Three years after separate tickets preceded a plurality victory for the All Progressives Congress (APC), Atiku Abubakar of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) and Peter Obi of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) are again on different ballots, with the presidential election about 10 weeks away. The arrangement resembles the one seen in 2023. This analysis looks at what has changed since then, what has stayed the same, and how the figures and the parties involved describe the situation.
The 2023 presidential result is the usual reference point in discussions of the opposition’s prospects. Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the APC was declared winner with 8,794,726 votes, or 36.61 per cent. Atiku, then of the Peoples Democratic Party, polled 6,984,520, Obi, then of the Labour Party, 6,101,533, and Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party 1,496,687. The three leading opposition candidates together recorded 14,582,740 votes, which is more than the winner’s tally. Opposition figures have often cited that sum. Analysts have cautioned that votes do not always transfer from one candidate to another, and a share of Obi’s 2023 supporters were first time or returning voters who might not have turned out for Atiku.
The structure of the election is also part of the record. Tinubu secured at least 25 per cent of the vote in 30 states, above the constitutional requirement, and his victory was upheld by the Supreme Court. Turnout was roughly 27 per cent, among the lowest recorded in the country’s democratic history. A low turnout, three leading challengers and a rule that requires a plurality meant that the winner needed a little over a third of the votes cast.
The principal figures were familiar with one another. Atiku and Obi ran together on the Peoples Democratic Party ticket in 2019 and lost to Muhammadu Buhari. By 2022 they were in separate parties, with Obi at Labour, Kwankwaso at the NNPP and Atiku in the PDP. Efforts to bring them together before the 2023 election did not produce an agreement. Obi and Kwankwaso explored an alliance, and the talks ended over the question of who would lead the ticket. Atiku said at the time that he was talking to both men. Kwankwaso said he was in talks with neither Obi nor Atiku.
The points of disagreement concerned leadership of a joint ticket rather than policy. Each man could point to a basis for leading. Atiku headed an established national party and had long experience. Obi led a fast growing movement among younger and urban voters. Kwankwaso had a strong base in Kano. Agreeing to serve under another candidate would have meant accepting that someone else was better placed to win, and none of the three did so. Tinubu, whose own nomination had been contested within the APC, went into the election against a field that had not consolidated.
The ADC coalition
By 2025 the opposition had moved towards a common platform. The ADC became the vehicle of a coalition that adopted it in July 2025 to challenge the APC in 2027. Participants included Atiku, Obi, former Kaduna governor Nasir El Rufai, former transport minister Rotimi Amaechi and former Senate President David Mark. The arrangement held for several months. At a leaders’ caucus in Abuja in September 2025, the presidential aspirants agreed to support whoever emerged as the party’s candidate, and members were asked to resign from other parties. Obi was absent from that meeting but sent word that he remained committed. Some observers took the caucus as a sign that the divisions of 2023 might not be repeated.
The question of who would carry the ticket had been postponed and not settled. Yusuf Datti Baba Ahmed, Obi’s running mate in 2023, said publicly that Obi should not take a vice presidential slot, given what he described as a contested 10 million votes. The coalition had a platform and a list of prominent names. It did not have an agreed procedure for choosing among them.
How the coalition divided
The break was happened in early 2026. The alliance came apart after weeks of deadlock over the presidential ticket, with Atiku’s camp seeking the nomination while Obi maintained that it was the turn of the South. Zoning, the informal rotation of the presidency between North and South, provided each side with an argument, though the disagreement also concerned who should lead. Court cases added pressure. A Supreme Court ruling that restored David Mark’s leadership of the ADC was described as a temporary reprieve, with further hurdles remaining under INEC’s tight timelines.
Events then moved quickly. Obi became the NDC’s presidential candidate on 29 May 2026, and Atiku became the ADC’s. Atiku won the ADC primary with 1,846,370 votes against Amaechi and the businessman Mohammed Hayatu Deen, and Amaechi was subsequently named his running mate. Within a year, the coalition formed to avoid a repeat of 2023 had given way to two leading opposition candidates on separate tickets.
