Peter Obi’s running mate in the 2023 presidential election, Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed, has urged the coalition-backed African Democratic Congress (ADC) to present a presidential candidate that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) will not be able to defeat in the 2027 election.
Amid the speculation that the ADC may offer former Vice President Alhaji Atiku Abubakar — who played a major role in the formation of the coalition — its 2027 presidential candidate, Baba-Ahmed maintained that President Bola Tinubu and the ruling party are familiar with Atiku’s political games.
According to him, the APC knows how to work against Atiku, having defeated him in two presidential elections.
The former lawmaker said this in an interview with Trust TV.
‘If you bring out Atiku, they know how to work against Atiku, and he is welcome to win, if he wins we will support him. You need that candidate they can’t understand, they don’t know where to catch, that is how to win an election’, Baba-Ahmed stated.
The 55-year-old Kaduna politician advised the ADC to realise how powerful Tinubu is, stressing that he (Tinubu) patiently schemed for 16 years and eventually achieved his presidential ambition in 2023.
Borrowing from President Tinubu’s playbook
He added that he has not seen any politician in the coalition who can plan for 16 years or shelve their political ambitions for another person, as President Tinubu did for former President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015.
He said: ‘Any coalition that is coming together has to realise how powerful this individual called President Tinubu is.
Somebody who schemed for 16 years to take it one day. He has done what nobody has done, and I don’t see among our own coalition now somebody who is able to plan or scheme for 16 years.
‘With due respect to Atiku, Atiku consistently contested, all the last six, this will be the seventh one without let or hinderance, tell me who from across the divide would stand up and say it must be that other individual that must be the president and I will take over from him after eight year. I’m yet to see that person. Others are also interested in their own candidacy, in their own presidency, but what did President Tinubu do?’
In a separate interview, Baba-Ahmed had recently argued in favour of Obi, saying the former governor of Anambra should not run as a Vice Presidential candidate for the coalition.
He said that with Obi’s performance in the 2023 election, the ex-governor is deserving of the ADC’s presidential ticket.
‘The position of VP is very big. Anyway, I wanted to be, and I was rigged out. But I think Peter Obi should not be a VP, having gotten a disputed 10 million votes’, he said.
The Kaduna politician also disagreed with the narrative that only the coalition of opposition politicians can defeat President Bola Tinubu and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
Citing the 2023 election, he claimed that the Labour Party defeated Tinubu and Atiku without a coalition.
‘It’s all about a narrative that was sold out to Nigeria very quickly, that to defeat Tinubu, it has to be a coalition. Coalition is good, but in 2023 we defeated APC, PDP. There was no coalition in Labor Party’.
