Olayinka says 2027 will be easier for Tinubu than 2023 because of new alliances
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieftain Lere Olayinka has said the 2027 presidential election will be easier for President Bola Tinubu than the 2023 contest, pointing to the president’s alliances and what he called his record in office.
Speaking on TVC Breakfast on Monday, Olayinka argued that Tinubu had drawn influential opposition figures toward his administration and that this made the next race “a one-way election.” “It will be much easier for the president than the 2023 election. That is a fact that most people are not willing to accept,” he said.
He singled out Federal Capital Territory Minister Nyesom Wike, who remains in the PDP but works with the Tinubu government. If Wike were not in that camp, Olayinka said, he might have been building support for the PDP. He also pointed to Abia State Governor Alex Otti and Osun State Governor Ademola Adeleke backing different platforms, and asked listeners to imagine a map in which Otti pushed a Labour candidate, Adeleke an Accord candidate and Wike a PDP candidate.
By opening his circle across party lines, Olayinka said, the president had made both governance and politics easier for himself. He urged Nigerians to acknowledge Wike’s support for Tinubu even while the minister stays in the PDP.
The argument treats fragmentation as the incumbent’s asset. In 2023 the opposition vote was already split. Olayinka’s claim is that 2027 will be easier still because some of the people who might have unified an alternative are now inside the president’s orbit or on separate tickets. That is a reading of structure, not a forecast of turnout or of how hardship will play at the booth.
Opposition parties will reject the idea that the race is already “one-way.” What Olayinka has named is the mechanism he thinks matters: who is available to mobilise against the president, and who is no longer available. Whether that mechanism decides January is a question for voters, not for a breakfast-show certainty.
