Ibadan Declaration: APC, PDP Fight Dirty Over Opposition, Makinde’s 2027 Stand

Ibadan Declaration: APC, PDP Fight Dirty Over Opposition, Makinde’s 2027 Stand

The presidency has said that opposition political parties are standing on a sinking ground while President Bola Tinubu is standing solidly on the rock of competence.

Special Adviser to President Tinubu on Media and Public Communication, Sunday Dare, stated this on Sunday in an interview on Arise Television.

The presidential spokesman, who was reacting to the Ibadan declaration by the opposition to field one presidential candidate, described the summit as a collection of recycled politicians.

He said they are people who have been ministers, governors, and political actors for years, stressing that a closer look at their recent performances, whether in executive or legislative roles, there is little evidence of fresh thinking.

According to him, the individuals have nothing new to offer Nigerians.

He said, “They are free to field five, seven presidential candidates. But I said they’re standing on the sinking ground.

“That is the beauty of democracy. You have the opposition, you have individuals, political leaders decide on what they want to do.

“But that does not diminish the fact that there is a government in place that is functional, that has measured outcomes in what it has been doing. It does not take that away.”

Press Statement.

THREAT TO VIOLENCE: TINUBU AND APC, NOT MAKINDE, ARE TO BLAME

The All Progressives Congress and many of its members serving in government have issued a plethora of statements since the successful hosting of the national summit of opposition political parties at Ibadan on Saturday, 25th April, 2026. One of their numerous pain points arising therefrom is the historical recollection of ‘wetie’ – a sad descent into uncontrollable violence, caused by the political greed of the then ruling party and its concomitant asphyxiation of the opposition.

This recollection was embedded in the speech of the host, Governor Oluseyi Makinde. The federal government and the APC have described that recollection as a call to violence and have since been reacting with the panic of an animal cornered by its own misdeeds.

In response, we state as follows:
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. The use of history in the way and manner done by Governor Makinde in the said
speech served as a caution and advisory to the Federal Government, the APC, and other national institutions, of the unmitigated crisis that their actions and inactions can result in. Only a guilty aggressor can interpret it to mean a threat or call to violence. It is common knowledge that those who do not learn from history are doomed by it.

Governor Makinde offered a sobering reminder that when insatiable political greed and avarice replace patriotism and good governance, and are compounded by the
accumulated anger and frustrations of the citizenry, the resultant conflagration will be
of immeasurable proportion. This again is a fact that history bears witness to.

The events that led to the sad incident of ‘wetie’ and the current happenings within the political space, as orchestrated by the APC, are not just similar but identical in both intent and execution. To continue doing the same thing while expecting a different result is the very definition of political recklessness. When pushed to the wall, people have no other direction to go but forward, against the wall itself.

The current slide into elected totalitarianism has been entirely
engineered by the APC and the Federal Government. They cannot decry the effect while remaining willfully blind to the cause and to their own culpability in it.

When the APC was in opposition, they did not merely threaten violence, they openly promised to make the country ungovernable, with the infamous baboon and blood narrative. They therefore lack any moral capacity to complain about a mere historical
recollection by a sitting governor.

As long as the targeted state-sponsored decimation of the opposition continues, the opposition parties will explore increasingly potent strategies, entirely within the ambit of the law, to prevent the enthronement of a one-party state under an elected dictator.

The APC should be ashamed of their comprehensive failure in both governance and
politics, and their resort to the crude tactics of inducement, intimidation and persecution of opposition leaders.

Finally, the responsibility for any violence in the build-up to or immediately after the 2027 elections lies squarely at the doors of the Federal Government, the All Progressives Congress,
INEC, and every national institution charged with the defence of democracy. The citizens know the aggressors from the victims, and the APC’s attempt to play victim has failed woefully.

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Signed:

Comrade Ini Ememobong, mnipr
National Publicity Secretary
Peoples Democratic Party