Former Cross River State governor Donald Duke says President Bola Tinubu no longer commands the same public goodwill that followed him into the 2023 elections. Speaking as the Peoples Redemption Party presidential candidate, Duke said that the hardship Nigerians have lived through under the present government has drained much of that earlier sympathy.
Asked on Monday about Tinubu’s current political standing, he said the way the administration has been run has laid bare the weakness of the arrangement in power. He does not believe the president still enjoys the kind of goodwill he had in 2023. People, he added, are struggling to get by because of the economic effects of government policy. Hope, in his words, has given way to despair. Structures will matter, he conceded, but on election day many voters will be thinking first of their own survival.
Even with that reading of Tinubu’s weaker hold on public feeling heading into 2027, Duke told Zoyols News the opposition could still lose if it stays split. A fractured field, he warned, would find it hard to beat the president and could even leave the country with another minority winner. The opposition, he argued, must find a way to come together and not replay 2023. What happens on polling day is almost certain to include familiar problems, he said. The real work is to anticipate those problems and deal with them in advance. He has no patience for people who only complain after the damage is done. United we stand, he said. If they do not, they will have only themselves to blame when the old story repeats.
Duke granted that Tinubu is a formidable politician. His quarrel is with governance, not with political skill. From what the country has seen over the past three years, he said the president is weak on governance. He argued Tinubu should not be allowed a second term, claiming the country is already going the wrong way and that another term would only deepen poverty. If he were elected in 2027, Duke said, he would put a better system of government in place.
He also made clear he would stand aside for any candidate the opposition settles on, so long as they share the same objective. The next question, he said, would then be who is best suited for the task, and that would need a voice of reason among those in the field.
