The Rudderless Coalition: Who Takes Charge?

Behind the search for a common presidential lies a more difficult question: who has the authority to steer Nigeria’s opposition coalition?

For months, Nigeria’s opposition has been speaking the language of unity. The objective is clear enough: bring the major opposition forces together, present a common candidate and make a serious attempt to defeat President Bola Tinubu in 2027.

That is the easy part.

The difficult question has now arrived, and it is considerably more consequential than the argument over who eventually appears on the ballot. Who takes charge of the coalition?

A political coalition can begin with a shared grievance. It can even survive for some time on the strength of a shared desire to remove an incumbent. But it cannot become an effective governing alternative without answering the question of authority.

Someone must have the power to convene the parties, enforce the rules, settle disputes, determine the process for choosing a candidate and, eventually, hold together the interests of people who may agree on the destination while disagreeing violently over who should drive.

That is where the opposition coalition is beginning to look rudderless.

The G100 process has brought six opposition parties around a negotiating table and begun work towards a common platform and single presidential candidate. The PDP has also endorsed the principle of a single opposition candidate. On paper, this is significant progress.

Yet some of the most important political actors remain outside the room at critical moments.

Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi were absent from the G100 summit that began the latest round of negotiations. Their absence does not necessarily mean rejection of the coalition. There have been explanations for it. But politically, their absence carries a more important message: the coalition has not yet established the mechanism through which the ambitions of its strongest individual actors will be reconciled with the collective project.

That is the real problem.

Nigeria has seen coalitions before. We have also seen how quickly they can become collections of politicians pursuing separate calculations under a common banner.

The temptation is to assume that defeating an incumbent is enough to hold an opposition alliance together. It is not.

The moment the coalition moves from denunciation to decision, the disagreements begin.

Who chooses the candidate?

Will there be a primary election?

Will delegates decide?

Will the parties negotiate a consensus?

Will an independent mechanism assess the aspirants?

What happens when the person who believes he is the strongest candidate is asked to step aside?

And perhaps the most important question of all: who has the authority to say that the decision is final?

These are not technicalities. They are the coalition.

The current argument over the presidential ticket is only the first manifestation of the problem. Behind it are competing political histories, constituencies, regional calculations, party structures and personal ambitions.

Atiku is an experienced presidential contender with an established political network. Obi has built a formidable political following of his own and is operating from a different political platform. Other politicians have ambitions that cannot simply be wished away because a coalition has been announced.

Nobody should be surprised by this. Politics is fundamentally about the pursuit of power. The mistake would be to pretend otherwise.

The coalition therefore does not need politicians without ambition. It needs politicians willing to submit ambition to rules.

That distinction matters.

A serious coalition must be designed so that no individual can determine its outcome simply because he is the loudest, wealthiest, most experienced or most politically connected member of the room. Equally, it must prevent smaller parties from acquiring disproportionate bargaining power merely because their endorsement is temporarily useful.

There must be rules agreed before the final contest begins.

That warning is already visible in the disagreement surrounding the African Democratic Congress itself. A faction of the party has challenged the coalition arrangement and rejected the notion that the ADC is committed to the alliance, while the recognised party leadership has participated in the process. Whatever the eventual legal or political resolution, the episode demonstrates the danger of entering a national coalition without first settling questions of institutional authority.

There is another problem, and it may prove even more difficult.

The opposition has not yet demonstrated that its members agree on what they intend to do with power.

The disagreement over fuel subsidy is revealing. Atiku has argued for its restoration, while Obi has defended the removal of subsidy and emphasised better management of the resulting gains. The disagreement is legitimate. Indeed, Nigerians should welcome serious disagreement over economic policy.

But it raises a question the coalition cannot postpone indefinitely: what exactly is the programme for the Nigeria it wants to govern?

It is insufficient to say that the country must be rescued.

Rescued into what?

What is the coalition’s position on taxation? How will it deal with public debt? What is its strategy for the exchange rate? What happens to fuel pricing? How will electricity become cheaper and more reliable? What will it do about insecurity? What kind of federalism does it believe Nigeria requires? How will it reform the civil service? What happens to the enormous cost of governance? What is its position on state police? How will it create productive employment rather than continue distributing promises?

These questions become especially important because the proposed coalition has spoken of a four year transition and a government of national competence. That is a large promise. It requires considerably more than an electoral arrangement.

A coalition seeking to replace an incumbent must eventually tell Nigerians what will replace the incumbent’s policies.

Otherwise, the alliance risks becoming another political vehicle whose greatest area of agreement is that somebody else should leave office.

There is also an organisational reality that the opposition must confront.

The ruling APC has the advantages of incumbency, federal visibility, established structures and access to a political network extending across the states. Its governors have continued to publicly affirm their support for Tinubu and the party has been presenting a more coherent picture of its presidential direction.

The opposition cannot defeat that machinery merely by assuming that public dissatisfaction will automatically translate into votes.

Elections are organised contests. They require structures, agents, logistics, money, message discipline, credible polling day operations and the ability to resolve disputes without destroying the organisation.

A coalition that cannot decide who speaks for it will struggle to convince voters that it can speak for Nigeria.

This is why the leadership question is more important than the presidential question.

A presidential candidate can be chosen tomorrow. The deeper question is whether the political arrangement behind that candidate will remain coherent the day after the announcement.

Suppose one aspirant loses the negotiation. What does he do?

Suppose a party believes it has been short changed. Who settles the matter?

Suppose regional interests clash over the running mate. Who decides?

Suppose the coalition wins. Who determines the distribution of executive responsibilities?

Suppose the president and the coalition leadership disagree after victory. What mechanism prevents the alliance from collapsing into the familiar Nigerian struggle for control?

These are the questions that should be answered now, while the coalition is still seeking votes, rather than after it has acquired power.

The opposition should also be careful about the psychology of coalitions. The larger the number of ambitious politicians around the table, the easier it is to confuse participation with leadership.

Everybody can be present. Everybody can speak. Everybody can claim victory. Yet someone must ultimately make a decision.

That is what a rudder does.

The coalition therefore needs more than a committee. It needs a governing mechanism. It needs agreed rules for membership, candidate selection, policy formulation, dispute resolution, campaign command and post election coordination.

Most importantly, it needs people who are prepared to accept an outcome that does not personally favour them.

That may be the hardest test of all.

The latest discussion around the coalition has already reached this uncomfortable point. Political unity becomes meaningful only when politicians accept the consequences of unity. A man who believes he can win may have to accept that somebody else has been chosen. A party that believes it deserves the presidency may have to settle for another role. An established politician may have to make room for a newer political force.

That is where rhetoric ends and political maturity begins.

The opposition does not need to pretend that its members have identical interests. They do not. They need to demonstrate that they can manage those differences without allowing personal ambition to destroy the larger project.

Nigeria has seen too many political alliances assembled for the purpose of winning an election and dismantled almost immediately after victory.

The country cannot afford another one.

The real test of this coalition, therefore, is not whether Atiku, Obi or another aspirant eventually gets the ticket. The test is whether the coalition can create a process respected even by the politician who loses it.

If it can, the coalition may become a serious national alternative.

If it cannot, the country may be watching another elaborate negotiation among politicians who have agreed on the person they want to defeat but remain unable to agree on who should take charge afterwards.

That is the danger beneath the excitement.

Nigeria does not merely need an opposition capable of winning an election. It needs one capable of governing after the election.

And before Nigerians are asked to trust that possibility, the coalition has to answer a very simple question:

Who holds the rudder?