A senior member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has issued a stark internal warning, urging President Bola Tinubu to abandon his 2023 electoral formula to fend off a potent threat from an unexpected quarter: former President Goodluck Jonathan.
While political pundits have focused on a potential alliance between opposition heavyweights Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi, APC Chieftain Dominic Alancha identified a growing, “cult-like” push for Jonathan’s return as a potentially more disruptive force that could unravel the ruling party’s strategy.
“Jonathan is around the corner. Nobody should wave aside that issue because it’s a serious one,” Alancha revealed on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Wednesday. “There are certain persons within the North pushing for Jonathan, ‘bring back Jonathan to them’. In fact, they are forming a cult-like following around that agenda.”
This emerging threat, Alancha argued, makes the ruling party’s previous winning structure obsolete. He stated that a ballot featuring Jonathan alongside Atiku and Obi would render the APC’s 2023 strategy unviable.
“If Jonathan is on the ballot, and Atiku and Obi are also there, believe me, the Muslim-Muslim ticket is not going to fly. Let’s have a balance on that ticket,” he added.
This advice comes as a broad coalition of opposition leaders, including Atiku, Obi, and figures like Rotimi Amaechi and Nasir El-Rufai, formally adopted the African Democratic Congress (ADC) as their platform to challenge Tinubu’s administration, which has faced criticism over economic hardship.
While acknowledging the clear danger of an Obi-Atiku alliance—”If Peter Obi and Atiku can align… I’m telling you it’s going to deplete our support base”—Alancha’s central argument was that the party’s internal preparation is its most critical vulnerability.
He pressed the point that the party must act now, framing the choice as one between proactive strategy and inevitable failure. “It is not too early in the day because preparation precedes manifestation. If you’re not preparing to succeed, then you must have been planning to fail,” he warned.
Alancha, who also leads the Northern Ethnic Nationality Forum (NENF), insisted that retaining the Muslim-Muslim ticket would not only alienate a key voter base but also hand the opposition a powerful campaign weapon.
“If the Muslim-Muslim ticket is retained, it’s going to pose a threat and deplete our support base. The opposition coalition is not sleeping; they are working very seriously,” he noted, quantifying the risk by pointing to the combined vote count of the leading opposition figures from the last election.
The warning highlights the complex calculus facing Tinubu’s camp: navigating the established threat of a united opposition while also war-gaming for a wildcard scenario that involves the return of a former president, a move that could dramatically reshape the electoral battlefield.
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