Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, former Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, and former Transportation Minister Rotimi Amaechi have flayed the administration of President Bola Tinubu for “weaponising poverty”.
They spoke at a public lecture held in honour of Amaechi who clocked 60 in Abuja, the nation’s capital on Saturday.
The trio criticised the economic policies of the Tinubu administration. “This particular government is weaponising poverty and that is why we are in this alliance to make sure we don’t allow them to continue weaponising poverty,” Atiku said.
For El-Rufai, Nigeria at the moment is in its biggest struggle since 1914. “We are working together to be a coalition to take Nigeria back,” he said.
The celebrant said the gains of the subsidy removal and forex unification policies of the Tinubu administration are in the private pockets of a few individuals in government.
Amaechi said: “At a point, we were paying close to N4 trillion to N5 trillion for oil subsidy so we stopped but where is the N4 trillion to N5 trillion? If they drop it on the economy, you will not be crying. We want to submit to the opposition if the opposition can lead us out of this problem.”
With Nigeria’s 2027 presidential election about two years away, political permutations and combinations have begun with actors shopping for special purpose vehicles among the 19 registered political parties in the country to realise their dream to occupy the Aso Rock, the nation’s seat of power in the political capital city of Abuja.
With a litany of court cases arising from intra-party squabbles and protracted leadership crises rocking the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Labour Party, as well as alleged maltreatment of some All Progressives Congress (APC) members, politicians in the three parties seem to have made the Social Democratic Party (SDP) a darling.
This is as fresh political alignments have been activated in many circles ahead of the 2027 polls.
Talks about an inter-party alliance reached a climax on Thursday, March 20, 2025, when opposition arrowhead Atiku, alongside Peter Obi, El-Rufai, amongst others, announced a coalition to oust incumbent Tinubu of the APC whose administration has been accused of mismanaging the economy, with all-time high inflation and unprecedented cost of living.
The coalition is banking on the numerical strength of the votes recorded by Atiku and Obi in the last poll.
In 2023, PDP’s Atiku and Labour Party’s Obi came second and third respectively with combined votes of over 12 million, more than four million above the total votes recorded by Tinubu who was declared the winner by electoral umpire INEC.