Amid early permutations and combinations ahead of the 2027 presidential election, Festus Keyamo, one of the vocal ministers in the President Bola Tinubu cabinet, has said that opposition arrowhead Peter Obi cannot penetrate northern Nigeria and garner votes like the incumbent.
Keyamo, who was a guest on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics programme, said Tinubu and his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), have political structures in place in northern Nigeria.
The aviation minister also said the opposition coalition floated on the platform of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) won’t go far.
Keyamo said, “They are going nowhere in terms of demography.
“I like what is happening; they are putting us on our toes; it is going to make us work harder, but the numbers are not looking good for them.
“This so-called ADC, in 2027, what they are working on is to bring Peter Obi and Atiku (Abubakar) together to join those numbers and beat our over eight million votes.
“Let me tell you why it is wrong. If you make Peter Obi the deputy to Atiku, three demographic factors delivered Peter Obi in 2023, but the three will collapse.”
Keyamo listed the three factors he felt worked in favour of Obi in 2023. “The other candidates were Muslims, and so there was only one Christian candidate, and the Christians went to one candidate,” he said.
“The South-East felt cheated, so the South-East went to one point because of the Igbo man.
“And the third demography: the Obidients, young Nigerians who felt they were angry, they wanted a younger person and all of that because the other candidates were older than him (Obi).
“If you put Peter Obi this time as president, he cannot penetrate the north. We have our structures in the north. We have governors and our structures in the north.”
The ADC Coalition
Tinubu, who trounced his closest rivals, Atiku of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Labour Party’s Obi, in the 2023 poll and assumed office in May 2023, is seeking re-election in 2027 to complete the country’s eight-year unwritten rule on rotation of power between the two major regions of the country – the southern and northern regions. Before Tinubu, the late Muhammadu Buhari, a retired military general from the North-West zone of the country, was in power between May 2015 and May 2023.
Ahead of the 2027 polls, talks about an inter-party alliance reached a climax on Wednesday, July 2, 2025, when opposition arrowhead Atiku Abubakar, alongside Obi, ex-Senate president David Mark, ex-minister Rauf Aregbesola, ex-minister Rotimi Amaechi, ex-Kaduna governor Nasir El-Rufai, amongst others, adopted the ADC as the platform by the opposition coalition to oust incumbent Tinubu, 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, Atiku and 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 the electoral umpire INEC.