A political research and advocacy group, the Future Nigeria League, has dismissed criticism of President Bola Tinubu’s description of the 2027 presidential contest as open and competitive.
The advocacy group insists that the difficulties confronting the country’s opposition parties are entirely of their own making.
Executive Director of the group, Ike Chijoke, said the objection raised against the President after his meeting with the leadership of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria did not withstand scrutiny of the three-and-a-half-year record of the parties now complaining.
Tinubu had received the CBCN delegation, led by the Archbishop of Kaduna and President of the Conference, Most Rev. Matthew Man-Oso Ndagoso, at the State House, Abuja, on Tuesday, 28 July. The President was reported to have said that all was fair in politics and that the opportunity open to every contestant was equal.
The remarks drew objections from sections of the opposition, who read them as a denial of the pressures facing challenger parties ahead of the poll scheduled for 16 January 2027. The FNL said the President had stated nothing beyond the constitutional position.
“Nigerian law guarantees equal opportunity. It has never guaranteed equal preparation, equal discipline, or equal competence,” the statement said. “Those are earned inside political parties, by the people who run them.”
The group added that between February 2023 and August 2026, the parties that contested the last presidential election had no restrictions on registration or campaigning, free access to the courts, and control over state governments and legislative seats.
Three years, eight governorships. Central to the group’s argument is what it described as a readiness audit of the two parties that produced the leading challengers in 2023.
According to the group, the Peoples Democratic Party held 10 governorships in February 2023 and holds two today, with only Bauchi and Oyo remaining. Each departure, the group said, was a voluntary decision made by the concerned governor.
The FNL further claimed that the PDP’s 2023 standard bearer, Atiku Abubakar, has since left for the African Democratic Congress, that the party is now presenting Senator Sandy Onor, that rival committees claim its national leadership, and that its Ibadan national convention of 14 November 2025, was halted hours before it opened on a suit filed by one of its own members.
On the Labour Party, the group said the leadership dispute that began in 2023 remains unresolved three years later, and that the party’s 2023 candidate, Peter Obi, left in December 2025 and was ratified as the New Democratic Coalition’s candidate on 30 May 2026. Where the opposition vote was split three ways in 2023, the statement said, it is now spread across four or more platforms.
“Not one of these changes was authored by the Presidency,” the group said. “Every defection was a personal choice. Every split was decided over a ticket its own founders could not agree to share.” ‘Filed by the opposition, against the opposition’
The FNL listed eleven leadership disputes, expulsions, defections, and court actions recorded since 2023, and said the origin of each was internal to the opposition.
