Convener of The Alternative, Segun Sowunmi, has criticised the coalition drive being promoted around the African Democratic Congress, ADC, insisting that the only successful coalition model in Nigerian politics belongs to President Bola Tinubu and former President Muhammadu Buhari and cannot be casually copied.
Speaking on TVC’s Breakfast programme on Thursday, Sowunmi said the alliance that produced the All Progressives Congress was the product of years of ideological consistency, grassroots labour and political sacrifice, elements he argued are absent in the current ADC-led coalition effort.
According to him, the APC coalition succeeded because it was built on stable political traditions rather than convenience.
“First of all, you must concede that the playbook of a coalition political party belongs to Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Muhammadu Buhari in that bloc. I don’t mean them as individuals, but within their bloc. They brought stability to ideological situations to the table,” Sowunmi said.
He explained that both leaders came into the coalition with clearly defined political identities. Tinubu, he noted, had long been rooted in the AD and AC political tradition, while Buhari remained firmly associated with the ANPP.
“To that extent, when they wanted to form a coalition, they could imagine themselves to be from the same material, only joining together political numbers,” he said.
Sowunmi accused current coalition advocates, particularly those rallying around the ADC, of attempting to run a political model they neither understood nor helped to build.
“The challenge with these people now is that those who want to form a coalition are a cheap, fake set of humans who do not understand that you have to rewrite the book,” he said.
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“You can’t run on the playbook of Bola Tinubu and Buhari, which they invented, and think you’re going to beat them at a game they invented.”
He stressed that coalition building demands deep grassroots engagement and patience, noting that Tinubu and Buhari failed in their first attempt to form a coalition in 2011 and only succeeded later after leaving their former parties and convincing others to join a new political platform.
According to Sowunmi, those currently calling for a coalition are unwilling to do the hard work required at the base of the political structure.
“If you watch the people calling for a coalition now, they don’t want to do the heavy lifting. The hard work of coalition building is going back to the parties at the base,” he said.
Using the ADC as an example, Sowunmi argued that the party’s leadership crisis is a direct result of attempts to seize control from the top without respecting internal constitutional processes.
“They hopped onto a party that had existed for some time and tried to grab it at the top, without looking at the constitutional requirements,” he said, adding that such an approach was bound to trigger internal conflict.
His comments add fresh heat to the debate over opposition alliances ahead of future elections, with Sowunmi insisting that without ideology, structure and sacrifice, no coalition can replicate the Tinubu–Buhari formula that reshaped Nigeria’s political landscape.
