REUBEN ABATI
With the inauguration of the campaign council of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) on October 9, that of the Nigeria Democratic Council (NDC) yesterday, October 25, and the flag-off of the campaigns of the All Progressives Congress (APC) on Saturday, October 24, all three being the main political parties in Nigeria’s three-way race, we may assume towards the 2027 general elections, the race, the countdown, clearly has begun. It is an important electoral moment for Nigeria, the eighth time since the return to democracy in Nigeria (1999, 2003, 2007, 2011, 2015, 2019, 2023). Again, Nigeria’s democracy, its institutions, and the people’s choice will be put to the test. There are 18 political parties on the ballot leading the race but the aforementioned three would seem to present us with an interesting three-way race. The highest point was reached last Saturday when President Tinubu launched, his party, APC’s campaign in Kaduna. It was a well-organized rally put together by Governor Uba Sani of Kaduna who welcomed President Tinubu, his wife and others with gratitude and the promise of the generous hospitality of the people of Kaduna State.
It was on the whole a good outing and a joyous event, with the RaRaRa musical band singing a number of songs: including the anthems A4A, and Omo Ologo to which the President and the Vice President, Senator Kashim Shettima danced with great excitement. Then there were the colourful Kaduna women for Asiwaju/Shettima, and a mammoth crowd which raised questions about alleged claims that the APC candidate and incumbent President has no major following in the North. There have been arguments about the authenticity of the images and reports on social media, but the caveat is that social media does not always represent reality, and it is not known that elections are won by a social media mob. It is real human beings, eligible and empowered accordingly that win elections. It is therefore important that the President in his campaign speech asked his audience: do you have your PVC? He promised the people that should they give him a second term in office, he would deliver growth, opportunity, prosperity, and recovery. The choice of Kaduna as the venue of the APC flag-off is instructive. The Governor of the state, Uba Sani is a right-hand man, and a favourite of President Tinubu in the North. He must be happy indeed that he was chosen as the host of the APC flag-off.
And that for another reason: the former Governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai is not exactly a friend of the incumbent administration, which ironically, he helped to create. To drive home this point, Nasir el-Rufai, a founding father of the APC, has been in security detention, toing and froing from the courts, for over seven months, and there is no guarantee that the Tinubu administration will allow him to be released until after the 2027 elections. Tinubu going to Kaduna State is a show of strength as in who is Nasir el-Rufai to challenge the President or the Federal Government of Nigeria? In spite of Nasir el-Rufai, who is out on a long, lonely season, the APC, Uba Sani and Tinubu put up a massive show in what could have been with el-Rufai on his feet and on the ground, a major battlefield. Kaduna is also a strategic political capital of the North, the home of virtually all the powerful figures of the North. What became a question mark in the Kaduna flag-off rally, however, is that the President and his team arrived three hours behind schedule, they arrived late in the afternoon at a rally scheduled for 10 am by which time many of the persons in attendance had become restless. No politician, no matter how highly placed, should treat the voting public so shabbily. Those who seek to govern and occupy public offices must learn to be punctual. Keeping the people under the sun and hoping to solicit for their votes is contemptuous. It should not happen again. As it turned out, the Tinubu campaign team members shot themselves in the foot. They had to start rushing the programme and found themselves in the uncomfortable position of struggling among themselves for the microphone and for time.
The other major highlight of President Tinubu’s maiden outing in the 2027 campaign process of which he had said previously that he will show up only in 12 of the 36 states of the Federation, was his statement that no one should blame him if there is hunger and poverty in the land because it is his opponents who created hunger and poverty. He is only trying to eradicate it. His opponents are just heckling him. I am uncomfortable with this claim. If President Tinubu’s opponents created multi-dimensional poverty, it is his duty to eradicate it. He must be reminded that he once said that he met many problems on the ground when he succeeded President Buhari and it was his duty to deal with both the liabilities and the assets that he inherited, government being a continuity. He had also promised then that he would resolve the crisis of electricity supply in the country within six months. When he now turns around and blames the opposition, he misses the point. Which opposition? Atiku who left office as a Vice President in 2007, with the worst testimonial that anyone could ever get from his boss? Or Peter Obi whose main pedigree is on social media and the streets of diaspora Nigeria? Or Omoyele Sowore who even if he were to become President would organize a protest against himself before suddenly realizing the truth of his own self-indictment? President Tinubu should have stayed on his message of a second term of consolidation, prosperity and growth for the people, and his advice that the people should make sure they have their PVCs and vote for him. Many commentators have taken him up on the subject of poverty and hunger. They claim that as President, he has done nothing to help the people in this regard. By the way, saying that will amount to misinformation, disinformation and outright blackmail. I have argued elsewhere, that nobody has the right to misinform the Nigerian public because it is convenient to do so, and to tell lies shamefacedly is a poor test of character and ability. The current campaign process is driven by too much ignorance and malice.
