Dr Hakeem Baba-Ahmed has a specific image for what he thinks is happening inside the All Progressives Congress. Speaking Wednesday on Channels Television’s Politics Today, the National Chairman of the Peoples Redemption Party described the ruling party as “a monster eating itself up and eating everybody up,” arguing that its dominance on paper, 31 state governors and control of the National Assembly, hasn’t translated into political comfort for President Bola Tinubu.
That discomfort, Baba-Ahmed argued, stems from the simple reality that Nigeria has gotten worse under his leadership, in his assessment, regardless of how much institutional power the president holds. He described Tinubu as possibly the most powerful president Nigeria has had, someone who has consolidated authority around himself extensively, yet remains visibly uneasy despite commanding roughly 75 percent of the National Assembly by his estimate. “It’s politically monstrous,” he said.
Baba-Ahmed pointed to Osun State as evidence that the APC’s dominance is more fragile than it appears. Governor Ademola Adeleke’s victory there, he said, showed that the party can be beaten without any coordinated opposition strategy. “APC was trounced in Osun. We didn’t even see a coalition or collaboration or a gang-up against the APC,” he said, noting that parties competed independently against each other and APC still lost. He dismissed rumors of a backroom deal between Tinubu and Adeleke, crediting Accord Party’s win instead to a straightforward electoral defeat. “There’s no reason why this cannot repeat itself at a national level,” he said.
That belief led him to a specific, if partly rhetorical, prediction about 2027. “If it’s a credible, free and fair election, I assure you, Tinubu will lose,” he said. “I won’t say before 12 noon. Maybe before 4 pm.”
But the credibility of that election, in his view, is far from guaranteed, and it’s INEC’s track record, not the outcome itself, that concerns him most. He argued that no one should credit the commission with running fair elections until it proves capable of conducting one in which a sitting president is actually a contestant. “I hope the election will be credible, free and fair,” he said. “If it’s not, I foresee a very serious threat to Nigeria’s democracy.”
