There is a reason why it took the formation of APC by the merger of 3 regional parties for PDP to have a worthy challenger at the Federal level: national structure.
Without a national structure, it is almost impossible to win the presidency. Does your party have presence in every state, local govt & ward? This matters greatly: it is not by road shows in some states & TV appearances.
If we were in a parliamentary system, smaller parties have a chance of challenging the dominance of the bigger ones by simply denying them the number of seats to form a govt & forcing them into coalitions.
But presidential systems are not so & this is not unique to Nigeria: there is a reason why in the US, only Republicans & Democrats have won the presidency. The best third-party/independent candidate attempts by Ross Perot in 92 & 96 didn't win him a single electoral college seat.
It takes money and time to build structure nationally. You can't do it in a few months. Again, to compare with the US, Ross Perot as a billionaire couldn't crack that. I don't see any candidate here doing that either.
Politics is not an exercise in idealism, it is also an exercise in realism. Unless you are trying to make a statement, don't aim for an office that is out of reach.
There is a reason why Bernie Sanders will be an independent as a senator but will run for president as a Democrat. You need that structure.
