Former Jigawa State Governor, Sule Lamido, says the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is an integral part of Nigeria’s democratic history and that the continued existence of the party is tied to the country’s survival.

The founding PDP member, who was a guest on Channels Television’s Political Paradigm programme aired on Tuesday, said should the PDP crumble, Nigeria would breed an emperor as president.

The septuagenarian powerbroker said, “If the PDP collapses, Nigeria will collapse. Where there is no opposition, then there will be an emperor. When the party collapses, then you have an emperor all over Nigeria, and all emperors are destroyed by their greed.

“The PDP is Nigeria’s history in the last 25 years, therefore, look at the bigger picture. If the party collapses, it is Nigeria’s history which collapses.”

Lamido said if the PDP hadn’t restored Nigeria’s democracy in 1999, there was no way ex-military head of state Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) would have taken over power as president in May 2015.

He added that without the PDP laying the foundation for Nigeria’s democracy in the Fourth Republic, incumbent ex-Lagos governor Bola Tinubu wouldn’t have taken over from his party man, Buhari, in May 2023.

The former governor said Tinubu needs the PDP as a focal opposition party to keep him in check.

“More than anybody, Tinubu needs PDP to be chasing him, to be on his toes, but when it collapses, nobody will be chasing him; he will be chasing himself,” he said, equivocally stating that he won’t leave the PDP despite the many crises rocking the party.

With Nigeria’s 2027 presidential election about two years away, political permutations and combinations have begun with actors shopping for special purpose vehicles among the 19 registered political parties in the country to realise their dream to occupy the Aso Rock, the nation’s seat of power in the political capital city of Abuja.

With a litany of court cases arising from intra-party squabbles and protracted leadership crises rocking the PDP and the Labour Party, as well as alleged maltreatment of some APC members, politicians in the three parties seem to have made the Social Democratic Party (SDP) a darling.

This is as fresh political alignments have been activated in many circles ahead of the 2027 polls.

Talks about an inter-party alliance reached a climax on Thursday, March 20, 2025, when opposition arrowhead Atiku Abubakar, alongside Peter Obi, ex-Kaduna governor Nasir El-Rufai, amongst others, announced a coalition to oust incumbent Tinubu of the APC whose administration has been accused of mismanaging the economy, with all-time high inflation and unprecedented cost of living.

The coalition is banking on the numerical strength of the votes recorded by Atiku and Obi in the last poll. In 2023, PDP’s Atiku and Labour Party’s Obi came second and third respectively with combined votes of over 12 million, more than four million above the total votes recorded by Tinubu who was declared the winner by electoral umpire INEC. (Channels TV)