Over the last one year Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has been waging a losing battle against early politicking for an election that was then two years away. With the polls now just over 12 months away, activities are building up to a frenzy, despite official campaigning not being scheduled to start until November.
The umpire may not have given its thumbs up for the contest to be joined still it’s not too early to outline scenarios that may define the polls. Nigerian elections are rarely decided in the final stretch; rather they are shaped years in advance by hard bargaining, economic pressures, and slow alignment of political interests. By that token, the 2027 contest is already taking form.
At the centre of all plausible scenarios stands President Bola Tinubu. Barring any dramatic development, he will be the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate. Incumbents hardly ever step aside. Even a doddering President Joe Biden, who at some point didn’t know if he was coming or going, insisted on running until a calamitous debate performance forced his Democratic Party to shoo him aside.
Tinubu, perhaps the most consummate political strategist of his generation, will most certainly be on the ticket barring the unknown. The real question is not whether he will run, but the conditions under which he will seek a second term, and the quality of opposition he confronts.
Some have framed the 2027 presidential election as a rematch as it throws up the same personalities who faced-off in the bitter 2023 contest: Tinubu, Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi. While the contestants may be the same, the circumstances couldn’t be any more different.
Three years ago, the incumbent was an outsider aspirant whom power brokers in the ruling APC were less than enthusiastic about. Such was the resistance that on the eve of the primary, then party chairman, Adamu Abdullahi, attempted to sell the dummy that President Muhammadu Buhari had anointed Senate President, Ahmed Lawan, as flag bearer. It would take rear-guard action by Northern governors to frustrate the scheme.
Today, the unwanted stone sits as head of state with all the advantages of incumbency. Back then Atiku ran as candidate of a divided Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) five of whose governors, rallying behind Nyesom Wike, decided to work for Tinubu’s victory. In the run-up to 2027, the former Vice President has dumped his former platform, choosing to make his bed in the African Democratic Congress (ADC) whose very structures are still in the making.
Sensing that the PDP’s ticket was being kept warm for Atiku, Obi fled early to the Labour Party (LP) where he transformed into a cult hero of sorts. Despite a modest record as governor of Anambra State from 2006 to 2014, he was suddenly transformed into this would-be saviour who had an answer to all of Nigeria’s problems.
A frustrated urban youth demographic bought massively into the hype. The candidate was then gifted the Muslim-Muslim ticket controversy by APC. This product of Tinubu’s cold calculation that having a Southern religious minority pair up with an individual from the Northern religious minority was a recipe for electoral disaster, almost backfired.
Obi played it for all it was worth – campaigning in churches, having photo-ops with popular clerics and encouraging Christians down South to ‘take back their country.’ It worked a treat, generating a surge from the angry youth to those who believed that the APC ticket was a vehicle for the imminent Islamisation of the country.
Not even Tinubu’s repeated pleas that he hadn’t even been able to successfully Islamise his home – his wife is a pastor and some of children Christian – made any difference. The upshot was unprecedented electoral breakthroughs for Obi in the North-Central zone and in wide swathes of the South. In his native Southeast, ethnic and religious solidarity produced landslides across five states.
In the last three years, so much has changed and many things sold to the gullible as gospel truth have been exposed as crude lies manufactured by fake news merchants. Back in 2023, social media was awash with videos that presented Tinubu as infirm. But after he won and was sworn in, the sickly old man attack line vanished. Today, one of the most recycled attack lines of his critics is that he travels too much.
Fake news is alive and well and would be deployed in the coming elections by dark forces. But they would be confronted by a populace that has been bitten once, and now scrutinise ‘breaking news’ more suspiciously.
Over the last three years Nigerians have been led by two individuals from the same faith. The Islamisation bugbear used to deceive many voters, turning many churches into campaign arenas, has not materialised. As a factor in the coming polls, this is deader than the dodo.
Many have pointed out that three years ago, Tinubu as an outside political force was able to defeat APC apparatchik and powerful office holders who didn’t want him as flag bearer. Today, he wields all the powers of the presidency and can embark on incumbency consolidation.
All over the world it is acknowledged that incumbency is a powerful advantage in electoral contests. In Nigeria, incumbents often win because alternatives fail to cohere and the system rewards continuity over disruption. It is not to say that office holders don’t lose, but they are more likely to win. Three years ago, of 11 governors who sought re-election, nine returned to office.
After the 2023 poll, APC had 21 governors. A steady stream of defectors has now seen that number reach 30 heading to the next election. Some opposition figures have tried to encourage their supporters with lame comments about the next election not being about defectors “but about Nigerians and the ruling party.”
Others have declared dismissively that governors have only one vote. But even those who make such comments know that incumbency isn’t about the individual’s single vote but about the influence and resources his position attracts.
To understand politicians and their mind games, notice how those who sneered at the defection of governors, have been quick to celebrate when a handful of federal lawmakers joined their camp recently.
The ruling party’s incumbency advantage becomes more formidable with the opposition behaving like a collection of rival camps rather than a serious governing alternative.
Despite agreeing that the only hope they have against the APC machine is unity of purpose, that hoped-for oneness remains a fantasy. Every election cycle, they convince themselves that moral outrage, demographic weight, or social media momentum will overcome structural realities. Obi even once famously dismissed such arrangements as “structures of criminality.”
But to pursue his ambitions he’s today part of a coalition against Tinubu, involving PDP refugees, remnants of LP, and defectors from APC and elsewhere. What was once sold as an all-conquering opposition platform that would reprise what APC did in 2015 is increasingly looking shaky as the battle for party’s ticket shapes up. What happens if OBI fails to get the ADC ticket? Would he jump ship, again? Would he take the next best thing and run as the under card? The nation is watching to see if this time common interest trumps individual ambition. Nigerian opposition leaders are often united only by their opposition to power, not by trust in one another.
The youth vote which was a disruptive force three years ago, faces a reality check this time. This segment of our population is vast, vocal, and frustrated – but it is also fragmented, fatigued, and structurally disadvantaged. This isn’t a monolithic bloc that works with common purpose. Rather, they are just as divided as other demographics by faith, sentiment, geography and ethnicity.
Their enthusiasm in 2023 quickly collided with the hard walls of party machinery, voter turnout dynamics, and state power. By 2027, youth voters are more likely to be selectively courted than organically mobilised. Without firm links to governors, party structures, and local power brokers, youth energy will remain morally resonant but electorally limited.
Ultimately, 2027 may not be a contest driven by ideological choice. It may not even be an assessment of the administration’s performance in terms of success of policies or infrastructure built. It may be shaped instead by misinformation, voter fatigue, ethnicity and elite consensus on matters like zoning. It could also come down to personalities and likeability.
The race is not yet fully formed. But its contours are already visible. And unless something fundamental changes, Nigerians may once again be asked not who can reinvent the country – but who can manage its contradictions for another four years.
