From all that we said last week, it seems that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is looking to borrow from former President Obasanjo’s 2003 and 2007 political playbook. There is little that needs restating how the northern political elite got Obasanjo into the presidency in 1999, but General Buhari’s entry into politics, Obasanjo’s perceived missteps during the turbulent years of the Sharia crisis, and his open political alliance with the South West, which had abandoned him at the beginning, all seemed to have changed everything for him in advance of the 2003 election. What did Obasanjo do? He adroitly carved out a new electoral map based on religion, ethnicity and class.

First, Obasanjo took the opportunity of the division along religious lines in the North that Sharia had opened up to split northern voters, while still holding onto the support of the northern elite, a majority of whom would not touch Buhari at the time. He also retained the 11 states of the South East and South-South largely based on party affiliation but also some anti-northern political sentiments. Obasanjo then bulldozed his way into the political heart of the South West, and took five of its six states, plus Kwara in the North. He won again with a mudslide, that is, with a significant padding of his vote tally. He then repeated the same feat for the late President Yar’adua in 2007, and even for former President Jonathan in 2011.

It is this twice-trodden electoral path that President Tinubu appears to be looking to walk, since the only other one is that which brought him to power in 2023. But will it stack up again? I don’t know, but it is clear that, for Tinubu, this path is strewn with at least three political hurdles that would be nearly impossible to surmount. First, Tinubu is no Obasanjo. The personal and politico-demographics of the two men are vastly different, even though both are Nigerian presidents of Yoruba extraction. Obasanjo has a domestic and international political standing that Tinubu simply cannot match. Even against a political figure as strong as Buhari in the North in 2003 and 2007, Obasanjo still enjoyed significant support among the northern elite, and throughout the country, which translated to votes that won him several states, first for himself and then for his protégés.

Tinubu does not enjoy Obasanjo’s level of support in the North because he has not been politically aligned for as long. So, like Obasanjo, Tinubu can survive if he loses the support of one or two of the North’s four political constituencies, but not all of the northern voters, religious leaders, the traditional leadership and political elite at the same time.

And then, there are the Peter Obi and Yemi Osinbajo hurdles. However one looks at it, these two men represent the presidential face of religious politics on one side of the dividing line in Nigeria today. It was the defeat of Osinbajo by Tinubu at the APC primaries in 2022 that turned Peter Obi from an Igbo ticket that he had been up to that point into a national Christian candidate, much more the so-called “Yes, Daddy” telephone call. Osinbajo’s exit opened the door for Tinubu’s strategic ticket, but also left the presidential field open for only one Christian and three Muslim candidates, out of the four leading contenders, in a country where the religious configuration of a presidential ticket matters. Therefore, a significant Christian support turned to Obi, and transformed him into a serious national contender in 2023.

If either Obi or Osinbajo, or both, are in the 2027 contest, it will be all nigh impossible for Tinubu to make electoral inroads into the northern religious minorities and the 11 states of the South-East and South-South that he now wants as his new coalition brides. Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah is an important political operative in Nigeria, perhaps even more politically effective than all the Muslim Mallams combined. His annual Christmas homilies tend to set the political agenda for northern Christians for the ensuing year, and all serious political observers know this. But it is hard to say if even having Kukah on his side can upturn the religious-political sentiments currently associated with Obi and Osinbajo. Moreover, if the opposition parties find a way to unite, as they did in 2015, then this hurdle will rise even higher for Tinubu, especially if any one of Obi, Osinbajo or Jonathan is on the ticket with significant northern support, or if all three support Atiku instead.

This leaves us with the elephant in the room in this long-distance electoral calculus: what will Tinubu do with his Muslim-Muslim ticket that got him here in the first place? This is where the difference between Obasanjo and Tinubu becomes even more pronounced. If Tinubu is looking to trod on Obasanjo’s successful 2003 electoral path for 2027, then surely, his presidential ticket must change as a logical consequence. That means dropping Vice President Kashim Shettima, a potentially catastrophic political miscalculation that has no parallel yet in Nigerian politics.

On the one hand, the Kukah-bloc—let’s call it that for now—that Tinubu is both openly and surreptitiously courting, higher and above his old political soulmates in the North, would not accept anything less than a vice-presidential slot to fall in line. This is where, perhaps, former Speaker Yakubu Dogara comes into the picture. But hoisting Dogara into Shettima’s place would simply mean expending the heaviest political price for the tiniest electoral prize because the Kukah bloc does not have much electoral value by itself alone, except to join up with other voting blocs to help push an Obasanjo (2003), a Yar’adua (2007) or a Jonathan (2011) across the finishing line. If, however, any one of Obi, Osinbajo or Jonathan is on the opposite side in 2027, then the electoral value of the Kukah bloc will be reduced to nought, as far as practical politics is concerned.

On the other hand, the consequences of the political betrayal that dropping Shettima will represent will be impossible for Tinubu to overcome. From at least 2021 to date, Tinubu has not had a better spokesperson in Nigeria than Shettima. No northern politician in government has a higher political legitimacy to speak or mobilise on behalf of Tinubu in the North today than Shettima, because his elevation to the vice presidency means he is the leader of the pack, at least in the mind of the northern public.

Dropping Shettima or publicly sidelining him for anyone will solidify the general impression in the North that Tinubu is actively working against the region, after coming to power by its votes. Even more, it will create Shettima into a political force far bigger than he currently represents, after all, perceptions, not facts, rule the world of politics.

This brings us to the whole point of the analysis. An electoral path to victory for an Obasanjo 20 years ago may not necessarily work for a Tinubu in today’s political climate. The personal and politico-demographic composition of Obasanjo favours that path; Tinubu’s does not. If Tinubu’s current ticket was a strategic necessity in 2023, it is now a moral necessity in 2027 because although betrayal is the stuff of politics, certain levels of political betrayals exact the heaviest price still. The Kukah bloc, the larger portions of which didn’t support the ticket in 2023 were right to have been concerned too, since politics is about interest, however interest is defined.

But the solution to those concerns is not to ditch a successful coalition and attempt to carve up a new one because you now have power. A columnist is no official adviser to anyone, even though a lot of the job involves political and economic advising in the public interest. And to that extent I would say the solution to Tinubu’s electoral equation is to expand the current coalition, not to ditch it, by first mending fences with your key constituencies, particularly the voters, and then bringing other voting blocs into the fold. But then again, the columnist is only on the outside pissing in.