proper contest, even if it's like the Ekiti election.

Nooo. Tinubu should disqualify the NDC and the ADC and declare himself re-elected. We warned you all that the signs of a Paul Biya in the making are visible but tribal sentiments are stronger. Tinubu is setting a very dangerous precedence that has never been seen in any democracy but he should continue.

fergie001:
Isa Dashen used to be a Judge at the FHC in Yenagoa.

"By Court Order was clear anything could happen" ... Wish them all well.

This was visible to the blind and audible to the deaf. Peter Obi displayed unprecedented level of naivety in deciding to join the NDC. How can a man who expended so much resources in destroying the PDP and attempting to do the same to the ADC suddenly have a convenient option in the NDC, allowed to exist out of thin air without any rancour?

seunmsg:
The NDC should appeal the judgement.

When we said Tinubu has no pathway and will lose the 2027 election, we didn't envisage that he will decide to destroy all opposition parties out of fear. He can't lose if he is the only candidate on the ballot, can he? The state of democracy under a NADECO activist.

fergie001:
Not true.
INEC will respect it asap

Aminda talk am ooooo.. I told Penguin2 months ago, that NDC own is coming!

This explains the silence from the APC since Obi left the coalition. We advised Obi to stay put in the coalition that the stakes are too high and that Tinubu is hell-bent on having no viable opposition in 2027 but he chose to leave for what was obviously a trap. With Obi remaining in the coalition, Tinubu would have been too afraid to destroy a united coalition as it will invariably mean that he has declared himself a dictator.

Meanwhile, Tinubu should keep testing the patience of Nigerians with his undemocratic moves against opposition parties. The patience Nigerians are exercising is only being sustained with the hope that they can make their votes count in 2027.

happney65:
He is not going anywhere. Even though I'm not a fan but he isn't going anywhere

This endorsement of oyinlola sef na sakamanje. It is an indirect endorsement of still adeleke

But wait,what is this by fire by force violence the APC is doing in Osun? Why? Wetin dey Osun state that you wanted to grab it by fire by fire leading to killings and the rest

Eyin shey ya apayan bayi?

Haba

Because Lagos is cosmopolitan and votes will always get split any which way. With Seyi Makinde refusing to play ball in Oyo, they cannot afford to lose Osun too. That will be 3 out 6 SW states where votes will be balkanized, which Tinubu cannot afford. This explains why despite openly pledging support for Tinubu, Adeleke is still being pressured while Igboho has been unleashed on Makinde to destabilise him as a pressure tactic but Seyi is fully on ground!

Kalashnikov49:
Tinubu used Igboho as a bargaining chip and the North fell for it. Threatening you with dissolution after seeing how the north was against Nnamdi kanu and his Biafra agitation.

Now...

The Yoruba in him has started again, and he is using the same Sunday igboho template of dissolution of Nigeria to whip the North into line.

Who do you think protected Igboho during the Buhari regime, when burutai was even made an Ambassador to Benin Republic, just to repatriate igboho?

Anyway..the SW, true to nature has done it again.

Nufff Said

It was clear to the North that Igboho was being sponsored but the North voted for Tinubu because a debt is a debt and Northerners ALWAYS pay their debts, whether good or bad. That's the concept of "Amana" (trust) and Elrufai did a lot in reminding Northerners of this code when it looked like many wouldn't bother voting for Tinubu. It worked. He didn't do it because he was friends with Tinubu, he did it for posterity as history will outlive us all. Which is why Tinubu has shot himself in the foot by incarcerating Elrufai without bail as he has only succeeded in breaking that "trust". Now, the North will be obligated to return the favour because a debt is a debt. Elrufai clearly set himself as a bait and Tinubu took it.

P.S: Northerners are not afraid of a breakup and any Northerner telling you the North is afraid of a breakup is either being naïve or mischievous. It will be in Tinubu's best interest to do the breakup now because any agitation by the likes of Igboho after he is voted out will not fly, and it wouldn't be because the North is afraid.

Watch the video of Elrufai's speech when he brought Tinubu to Arewa House. Just like Ahmadu Bello and Tafawa Balewa, Elrufai is just one man but in politics, symbolism is everything.

MAJOR THROWBACK!

Yet some ingrates say…………… 🤣 pic.twitter.com/Y2KrfifaUp

— Mal. Imran U. Wakili (PULLO) 👑 #iSTANDWITHELRUFAI (@IU_Wakilii) April 17, 2026

flokii:
@OP I think you should mind your business and the region you originated from.

How many Fulanis condemned their people engaging in banditary and kidnapping in South West forests?.. or you think Yorubas will allow Fulani turn our South West States to likes of Zamfara, Katsina, Borno etc.?

Go and check Yoruba history, our people never shy away from conflict.. if you choose peace, we give peace but jf you claim you're a bastar.rd that likes violence, you'll get excess violence in return.

All ye paid writers criticizing Igboho but keeping mum on the killings and kidnapping going on around the country will meet your waterloo soon.. no matter how long, you'll all reap your reward.

The approach Northern leaders have chosen shows they don't intend to continue in One Nigeria despite the fact that revenue generated from South West is what is feeding them due to their low economic productivity.

Lastly, kudos to Mr. President for the State Police Bill passed, now State Governors can champion security in their terrain without casting blame on the FG. They should ensure it's indigenes only that get recruited into State Police if not, the purpose of the entire framework would be defeated. It's only an indigene of a place that will be passionate about the security of his/,her home State.

In other words, Igboho will become the Nnamdi Kanu of the Southwest. Why then did Tinubu send one to prison while the other continues to parade himself with guns while namedropping the president at every twist and turn, amid total silence from the presidency? He is already threatening to unalive any Yoruba that connives with Fulani without saying what the nature of that connivance will be and who would be the judge. It's clear that he's being backed from the top to create carnage in Oyo since Makinde has refused to sing the mandate song this time.