Vagueness, the insufficient specification of the meaning of an utterance, is one of the characteristics of political language. This characteristic makes political utterances potentially ambiguous. Ambiguous utterances possess more than one clear meaning; and vagueness and ambiguity often create conflict between what speakers intend by their utterances and what hearers perceive the utterances to mean. This conflict is one of the reasons why politicians are said to lie and create confusion.
In Nigerian politics today, one interestingly vague and increasingly popular opposition utterance which concerns the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is: “The 2027 election is going to be between APC and Nigerians.” It’s not clear who first uttered this statement. It’s however certain that it has become an opposition catchphrase. According to Merriam Webster dictionary, a catchphrase is “a word or expression that is used repeatedly and conveniently to represent or characterize a person, group, idea, or point of view.”
On 3 November, 2024, Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State, who belongs to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), addressed party members as follows: “If you’re accusing the ruling party that they are the ones putting their hands into all other parties to ensure that they don’t get their acts together so that there will be no opposition in 2027, … please let us all work together, unite our base. That is all we need to do. The next elections will be APC versus Nigerians. It is not even APC versus PDP.”
Moreover, on 15 April, 2025, in a Channels Television interview, Governor Makinde said: “Most people in this country, what they’re saying to us is that, look you guys, go and get yourselves together and then leave the rest to us. And I kept saying it, 2027 election … won’t even be PDP versus APC. It will be Nigerians versus APC.” Furthermore, on 14 October, 2025, Governor Makinde said in a media chat in response to the spate of defections of legislators and governors from PDP to APC: “[A]bout governors defecting, senators defecting, … we’re not concerned and we’re not bothered, because the ultimate decider here will be the Nigerian people.” Then in a rhetorical flourish, he said: “[T]he only time I’ll be concerned or … that we will be concerned as a party is when we see hunger defect from the ordinary people on the street and join APC.”
A stalwart of the PDP, Mazi Dickson Iroegbu, also reacted to the possible effects of the defections as follows in a 28 October, 2025 News Central TV interview: “[Our party] is the Peoples Democratic Party, not ‘Governors Democratic Party’, ‘Senators Democratic Party’, not ‘House of Representatives Democratic Party’. … Like the Governor of Oyo State rightly stated, until hunger defects, until poverty that is ravaging the nation defects, until insecurity defects to the ruling party, … we will [not] worry. … Let me put it on record … that 2027 is going to be Nigerian people against the APC, because we are the ones directly affected [by APC’s governance].”
The catchphrase has been used by other opposition politicians. For example, in a 16 October, 2025 Premium Times piece titled “Defections: ADC says 2027 elections will be between APC and Nigerians,” the National Publicity Secretary of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Bolaji Abdullahi, was reported to have said: “2027 would be between Nigerians and the governors ‘who deserted them politically.’” Two readers of the Premium Times report demonstrated their sharp perception of the acute vagueness of the opposition catchphrase through their comments. One of them, Eugene Igiewe, said sarcastically: “Those who will vote for APC are from the moon.” The other one, Adeyinka Peter Kolawole, asked rhetorically: “Are the governors from Ghana? Are they not Nigerians?”
Even as late as 10 November, 2025, the former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, former member of APC and current ADC chieftain, Mr. Babachir Lawal, while reacting to the remarkably poor performance of his party relative to that of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) in the 8 November, 2025 Anambra State governorship election said: “[O]ur battle is in the coming election in Nigeria versus APC, not APGA.” This is another example of the appropriation of the label ‘Nigerians’ by the opposition and the exclusion of members of the ruling APC from the term’s coverage.
The opposition catchphrase seems to be a mark of despondency and the abandonment of any hope of offering any meaningful challenge to APC in 2027. In a research article titled “What kind of opposition do citizens want?” and published online on 9 June, 2025 in the journal West European Politics, Tom Louwerse and Elina Zorina note that one of the functions of opposition parties is “providing voters with alternative, both in form of policies different from the ones proposed by the incumbent government, but also in form of an alternative cabinet [or government] at the next elections.” This is the democratic duty of legally recognised Nigerian political parties like PDP and ADC, and not that of the nebulous ‘Nigerians’ to whom the opposition seem to have voluntarily ceded electoral responsibility.
Another tired opposition catchphrase or even buck-passing cliché which has resonated with some Nigerians is that APC is working towards creating a one-party state. The charge had been so strident that Iniobong Ibok and Taofeek Oyedokun published a 4 May, 2025 report in BusinessDay titled, “Is Tinubu plotting a one-party state in Nigeria?” The report stated: “Notably, 17 prominent Nigerians, among them human rights advocate Chidi Odinkalu, legal activist Richard Akinnola, and former presidential adviser Babafemi Ojudu, issued a joint statement on April 25, 2025, titled ‘Defending democracy: A call to resist the march toward a one-party state in Nigeria.’”
