As the build up towards the 2027 Elections in Nigeria gathers momentum the opposition group, the G100 has unveiled plans to defeat the All Progressives Congress, APC.
It had proposed a structured framework for opposition political parties to work together, urging them to build mechanisms for cooperation before negotiating issues of candidates and political offices.
The proposal was contained in the opening remarks delivered by Mallam Salihu Moh. Lukman on behalf of the G100 at a summit of Nigeria’s opposition political parties held on Monday at the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Centre, Abuja.
The summit brought together national chairmen and leaders of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Allied Peoples Movement (APM), Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) and Social Democratic Party (SDP), as well as presidential and vice-presidential candidates and members of the National Assembly’s Minority Caucus.
Lukman said the G100 convened the summit because Nigeria’s opposition had repeatedly suffered from fragmentation during presidential elections, arguing that the experience of the 2023 election demonstrated the consequences of failing to coordinate opposition votes.
According to him, opposition parties contested the 2003, 2007 and 2011 presidential elections largely as separate entities, resulting in divided votes, while the coalition that emerged ahead of the 2015 election demonstrated the political advantage of agreeing on rules and cooperation before determining individual interests.
He recalled that opposition parties negotiated between 2013 and 2015 and eventually defeated an incumbent president in 2015, leading to a peaceful transfer of power.
Lukman said the lesson from the 2015 experience was not that political actors suddenly became friends but that they agreed on rules and sequencing before determining the eventual outcome.
He contrasted that experience with the 2023 presidential election, when opposition votes were divided among several candidates.
“The winner took just under nine million votes. One opposition candidate took close to seven million. Another took just over six million,” he said.
Lukman argued that the combined votes of the opposition candidates exceeded the votes secured by the eventual winner, but stressed that the outcome was neither a conspiracy nor evidence that votes had been stolen.
“That is not a conspiracy. Nobody stole thirteen million votes. We divided them ourselves, in public and we did it knowing exactly what the consequence would be,” he said.
He cited political developments in Kenya and Malaysia as examples of opposition parties overcoming longstanding divisions through coalition-building, arguing that successful opposition coalitions were based less on ideological uniformity than on the ability of political actors to work together.
“The lesson is not a moral lesson. It is an arithmetical one. And arithmetic, unlike sentiment, does not improve on its own,” he said.
Lukman also urged opposition parties to acknowledge their own internal weaknesses instead of attributing electoral defeats entirely to the ruling party, electoral institutions or the judiciary.
He said some complaints against institutions could be legitimate but maintained that opposition parties had also suffered from their inability to keep agreements, sustain cooperation and establish clear frameworks.
“If we cannot keep faith with one another, no framework we design today will save us. And if we can, we may not need much of a framework at all,” he said.
He disclosed that the G100 had held separate and confidential consultations with the leadership of the six political parties represented at the summit, adding that the discussions showed that the parties understood the cost of division ahead of the 2027 election.
“What has been missing is not analysis. It is a table,” Lukman said.
He described the summit as significant because, for the first time in the current political cycle, the six parties were meeting collectively to hear each other’s positions directly rather than through intermediaries or media reports.
Lukman clarified that the summit was not intended to force any party to dissolve, abandon its identity or immediately withdraw any candidate.
He also said the gathering was not designed to determine who would lead a possible opposition presidential ticket.
“It is not asking any party to dissolve. It is not asking any party to disappear into another party. It is not asking any candidate to stand down this morning,” he said.
“What we are asking is narrower, and in some ways harder. We are asking you to agree that the table should be built before the seats around it are negotiated. We are asking you to authorise the machinery that will build it.”
According to him, the proposed coalition process would go beyond the presidency and encompass the broader structure of governance, including the Federal Executive Council, ministries and agencies, the National Assembly and other institutions critical to implementing a national recovery programme.
The G100 proposed two broad outcomes from the process: institutions for political cooperation and negotiated documents defining the substance of the proposed cooperation.
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Lukman said the G100 would participate primarily as facilitators and observers, subject to the approval of the participating parties, rather than take over the authority of the political organisations.