What is different now
Several things have changed since 2023, and some of them are favourable to the opposition. The first concerns Kwankwaso, who took nearly 1.5 million votes in 2023. He is now Obi’s running mate on the NDC ticket. The pairing combines Obi’s southern and urban following with the Kwankwasiyya base in Kano. Akin Osuntokun, a former political adviser to Olusegun Obasanjo, has described it as a more realistic and compelling ticket than Labour’s in 2023.
The second concerns Atiku’s ticket. At 80, he is the oldest candidate on INEC’s final list, and his running mate, Amaechi, is 61. Amaechi is a former Rivers governor from the South South, and his selection is read by some as a response to criticism that Atiku’s 2023 campaign had limited reach outside the North. The third is a new entrant. Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State declared on 14 May that he would run under an alliance of the PDP and the Allied Peoples Movement. He supported Tinubu in 2023, became a critic in 2025 and has said he will not back the President’s second term bid.
His candidacy is most relevant to the South West, where Tinubu received about 2.28 million votes in 2023. Support drawn from the incumbent there would help the opposition as a whole, while support drawn from Atiku or Obi elsewhere would have the opposite effect. The fourth change is that the ruling party has had a further three years in office.
The ruling party’s position
In 2023, Tinubu led a party whose outgoing president was reported to have shown little enthusiasm for a successor, and he had recently come through a keenly contested primary. In 2027, he is leading a party that has received members from others during his term. Since July 2023, at least 38 lawmakers, eight senators and 30 members of the House of Representatives, have moved to the APC.
Governors have also crossed over. Most of the six PDP governors who moved to the APC cited their former party’s unresolved crisis, while some alleged inducements from federal actors. After the governors of Enugu and Bayelsa defected, the ADC accused the President of working towards a one party state. APC officials have rejected that description and attributed the movement to difficulties within the opposition.
Governors typically control patronage, local government machinery and much of the logistics involved in getting voters to polling units, which is why their party affiliations draw attention in presidential elections. By January 2026, of the seven governors remaining in opposition parties, only two, Makinde and Mohammed, were consistently showing resistance to Tinubu. Nyesom Wike has said publicly that he will support Tinubu in 2027. The PDP has also contracted. It held 32 governorships in 2007 and 12 after losing power in 2015. Atiku has left the party, and the organisation that supported his 6.9 million votes in 2023 is now divided among several platforms.
What the numbers show
A recent poll published this week, based on 2023 state results showed varying turnout and switching. In one scenario, Tinubu polled 11.69 million votes, or 33.67 per cent, compared with 10.62 million for Obi and Kwankwaso, 8.96 million for Atiku and 1.18 million for Makinde. The figures illustrate possibilities and are not a forecast, and the authors varied their assumptions several times. In that exercise, Atiku would need about 1.66 million converts, roughly 30 per cent of Tinubu’s 2023 northern vote, to finish first, and every southern Atiku voter who moves to Tinubu raises that requirement.
The regional distribution of the 2023 vote is relevant to these estimates. Obi’s support came mainly from the South East, the South South and the cities. He beat Tinubu in Lagos by 582,454 votes to 572,606, while Atiku carried Osun. Atiku’s strength lay in the North East and parts of the North West. He consolidated parts of both regions without building a national spread. A single opposition candidate might have combined these areas. Two candidates could draw from one another where either might have won, although two campaigns could also reach voters that one would not.
Opinion surveys have pointed to a competitive contest, with caveats. An online poll in September gave Tinubu 35.41 per cent, Obi 33.86 per cent and Atiku 26.67 per cent among 69,110 approved responses. Self selected online samples do not represent the electorate. A separate online poll run by the Tinubu Must Go movement, with nearly 110,000 respondents, gave Atiku 73.6 per cent. The difference between the two reflects how much such results depend on who chooses to take part. Both suggest that the opposition vote remains divided.