Furthermore, with respect to allegations that the incumbent government had been unduly pressurising or bribing opposition members to defect to APC, the report noted: “Although the fears are not unfounded given Nigeria’s political history, the current wave of defections lacks hard evidence of coercion or systemic abuse. The claimants have not presented documents, recordings, or testimonies that substantiate allegations of bribery or blackmail originating directly from the presidency or federal authorities.”
Ironically, the main opposition party PDP, which has been stridently promoting the one-party state narrative, has been dragged to court by a founding member of the party, Alhaji Sule Lamido, for depriving him the right to purchase an application form to enable him to vie for the position of National Chairman in the anticipated elective national convention of the party. He prayed the court to order the convention to be stopped until a level playing field has been guaranteed. In reaction to the 11 November, 2025 Federal High Court, Abuja, restraining order issued in favour of Alhaji Lamido and against the holding of the convention, a former PDP Deputy National Chairman, Southwest, Eddy Olafeso, in an interview with Channels Television’s Seun Okinbaloye, said that the agenda of those who did not want the national convention of the party to hold “is to entrench a one-party state.”
Related to the defeatist opposition catchphrase is also the claim that the opposition is not bothered by the recent defection of governors, especially from the PDP, into the ruling APC. The opposition’s argument, in this respect, is that a governor has only one vote, and that in 2023, for example, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu lost elections in some states with APC governors. The fallacy in this argument is that the new defections of governors into the party give no cause to cheer. Well, an English proverb, associated with the Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, says, “You can’t step in the same river twice.” The political circumstances in 2023 were radically different from those of today, and would most certainly be different from those of 2027.
Having created the impression, through the opposition catchphrase, that they have washed their hands off any responsibility to give the electorate a credible alternative come 2027, the opposition seem to have a lot of idle time on their hands to engage in all sorts of political shenanigans. For example, on 31 October, 2025, shortly after a Federal High Court in Abuja ruled that the National Convention of the PDP scheduled for 15 to 16 November, 2025 did not follow due process and ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) not to observe the convention and not to recognise the resolutions from it, a chieftain of the PDP, Umar Sani, condemned the judgement in his interview with Trust TV’s Hamza Idris.
He also said that the fear that the National Legal Adviser of the party, Kamaldeen Ajibade, SAN, was working against the party in cahoots with the incumbent PDP-member Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, Nyesom Wike, was the reason the National Chairman, Ambassador Umar Iliya Damagum, appointed a legal team led by another lawyer, Chris Uche, to represent the party rather than allow the National Legal Adviser to coordinate the party’s legal defence in court, as specified by the party’s constitution.
The National Secretary, National Legal Adviser, Deputy National Legal Adviser, and National Organising Secretary of PDP, who presumably belonged to Wike’s group, were subsequently suspended from the party by the National Chairman and his group. Counteracting the suspension, the Wike group led by the National Secretary announced their own suspension of the National Chairman and some officers of the party for incompetence, financial misconduct and disregard for court judgement. Abdulrahman Muhammed was thereafter declared the new Acting National Chairman of PDP. Shortly after, his faction declared their disbandment of the Board of Trustees of the party and the appointment of a new one. The other opposition parties, probably with the exception of APGA, are bedevilled by their own debilitating crises.
The results of the 2025 Anambra State governorship election seem to show what the consequences of such crises could be. INEC announced that out of 584,054 accredited voters, the ruling party in the state, APGA, scored 422,664 votes; the ruling party at the federal level, APC, scored 99,445 votes; the less well-known Young Progressives Party (YPP) scored 37,753 votes; Labour Party (LP), the party of the former governor of the state and 2023 presidential candidate of the party, Mr. Peter Obi, scored 10,576 votes; ADC scored 8,202 votes; and the main opposition party in the country, PDP, scored 1,401 votes.
It is hoped that, moving forward, the opposition would recalibrate and strive to hold themselves up as a credible alternative to APC, rather than throwing up their hands and defeatistly saying that the 2027 election is going to be between APC and ‘Nigerians’. As things stand now, that vague and uninspiring expression seems to be a euphemistic repudiation of democratic or electoral responsibility. It is like the proverbial one finger pointing at APC, while the remaining four are pointing at the opposition parties themselves in a most unflattering manner.