The G100 also proposed five working groups, with each group comprising one representative from every participating party and facilitated by the organisation.
The groups would produce working papers within four weeks covering a National Covenant for Democratic Renewal; a Single-Term Transition Charter; a National Reform Programme; a Framework for Opposition Unity; and a Roadmap to a Common Presidential Candidate.
The proposed National Covenant for Democratic Renewal would define shared principles, obligations and national purpose, while the Single-Term Transition Charter would address the mandate, duration, limitations and safeguards of a proposed four-year transition.
The National Reform Programme would cover constitutional, judicial, electoral, federal, economic, security and institutional reforms, while the Framework for Opposition Unity would establish rules for party cooperation, decision-making, conflict resolution, campaign coordination, election protection and post-election governance.
The Roadmap to a Common Presidential Candidate would provide what the G100 described as a transparent, credible, fair and time-bound process for producing and collectively supporting one presidential candidate.
Lukman said the documents were expected to be completed within four weeks and presented to a second summit for consideration and adoption, subject to approval by the Central Leadership Committee.
He stressed that the immediate objective was not to force any political party to surrender its identity, candidate or legitimate interests but to establish a credible platform for negotiating those interests.
He said party leaders would have to determine the extent of cooperation they were prepared to accept, the concessions they could make, their non-negotiable positions and the safeguards they required.
They would also have to decide whether they would support another candidate if that candidate emerged through a process they considered fair and transparent, he added.
Lukman said the success of the proposed coalition would depend less on declarations of unity than on the quality of the structures created to sustain it.
“The parties must build the table before negotiating the seats, agree the rules before determining the outcome, and recognise throughout that the country is larger than every party, every ambition and every office within it,” he said.
He said the framework envisaged a “Government of National Competence” based on competence, integrity, national inclusion and fair representation of participating parties.
Such a government, he said, would be expected to operate a disciplined, time-bound Four-Year National Reset Programme and be backed by a political commitment to a single four-year term through an enforceable Transition Charter.
Lukman emphasised that any agreement reached by the parties must be enforceable, arguing that Nigerian politics had witnessed numerous political promises that could not be sustained once circumstances changed.
“This gathering does not need more sincerity. Nigerian politics has never suffered from a shortage of sincere promises. What it has suffered from is promises that nobody could enforce when the person who made them changed his/her mind,” he said.
He urged the opposition leaders to approach the process with candour, proper sequencing and willingness to make sacrifices.
Lukman said the parties must openly identify their hard lines and conditions, warning that concealed disagreements could eventually undermine the coalition.
He also urged the parties not to rush into determining the final collaborative arrangement before agreeing on the rules and structures that would guide the process.
“There will be a temptation in both sessions to jump straight to the last question: what will the final collaborative framework look like? Please resist it,” he said.
According to him, successful coalition-building requires rules to be established before outcomes are determined.
He further warned that genuine unity would require sacrifices from some participants.
“There is no version of this that costs nobody anything. Someone in this hall will have to accept an outcome he/she did not want. That is what unity is. It is not a communiqué. It is somebody’s disappointment, borne well,” he said.
Lukman said the G100 and the Minority Caucus of the House of Representatives convened the summit but would neither determine its outcome nor promote any particular candidate or party.
He said the group’s interest was in ensuring that Nigerians had a credible alternative government within a functioning democratic system.
He urged the political parties to focus ultimately on the challenges confronting ordinary Nigerians rather than merely on political calculations.
Lukman cited the experiences of families struggling with education costs, farmers unable to safely access their farms, unemployed graduates and households forced to make difficult decisions over food.
“They are not waiting for a coalition. They are not interested in our committees, and they will not read our communiqué,” he said.
“But they are entitled to something, and it is this: a real choice, presented by serious people, capable of governing.”
He warned that failure to achieve meaningful cooperation could leave the opposition repeating the same calculations after the 2027 election.
“If we do our work well today, nobody will remember this morning. They will remember what it made possible. And if we do it badly, we will be back in this same spot in 2031, doing the same arithmetic, with the same regret, and with a country less able to bear it,” he said.
“The table is here. The chairs are here. Let us build it properly.”
