Ologbondiyan: Talks of political parties’ merger premature | It’s time for governance

Kola Ologbondiyan, former national publicity secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), says it is too early to explore a merger of political parties ahead of the 2027 elections.

Atiku Abubakar, former vice-president and PDP presidential candidate in the 2023 polls, had in November called on opposition parties to form a coalition.

Atiku had said Nigeria requires a strong opposition to stop the All Progressives Congress (APC) from “turning” the country into a one-party state.

The Labour Party (LP) had subsequently said it was not in talks with any party over a possible merger, while the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) said it would only merge with a political party whose ideologies align with its own.

Speaking in a chat with TheCable on Sunday, Ologbondiyan said although the proposal for a merger is desirable, the conversation is premature.

“Those talking about merger should first of all understudy the psychology of President Tinubu’s politics. That is the first step. As you can see, since they started talking about merger, you saw the fate that befell the Labour Party,” he said.

“This doesn’t imply that I am opposed to merger but even the Bible says, there is time for everything. I don’t think that the time for merger talk is now. We just finished a major election not too long ago. Now is the time for governance.”

‘INEC CHAIRMAN HASN’T HELPED ELECTORAL PROCESS’

Commenting on the 2023 elections, Ologbondiyan said Mahmood Yakubu, chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), did not “help” Nigeria’s electoral process.

“As far as I am concerned, I know that the current INEC chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, has not helped our electoral process,” he said.

Following the elections, Yakubu and the commission came under criticism over the outcome, particularly the failure of the result viewing (IReV) portal during the presidential poll.

On the first anniversary of the election, INEC released a report which detailed the failure of the IReV.

The commission said the server returned “HTTP error” because of a configuration bug which was discovered after the presiding officers at the polling units could only upload the results of the national assembly elections.