President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is not a man of many words. Yet, throughout his career, few would have been in doubt of his personal political abilities. Such a subject would present difficulties to the analyst, but to understand Tinubu proper, as a politician and president, it is perhaps better not to read meaning into his words, however few those maybe, but to focus analytical attention into his actions and political body language, of which there are aplenty lately.
The 700 kilometers Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway project. The appointment of Daniel Bwala, a brilliant lawyer and Tinubu critic turned ally, into the presidential communication apparatus. An enduring birthday gift to General Yakubu Gowon. The increasing political visibility of friend-turned-foe-turned-friend again former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, in national politics on the side of Tinubu, when only a few months ago he was arch political enemy. The establishment of a federal university in Southern Kaduna. And well, the small but equally conspicuous presidential condolence visit to Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah over the passing of his relative. The decamping of five Labour Party members of the National Assembly to the APC.
It is sometimes said that accidents are common in life but not in politics. So, these events point in only one direction: President Tinubu is building a new electoral coalition for 2027. If correct, then it raises several questions: What has happened to the “old coalition” that brought him to power less than two years ago? Is this idea a response to changing political circumstances, or was it always there? What would this new coalition look like and who would the new brides be? And what are the chances of success? As an outsider peering in, I can speculate. But first a look at our list of events.
Take the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway. Whatever the economic basis of this project, and of that, there is little doubt, the politics of this policy is just as important because it is like rewarding those who did not vote for Tinubu to the detriment of those who did, especially since the Badagry-Sokoto policy came up clearly like an after-thought. Remember, large-scale policy projects can also serve political purposes, sometimes as bribes to cultivate new voters or retain current ones. So, the coastal highway is both an infrastructural and electoral inroad into the 11 South-South/South East states for Tinubu, even if he lost there in 2023.
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The selection of the University of Abuja to rename after former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon, is entirely appropriate, and the whole idea is certainly deserving for a statesman who led Nigeria successfully through its most turbulent political moment. If anything, it is rather shameful that no Nigerian leader thought of it earlier. Still, the renaming connects deeply with the appointment of Bwala, the political renaissance of Dogara, the Southern Kaduna federal university, and a presidential condolence visit to Bishop Kukah. All of these have the same political undertones, or at least, political effects: to help carve out a new electoral map that includes northern Christians, an electoral bloc that Tinubu lost resoundingly in 2023.
The idea that the vice-president, no less, would visit Kukah over the passing of a relative no one knows cannot be but political. That Speaker Dogara, whom I have always admired for his broad-based northern political inclination, but who only yesterday publicly broke with Tinubu only to condemn the same North this morning on Tinubu’s behalf requires only a political explanation. Hardly any state has two federal universities, and to make Kaduna first in that regard cannot be fortuitous but a deliberate political move. All of which brings us to the meat of the gist.
The electoral coalition that successfully won the presidency for Tinubu dates back to 2013. By 2023, it had shifted considerably in personnel, but its two main flanks—let’s say about 80% of the North plus 60% of the South-West—remained intact, and delivered, even if it required the political equivalence of addition by subtraction in several fronts. What has happened to this coalition in less than two years? I cannot know. But it is clear that Tinubu has lost two key constituencies from that coalition, although for different reasons. He has lost the northern voters due mainly to his own T-pain policies which have disproportionately affected the North precisely because poverty is higher here. Anyone who pays attention to social media in the North can see this clearly.
Tinubu has also clearly lost the support of northern Muslim religious leaders, who helped him drive home the affective message of the “Muslim-Muslim” ticket. And that, in fact, was the original mistake.
The Muslim-Muslim ticket was a political necessity to win an election, and its messaging should have been done covertly and symbolically, most preferably through politicians, rather than Muslim religious leaders, if for nothing else, to reduce tension on the very side of the North he is now profusely courting. Instead, Tinubu and his northern political surrogates openly and actively coopted northern Muslim religious leaders who promptly turned a political necessity into a religious contest in the North or a contest of religious numerical superiority in the country at large.
Having been given an outsized power for their number, northern Muslim religious leaders, going by their recent political commentary—almost all commentary from Nigerian religious leaders on both sides of the religious divide in Nigeria today is also at once political—now feel alienated by the government they believe, correctly, that they helped hoist onto power. That is two political constituencies of Tinubu’s old coalition lost, or nearly lost. Making an unprecedented mess of the emirate system in Kano would also not have gone down well with the traditional leadership in northern Nigeria, even if, for now, none of them have been openly critical of it.
That leaves the more ambiguous case of the northern political elite. Other than Vice-President Kashim Shettima and the National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, and to a lesser extent, Minister of Health Professor Mohammed Pate, most other northern politicians in Tinubu’s government appear to be only on the fringe of it. We don’t see too many northern politicians in close informal proximity with the president, unlike under Obasanjo, and Jonathan before the end of 2012. This could be as a result of the political infighting I once wrote in these pages that characterize northern politics under a southern president, or it could be a deliberate attempt by Tinubu himself, or those close to him, to show them their place.
Even more problematic, Tinubu’s tax reforms, the Niger Republic debacle, the relocation of certain government offices from Abuja to Lagos, and his T-pain policies have created the impression that he is actively working against the North, which, in turn, has undermined any leverage northern politicians would have in standing up for him among northern voters now or in the near future. What about the northern governors and the northern representative with the APC as a party?
Since at least 2004, party leaders have subordinated themselves to elected officials of the executive branch, thereby losing their power and also making it difficult for others to stand up to that branch. So, whether they are still with the president or not is a mute question because their position matters little at this point. As for the northern governors, it is simply hard to tell, but the recent statement by Bala Mohammed of Bauchi and the reply by Sunday Dare on behalf of the presidency simply means there is trouble somewhere for Tinubu among northern governors too.
All told, then, Tinubu appears to have already lost a majority of the integral constituents that make up the largest electoral flank of the coalition that brought him to power, which explains why he is dishing federal resources left and right in an effort to build new political blocs for 2027.
In short, Tinubu appears to be dumping his current partners for a new political bride. Can the new partners stack up? And what will happen to the old ones? Above all, where lies the future of the Muslim-Muslim ticket, which, remember was purely a Nigerian-Nigerian ticket?
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