The All Progressives Congress (APC) has dismissed claims by former Secretary to the Government of the Federation Babachir Lawal that a joint presidential ticket pairing Peter Obi and Rabiu Kwankwaso would stand a stronger chance of winning the 2027 election than either candidate running alone.
Lawal made the comments in a weekend interview with Symfoni TV, where he assessed the prospects of leading political figures ahead of the next general election.
APC National Publicity Secretary Felix Morka rejected the claim outright.
“He said nothing that’s worth responding to,” Morka told Vanguard.
Lawal Rates an Obi-Kwankwaso Alliance at 70%
Lawal said an Obi-Kwankwaso pairing would perform far better than either man running solo.
“Peter Obi, Kwankwaso, take note, I’m pairing them. Individually will be disaster, but I’m pairing them. So I’ll give them, on my scale, close to like 70 per cent. Again, Bola, 50. Atiku, zero,” he said.
He also predicted that former Vice President Atiku Abubakar would lose if he contested in 2027.
“Atiku will lose. He will, and I pray he loses,” Lawal said.
Speaking further, Lawal claimed President Tinubu played a central role in forming the APC and personally financed key parts of Muhammadu Buhari’s 2015 campaign, including funding for then vice-presidential candidate Yemi Osinbajo.
He said Buhari had asked him to broker a merger between the Congress for Progressive Change and Tinubu’s Action Congress of Nigeria because of his closeness to Tinubu, and that Tinubu agreed to set aside his own presidential ambition to help unite the opposition against the then-ruling Peoples Democratic Party.
“BD, you know my ambition to be president. But the way the country is going, the primary goal is to get rid of PDP. I will defer my ambition,” Lawal quoted Tinubu as saying.
Lawal also alleged that Tinubu hired American political consultants linked to former US President Barack Obama for the 2015 campaign, at a reported cost exceeding ₦2 billion.
Despite praising Tinubu’s past generosity, Lawal said the current administration has failed Nigerians.
“The people running the government don’t seem to be people who love the country. They are people who love themselves,” he said.
Kwankwasiyya, Osuntokun Back Growing Alliance
In a related development, the Kwankwasiyya Movement said the Obi-Kwankwaso ticket remains the APC’s biggest political worry ahead of 2027.
The group was reacting to former Kano State Governor Abdullahi Ganduje’s claim that the ticket was “dead on arrival.”
Movement spokesman Habeeb Saleh said the repeated attacks show the APC fears the alliance’s growing popularity.
“The Obi-Kwankwaso’s ticket is the APC’s greatest nightmare. The more they attack it, the more they remind Nigerians that it is the alliance they fear the most,” Saleh said.
He argued that Kwankwaso’s political weight cannot be dismissed, noting the former Kano governor secured more than one million votes in the 2023 presidential election on a relatively unknown platform.
Separately, Akin Osuntokun, a former political adviser to ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo, described the Obi-Kwankwaso pairing as more realistic than the Labour Party’s 2023 arrangement, crediting Obasanjo with brokering it.
“Obi and Kwankwaso is a much more realistic, more compelling ticket than the 2023 one,” Osuntokun said on Arise News.
He rejected suggestions that Obasanjo’s recent letter to former Ogun State Governor Olusegun Osoba was meant to benefit Tinubu politically, insisting Obasanjo remains critical of the administration.
“If you can say that Obasanjo is supporting any ticket, it is Peter Obi and Kwankwaso. As a matter of fact, he is the main sponsor of that ticket,” he said.
