Former members of the National Assembly from the southern region have formally adopted President Bola Ahmed Tinubu as their preferred candidate for the 2027 presidential election.
POLITICS NIGERIA reports that the ex-lawmakers, meeting under the auspices of the Southern Caucus of the National Forum of Former Legislators announced their decision in Abeokuta, Ogun State, on Saturday.
They declared that it is in the “best interest of the South and the nation” for Tinubu to complete an eight-year tenure.
The communiqué of the meeting, signed by Samson Osagie, Adeyemi Oluwole, and Israel Sunny Goli, stressed that the president should be supported to consolidate his reforms, which they listed as the establishment of Regional Development Commissions, local government autonomy, a student loan scheme, and the deregulation of the electricity sector.
Addressing the summit, former Speaker of the House of Representatives and now Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila, commended the ex-lawmakers for their support and argued that Tinubu’s policies were laying the foundation for long-term national stability. He also noted that no fewer than 15 former federal legislators currently serve in the president’s cabinet.
The National Coordinator of the Forum, Raphael Igbokwe, described the gathering as an opportunity to reinforce unity among former lawmakers and to lend their voices to critical national issues. He urged the government to reinstate former legislators as statutory delegates to political conventions and called for payment of outstanding severance allowances to 2nd and 3rd Republic lawmakers.
The move comes as the opposition rallies around a new coalition. Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and former Anambra State governor Peter Obi, who ran separately in 2023, are now aligned under the African Democratic Congress (ADC).
In the 2023 general election, Tinubu, running on the All Progressives Congress (APC) platform, secured 8,794,726 votes. Atiku, candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), polled 6,984,520 votes, while Obi of the Labour Party recorded 6,101,533 votes. Combined, Atiku and Obi amassed over 13 million votes, a tally that would have comfortably defeated Tinubu if they had run on a joint ticket.