2027: PDP says party’s presidential candidate still in race despite backing Tinubu

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has said its presidential candidate, Sandy Onor, remains in the 2027 race despite the party’s decision to support President Bola Tinubu under a cross-party political arrangement known as the Rainbow Coalition.

George Turner, the PDP chairman in Bayelsa State, said this during an interview on TVC News’ Beyond the Headlines, as the country prepares for the 2027 general election.

Asked whether the decision to back the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate meant Mr Onor was out of the race, Mr Turner said: “No, no, no, no, no. He is in the race.”

He said the Rainbow Coalition was not a merger but a political platform that allows participating parties to retain their candidates while supporting agreed candidates at different levels.

“The Rainbow Coalition is a cross-party political platform, with all the political parties coming on board with their candidates,” he said.

Mr Turner said the coalition’s decisions cut across the state assembly, governorship, National Assembly and presidential elections. At the presidential level, he said, the coalition had settled for Mr Tinubu.

“For the presidency, it is President Ahmed Tinubu that is the candidate of the Rainbow Coalition,” he said.

He added that the participating parties’ presidential candidates, including Mr Onor, would lead their supporters to back Mr Tinubu. According to him, the coalition announced the decision at its launch in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, two days earlier, after consultations with party leaders and the PDP’s National Working Committee.

Mr Turner said similar political arrangements had been made in the past, citing the APC’s 2015 convention and the support Bola Tinubu, then a leader of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), gave to the PDP’s presidential candidate in 2011.

“The overall interest here is the interest of the people, the interest of the nation, the interest of the various states, and that is what drives the Rainbow Coalition,” he said.

Mr Turner also defended the party’s position on zoning, arguing that the South should complete its eight-year presidential tenure in 2027.

“As a nation, we must be concerned about our survival, our unity, what keeps us together and the way we play our politics,” he said.

He recalled the 2013 dispute over zoning, when Atiku Abubakar and five PDP governors left the party after disagreements over the North-South power rotation arrangement. Atiku later returned to contest the PDP presidential ticket in 2019 and challenged former President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration. He also contested the 2023 presidential election.

“Don’t we have conscience? Why do we say one thing in the morning, another thing in the afternoon?” Mr Turner asked.

He argued that fielding another PDP presidential candidate would not guarantee that the person would serve only one term.

“There is no guarantee of doing one term,” he said. “Everything is not politics.”

Mr Turner acknowledged that some PDP candidates were missing from the lists published by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Still, he maintained that all the party’s candidates met the legal requirements for nomination.

“I can assure you that all our candidates met the requirements of the law, and we follow due process in the nomination of our candidates,” he said.

He said the PDP’s national leadership and INEC were working to resolve the issue, adding that it would be discussed at a leadership meeting in Abuja on Tuesday.

“There is nothing to worry about,” he said.

Mr Turner also defended the PDP’s record in government, describing its 16 years in power as the country’s best period of governance.

“The 16 years of PDP is the best we have had,” he said.

He claimed that Mr Tinubu had approached the PDP for a partnership early in his administration and cited road projects in Abuja as an example of the benefits of cooperation between the parties.

“Who are the biggest beneficiaries of this partnership? Nigerian people,” he said.

Francis Okoye, a member of the APC Presidential Campaign Council, said the PDP’s decision to support Mr Tinubu had made the ruling party’s re-election campaign easier but insisted that the APC would not become complacent.

“Somehow they have made our job easy, but we are not sleeping an inch, because we still have many hurdles to cross,” he said.

Mr Okoye identified the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) and the African Democratic Congress (ADC) as potential challengers, urging APC members not to underestimate the opposition.

“APC members should tell themselves the truth that we have a very strong challenge to cross, even though we have 33 governors supporting us,” he said.

He urged party members to intensify grassroots mobilisation and campaign from door to door.

Mr Okoye said Mr Tinubu deserved a second term, arguing that the president’s economic reforms were beginning to yield results.

“This is a man who has shown capacity, has shown courage in all the reforms he has embarked on,” he said.

He cited the removal of the petrol subsidy, saying it had increased the funds available to state governments. He also claimed that many governors no longer owed workers salaries, gratuities and pensions.

“Today we no longer hear of ASUU strike,” he said, referring to the Academic Staff Union of Universities. He added that students were accessing loans through the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND).

Mr Okoye also said the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the outgoing president of the African Development Bank had backed the administration’s reforms.

He criticised Atiku for promising to restore the petrol subsidy and failing to offer a credible alternative to the current administration, if elected.

“Whatever he is promising now is what is not going to keep,” he said.

“He has no agenda, has no policy, has no programme to offer Nigerians.”

Mr Okoye predicted that the APC would perform significantly better in the South-east in 2027 than it did in the 2023 presidential election.

“If Tinubu had gotten just five per cent of votes in the South-east in 2023, this 2027 election he will get more than 25 per cent,” he said.

He attributed the expected improvement to the APC’s increased political presence in the region, saying the party had gone from one governor to three. He also cited Anambra State Governor Charles Soludo’s public support for Mr Tinubu.

Mr Okoye rejected the argument that governors could contribute only their individual votes to the president’s re-election campaign, saying their influence extended to political appointees and supporters.

“You can’t say that a governor has one vote when he has appointed more than 200 or 300 SAs or SSAs,” he said. “When you aggregate all these people, you now see that the governor doesn’t have one vote.”

He also rejected criticism that the administration’s reforms had failed to benefit ordinary Nigerians.

“Anybody who says that the reform is not getting to the grassroots is deceiving himself,” he said, citing road projects, student loans through NELFUND and improved pay for soldiers as examples of the reforms’ impact.