Positions of the two camps
Each camp has asked the other to step aside. The NDC has urged Atiku and the ADC to join Obi, and Kwankwaso has cautioned Atiku against disturbing the zoning arrangement, saying the presidency remains the South’s turn. The ADC has set out its own position. Atiku’s camp said he has national reach and owns the original coalition structure, and its officials are asking what the ADC would receive if he stood down.
The exchanges have become sharper. The ADC campaign’s spokesman said Kwankwaso should be focusing on the Tinubu administration and not on another opposition candidate, while Kwankwaso replied that the ADC had tried to portray the NDC as working for the ruling party, or as ready to withdraw its ticket at the last minute. Mutual suspicion of this kind is the context in which any late agreement would have to be reached, and each side has tended to describe offers of cooperation as proposals for the other to be absorbed.
Personal and political stakes also feature in the standoff. Atiku, 80, is on his 7th presidential bid. Obi finished third in 2023 and leads a movement whose supporters regard his candidacy as the outcome of their efforts. Where each side’s stated position is that the other should withdraw, neither has yet done so. Commentators generally regard a plurality system as favourable to a united incumbent facing divided challengers, though both candidates maintain that their candidacies reflect sincere commitments to the voters who back them.
The calendar and the runoff
The timetable is tight. INEC’s timetable places the presidential election on 16 January 2027, and the commission has published its final list of 18 candidates. The date was brought forward from 20 February after the Electoral Act 2026 was signed on 18 February. Campaigns are under way, ballots are largely settled and party structures are committed. A merger would face logistical difficulty at this stage, and a withdrawal could leave a candidate’s name on the ballot for voters who have not heard of the change.
Some analysts have pointed to the constitution as another route to a different outcome. A first round victory requires a plurality and at least 25 per cent of the vote in two thirds of the states. One assessment noted that the APC would need 25 per cent in at least 24 states to retain the presidency, and that the northern vote is central to its plans. If the incumbent fell short of that spread, a runoff would follow, and the vote against him might gather behind a single challenger.
The scenario depends on one opposition candidate reaching the second round with sufficient support. In 2023, Tinubu cleared the threshold in 30 states with barely a third of the national vote, and his support in the South West and among northern allies has not yet been tested in a divided field of this kind.
Discontent and organisation
The opposition’s case assumes that the incumbent is vulnerable to public dissatisfaction. Another polls has shown rising anger with Tinubu over the economy and security. Atiku and Obi have each built their campaigns around the cost of living. The government, for its part, has pointed to its record in office as grounds for a second term. Public dissatisfaction does not by itself determine results, because votes must be won at polling units, which depends on agents, legal teams, transport and organised turnout. Chekwas Okorie, a former presidential candidate, has said that opposition parties would find it difficult to unseat Tinubu without a coordinated strategy and a strong alliance.
The ruling party’s position is also subject to change. Defections can be reversed, party machinery can underperform, and turnout in a low participation election is difficult to predict. A late movement among northern voters who backed Tinubu in 2023, or an increase in participation among young urban voters, could alter the picture. The degree to which public dissatisfaction translates into organised votes is likely to be central to the remaining weeks of campaigning.
Questions
Several outcomes are possible. One of the two leading opposition candidates could withdraw in favour of the other, early enough for the endorsement to reach voters. Both could direct their campaigns mainly at the incumbent and defer their differences until after polling day. Events outside the candidates’ control, such as a security or economic shock, a change in northern support for the President, or a shift in turnout, could also alter the contest, and none can be forecast. Recent exchanges between the ADC and the NDC have not pointed towards an early agreement, although Nigerian political arrangements have changed quickly before.
Commentators have used the phrase “return ticket” to describe the possibility that a divided opposition could again benefit the incumbent. The principals dispute that characterisation. In 2023, the opposition recorded more combined votes than the winner but did not contest as a single force. In 2027, some names have changed, with Kwankwaso now on Obi’s ticket and Makinde a new entrant, while the broad pattern of one ruling party facing several challengers in a plurality contest remains.
Among the open questions are whether the opposition leaders view the contest as one to be approached jointly or separately, what each side would require in return for stepping aside, and whether the electorate will treat the election as a verdict on the incumbent or as a choice among alternatives.
