Nigeria Will Collapse If PDP Disintegrates – Lamido Warns, Says Tinubu Needs Opposition to Stay Accountable

Former Governor of Jigawa State, Sule Lamido, has said that President Bola Tinubu needs the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to keep his administration in check, warning that Nigeria would risk authoritarianism if the opposition collapses.

Lamido, a founding member of the PDP, made the comments during an interview on Channels Television’s Political Paradigm programme aired on Tuesday. He argued that the PDP’s survival is essential to Nigeria’s democratic health and political balance.

“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,”

Lamido said.

“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.

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.”

The former foreign affairs minister maintained that without the PDP’s efforts to restore democracy in 1999, former military ruler Muhammadu Buhari would not have emerged as President in 2015, and Bola Tinubu wouldn’t have succeeded him in 2023. He stressed that the PDP laid the democratic foundation of the Fourth Republic and remains critical to Nigeria’s political stability.