President Bola Tinubu has said 2027 presidential election is going to be a battle he is ready to fight till the end.
He warned opposition figures, including former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, that they must defeat him through the ballot box if they hope to unseat him.
The President made the remarks on Tuesday while receiving members of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria at the Presidential Villa in Abuja. 
Speaking during the meeting, Tinubu said he was prepared for a fair democratic contest and insisted that politics is a competitive process where every contestant has an equal opportunity.
“Those who would take it from me will try. They will try. All is fair in politics, and there is equal opportunity. I won’t offer them a red carpet. I won’t offer them the leash to tie me at home. No, we will wrestle each other to the finishing point. That’s the truth.
That is fair in politics,” the President said. Tinubu also rejected allegations that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is biased, maintaining that the electoral body has remained impartial.
According to him, political opponents questioning the commission’s neutrality are merely expressing fears over their own political prospects.Politics “INEC is neutral. It has never, ever intimidated anybody. If political opponents are crying wolf, then they are afraid of their own shadows and the uncertainty in the company they keep,” he stated.
The President used the meeting to defend the economic reforms introduced by his administration, saying they were beginning to produce positive results despite the initial hardship experienced by Nigerians.
He cited the uninterrupted academic calendar in public universities as one of the administration’s notable achievements, pointing out that the absence of strikes by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) had brought relief to students and their families. “None of your children in university today—and I would say they are all your children because you are Reverend Fathers—can say a four-year course is not four years.
ASUU is not on strike. They are not bringing agony to your homes. Is that not an answer to our prayers? To me, that’s an answer,” Tinubu said. The President acknowledged that his administration inherited significant economic challenges from the government of former President Muhammadu Buhari but insisted that the country had now achieved stability and was on the path to economic recovery. “This government has stabilized, and there is prosperity on the horizon. The quality of life is improving,” he said. “I inherited it. I didn’t run away. I asked for this job. I’m in it.”
