By Isiaka Wakeel

In Nigeria’s political marketplace, the merchandise is changing hands, but the traders appear to be the same. The men who should be sharpening their knives for the electoral battle are increasingly looking in the direction of the man they are supposed to challenge.

As 2027 draws closer, President Tinubu may not need to spend all his energy fighting the opposition if some of its most influential figures are willing to help clear the path to his re-election.

From Ademola Adeleke in Osun to Chukwuma Soludo in Anambra and Nyesom Wike in Abuja, the emerging political calculations pose an uncomfortable question: Is Tinubu fighting the opposition or is he quietly harvesting its influential members for his own political plantation?

Politics has always been a game of interests, but there is a marked difference between building bridges across party lines and turning the opposition into a ladder for the ruling party to climb back to power. One is democratic cooperation; the other tends to become political surrender dressed in the robes of pragmatism.

The tragedy is that the Nigerian electorate may be left holding the empty basket; while the political class shares the harvest.

Adeleke belongs to a political tradition outside Tinubu’s APC. Yet, in the chessboard of presidential politics, every move by an influential governor can carry consequences far beyond his state. If Adeleke’s political calculations end up strengthening Tinubu’s re-election machinery, Osun voters deserve to know where the governor’s ultimate loyalty lies: with the people who entrusted him with their mandate or with the political arrangements that could shape the next presidential contest?

A governor cannot spend an election season speaking the language of one political family while his political manoeuvres help another family secure the throne without inviting questions. The electorate did not cast their votes to make their leaders political couriers delivering electoral advantages to another camp.

Soludo is another intriguing piece on this political chessboard. As an APGA governor, he also occupies a platform outside the APC. There is nothing wrong with a governor cooperating with the federal government. Indeed, federalism would be an expensive joke if state governors and the president could not work together.

But cooperation is not capitulation, and a handshake should not become a handover. Anambra’s interests must not disappear beneath the carpet of presidential calculations. If the political romance with Tinubu produces benefits for Anambra people, it should be defended openly. If it merely adds another feather to the president’s re-election cap, the people deserve to know what their state has gained or will gain in return.

Then comes Wike whose political journey has demonstrated how easily the boundaries between opposition and government can become blurred. A man who emerged from the PDP now occupies a strategic position in an APC-led administration. His presence in Tinubu’s government is a reminder that Nigerian politics can turn yesterday’s adversaries into today’s partners without requiring either side to explain the journey to the electorate.

In this kind of arrangement, the opposition risks becoming a house whose doors are open to the very person it should be keeping under watch. While its members argue over who should carry the flag, the incumbent may be busy recruiting the gatekeepers. And that is where the real danger lies.

A democracy without a credible opposition is like a football match in which one team supplies the referee, borrows the opposing team’s boots and persuades its defenders to clear the ball away from their own goal. The match may continue, the stadium may remain full and the scoreboard may look legitimate; but the contest has lost much of its meaning.

Yes, the opposition’s responsibility is not to oppose every government policy simply because it did not produce the president. Nor should it reject every federal initiative that could benefit its states. Its duty, however, is to preserve the independence necessary to question power, challenge failure and offer Nigerians a credible alternative. When that independence becomes negotiable, the electorate are left watching a political masquerade in which different dancers wear different costumes but appear to be moving to the same drummer.

Meanwhile, ordinary Nigerians are paying the price of a country where political calculations often travel faster than solutions to public problems. Soaring costs of food and transportation, unemployment, insecurity and the pressure on households’ incomes do not disappear because governors have perfected the art of political fraternisation. A hungry citizen cannot eat a cross-party handshake, and a struggling family cannot pay its bills with photographs of politicians smiling across party lines.

President Tinubu has every right to seek re-election in 2027, but he should earn another mandate by convincing Nigerians that his administration deserves one; not by benefiting from an opposition whose influential members may be helping to weaken the alternatives available to voters.

If the president’s record is strong enough, let the electorate be the judge. If his policies have delivered prosperity as he claims, let the evidence make the argument. A president who is proud of his administration’s achievements should not need the opposition to become his unofficial campaign orchestra.

Ultimately, the tragedy is not that politicians are talking to one another. It is that the citizens may be watching a contest in which the supposed opponents are quietly helping one contestant prepare for victory.

And when the dust of the 2027 presidential race settles, Nigerians must ask themselves a painful question: Did the opposition lose the election or did some of its own players help the president win it before the race even began?