By Olukorede Yishau
NIGERIA IS not where we want it. It is, in fact, far away from it. So, the news of a coalition vowing to take us there should be exciting.
But, there is a lacuna when a look at the men and women in this coalition reveals they have, for decades, had the opportunity to do what they are now promising.
Let’s unpack things this way: There is something oddly powerful about being cast aside. About being deemed unworthy of the table where others dine and decide. It is in the margins that solidarity often takes root, not in grandeur, but in grit.
Like moths circling a dimmed flame, those in the margins are finding each other again, not necessarily out of love for country, but out of a mutual need to reclaim lost relevance. This is the solidarity of pariahs, a congregation of political heavyweights shut out of Bola Tinubu’s inner circle, quietly building the machinery to challenge him in 2027.
To be a pariah in Nigerian politics is often temporary. Today’s exile is tomorrow’s kingmaker. Those outside the circle of power have discovered that redemption requires coordination. Thus, they are banding together under a single mission: end Tinubu’s reign.
The signs began to emerge months after the 2023 election, when it became clear that the Tinubu presidency would become stronger with governors, senators and House of Representatives members defecting to the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Atiku Abubakar, the perennial PDP presidential candidate, is not done. He leads the pack of the aggrieved. Despite his sixth consecutive loss, he has refused to retire. Instead, he is reaching across lines he once mocked. Peter Obi, who captured the imagination of millions of urban youth, is also outside in the cold, not just of government, but of the wider policy conversation. In the months since the 2023 election, Atiku and Obi have met a number of times. Both, after denying merger rumours despite their body language betraying ambition, are now in a coalition glued by solidarity of being pariahs. Their dictum is: the enemy of my political stagnation is my new best friend.
Then there is Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, the kingmaker from Kano and leader of the NNPP. Kwankwaso, initially courted by Tinubu’s allies, has now veered sharply into opposition. The political math is compelling: Obi controls Southeast sentiments; Kwankwaso owns Kano; Atiku holds sway in the Northeast and parts of the Middle Belt. Together, they represent a formidable, if unstable, coalition. But it is a coalition born of exclusion, a gathering of the left out and the pushed aside.
But the pariah club isn’t just made up of former presidential hopefuls. There is also Nasir El‑Rufai, ex-Kaduna State governor who would have been a minister in the Tinubu government, but for last-minute rigmarole. El-Rufai, now a pariah, has become one of the harshest critics of the Tinubu administration. When he attacks the government, my disdain for politics and politicking mounts. There is also Rotimi Amaechi, ex-Speaker, ex-governor, ex-minister, but now a pariah. Amaechi is hungry.
He hasn’t hidden this, and he has teamed up with hungry lions like him to see how to tear the prey and take over the arena once again. It is cold being out there after eight years as Speaker, eight years as governor and eight years as minister. We also have David Mark, ex-military big boy and ex-Senate President. He has been made the symbol of the coalition.
Rauf Aregbesola, the scribe of the pariah, is a man whose recent acts is another reason why politics and politicking will be difficult for me to embrace. Aregbesola, a former Commissioner of Works in Lagos, former governor of Osun State and former Minister of Interior, would have been an unknown engineer plying his trade in Alimosho if not for his association with Tinubu, whose influence gave him all the offices he has held. His falling out with Tinubu remains a mystery.
He was so close to Tinubu that, according to Professor Sola Adeyeye, the president once remarked that if he were asleep with Aregbesola standing over him holding a dagger, no one should dare wake him—such was his trust that Aregbesola would never harm him. What could have gone wrong? My only guess is that it has to do with the politics of Osun State, especially regarding Aregbesola’s successor, Adegboyega Oyetola.
The pariah club also swells with more familiar names: Abubakar Malami, the former Justice Minister who once whispered law into the ears of the President; John Odigie-Oyegun, aged steward of a party he no longer recognises; Uche Secondus, former helmsman of the PDP’s battered ship; and Aminu Tambuwal, whose eyes seems to still be scanning the horizon for a presidential dawn. Once fixtures in the engine room of power, they circle back, not stirred by duty or the country’s broken heart, but by a quieter hunger: the ache to be seen, to be counted, to matter still.
Instructively, the key members of this club helped build the very system they now criticise. Atiku was Vice President in an era of privatisation scandals. Obi governed Anambra with a technocratic aloofness some still critique. Kwankwaso has been everything from defence minister to governor for eight broken years. Others too have had their years as insiders. Can they truly become the change they claim to seek?
Certainly, this is not yet a revolution. Is it even a movement? But it is something potent: a solidarity of pariahs, forged not by shared dreams, but by shared exile.
My final take: It is possible that pariahs can become prophets if they can agree on who leads and who follows. But, because the solidarity of pariahs is usually fragile, how that will work out remains to be seen. From his body language, Atiku still believes he should lead.
Obi, from what I can see, believes it is his turn. Kwankwaso, too, sees himself as the Northern alternative, a force to reckon with, a god that must be deified. With this scenario, none will easily submit. And egos, more than ideology, have broken more coalitions than ambition ever did.