The truth is that the Tinubu administration launched a $3.5 billion poverty alleviation programme along with a Hope Package which comprises Hope Governance, Hope Primary Health Care, Hope Education, Ward Development programme, NELFUND for Nigerian students, and the Renewed Hope Baby Support Programme. There is also a programme called NG-Cares worth about $1. 25 million, there is also a Ward Development programme and a $300 million Solutions for Internally Displaced and Host Communities programme, in addition to other social intervention programmes. The duty of an informed commentator is to interrogate the process, implications and the impact of these programmes: Were they effective? What was their impact? Were they transparent? How best could they be redesigned and improved upon? The government can also be held accountable. Unfortunately, one of Nigeria’s major problems is that its electoral process, every season, indeed public debate, is often overtaken by beer parlour talk even in places where more reasoned analysis is required. That disease called “opinionitis” is back on our shores.
Nigerian politics, as we approach the 2027 elections, should be driven by decency and sanity. Politicians must realize that they have a bounden duty to preserve the integrity of the same country they seek to govern. If they uproot the country because of their selfish ambitions, there will be nothing left for the average citizen. Politicians should allow sanity to prevail. We are all living witnesses to the Peace Accord that was signed in August 2026 by the political parties with a promise that they will protect the integrity of the electoral process. The time has come for the National Peace Committee to review its methodology and ask critical questions, ahead of its next meeting on January 14, 2027, in the face of the prevalence of discord in Nigerian politics. Of what use is a peace accord that politicians sign and then go ahead to do the opposite at all levels? In August, one Senator Francis Fadahunsi, (APC, Osun East) openly threatened to attack and kill members of the Accord Party in the state. He was invited by the Osun Police Command. He lied to the Police, they gave him a handshake and that was it. Many deaths were recorded during the Osun Gubernatorial election. Today, the same Governor whose followers were allegedly killed by APC thugs is President Tinubu’s campaigner-in-chief in Osun State. Dele Farotimi has said it all in a book of the same title: “Do Not Die In Their War (2021).” They will end their war on their own terms and you will be in the mortuary, a casualty, a loss to your loved ones. Voter, beware!
In Edo State, in October, a Jarret Tenebe, Chair of the state branch of the APC boasted that whoever opposes the APC in Edo State will be treated to a prayer round of “AK-47 Fire”. He has since claimed that he said this in the same context as “Holy Ghost Fire”, a popular Nigerian saying. Except that intelligent people have not been able to establish a connection in this regard. Mikhail Kalashnikov, the Russian small arms designer, hero of the Russian Federation, hero of Socialist Labour, who invented the AK47 in 1947, before his death in December 2013, wrote to the Russian Orthodox Church to beg for forgiveness for inventing a rifle that had killed so many. In Nigeria, in 2026, it is the same rifle that a Nigerian politician celebrates as a weapon of recourse, not at war but for a simple, civilian election among compatriots.
In October 2026, Rotimi Amaechi, a former Speaker of the Rivers State Assembly, a former two-time Rivers state Governor and a former Minister of the Federation, declared that if the people of Edo State were to vote for President Bola Tinubu in 2027, then all Edo people should be considered mad. He said “only thieves and mad people can vote for Tinubu in 2027.” Must people vote by force? Where is the threat of madness coming from? A few days ago, a former Senate Deputy President, also a former APC member, now in the NDC threatened that anyone who rigs the 2027 election in Urhoboland should be ready to die. “We will kill whoever rigs”! , he declared. He has not denied saying so. Nor has he blamed AI which is the latest lying machine that Nigerian politicians have discovered. They often speak so indecently and they claim it is AI that has misrepresented them. There must be decency in politics. There are existing laws to deal with electoral offences- Sections 118 -133 of the Electoral Act 2026 which must be enforced and not treated as dead law at the very moment their enforcement is required. It is most unfortunate that the worst of all are the ones who find it easy to occupy leadership positions.
Now that the 2027 games have begun as it were, we suggest that Nigeria’s 2027 electoral process should be driven by issues and ideas, not gossip, personality attacks, or the thinking that the man who shouts the loudest deserves to win. Elections should not be won by those who burn posters and billboards belonging to the opposition or those who threaten to kill. Democracy is about choice and the people must be allowed to choose freely. Increased voter turn-out in a run off, has recently made the difference in the just concluded Presidential elections in Brazil. The Nigerian voter must be confident enough that he or she is safe and that his or her vote will be protected and counted on election day. After 2027, there should be a country to run.