The Next Elections Are a Foregone Conclusion—What Does This Mean for Nigeria?
“@seyitinubu OMO President Wa Don Change My Life Naija Go Still Better Base On Belive Akoi TINUBU Ijoba Labubu bujebudanu Oluwa Send my Helper To Me Loyalty pass juju Thank God say man no be God.” Portable’s July 2025 endorsement of Seyi Tinubu and of course, his father’s administration, was a feat celebrated on the man’s website itself, with the co-sign of the Abeokuta-born internet personality described in glowing terms as pointing to “Seyi’s growing influence beyond business and politics—right into Nigeria’s entertainment and youth culture.”
This would come amidst another meaningless internet squabble between Habeeb ‘Portable’ Badmus, a regular fixture in these, and VeryDarkMan, a Nigerian influencer who’s acquired a similar notoriety over the past year. To examine the beginning and end of this disagreement is to sift through Nigerian internet slop, a wholly unfulfilling endeavour. But what you do need to know is that, on the heels of Portable meeting with Oluwaseyi Tinubu—second son of the Nigerian President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and heir apparent to his political empire upon the passing of Kazeem Tinubu, his elder brother, in 2017—the Azaman crooner would request that the statesman attend to his dispute with VeryDarkMan, demanding that the internet activist be placed behind bars for ridiculing the size of his member.
Statements such as these are scarcely believable—and if we were not living through these times, we would be loath to take any of this at face value. Yet, this caricature is exactly what Nigerian politics is today, each scandal somehow more ridiculous than the last. Public embarrassment now holds far too little weight, a phenomenon analogous to the devaluing of public opinion.
And all this is to do with our far-from-robust political system. The morphing of Nigeria into a one-party state, at least in practice, is cause for genuine concern. Worse still, unlike China’s CCP (Chinese Communist Party) or Cuba’s CPC (Communist Party of Cuba), this ruling party is non-ideological—or ideological only in a shared understanding of the consolidation of power and the benefits therein—an arrangement not entirely dissimilar to South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC), or at least the version of it in power today.
But how healthy is an All Progressives Congress monolith for Nigerian politics, and how has this status quo come to be, a mere 13 years since it was founded? At the 2027 general elections, the party seems well placed to equal the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)’s 16-year term at the helm of affairs, dating back to the election of Muhammadu Buhari as President in 2015, and the accompanying legislative majority won by APC. And it will be a cakewalk.
Presently, Nigeria exists in the unique position of having no true opposition, and most pertinently, no true opposition leader. In the face of consistent defections from PDP to APC, including ten sitting governors, it’s become apparent that even in regions where PDP historically held sway—the South-South most especially—the party has well and truly become a thing of the past. And this public collapse doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface. At a time when APC has struggled with the prevailing crises that come part and parcel with overseeing government, PDP has been a picture of disunity, evidenced by the splitting of the party into factions once again—a Kabiru Turaki faction backed by Seyi Makinde, Governor of Oyo State, and an Abdulrahman Mohammed faction supported by Nyesom Wike, Minister of the FCT.
The factionalisation, an altogether too common occurrence in Nigerian politics, has come to a head in recent times, with the battle between regional powerhouses seeing the Court of Appeal, Abuja, nullify the November 15 and 16, 2025, National Convention, which saw Turaki emerge as PDP National Chairman. In a show of the role of the Judiciary as enforcers of the powers-that-be, this convention had only gone ahead initially after a November 3rd ruling from the Oyo High Court permitted PDP to proceed with this convention. When you learn that indeed, this ruling had conflicted with an earlier ruling from Justice James Omotosho of the Federal High Court, Abuja which halted the convention on the grounds that Sule Lamido, former Governor of Jigawa State, was not permitted to contest for the role of National Chairman, the situation begins to tend towards an ominous conclusion on the independence of the Judiciary. This confusing rigmarole before us would have been more at home at conventions of the National Association of Nigerian Students than that of the mother of the fourth republic, but it is not so simple to tell these institutions apart anymore.
Still, the alignment of courts along geographical lines in a bid to support the executives in charge of various territories has not gone unnoticed. And this struggle and the court orders are far from over. At a time when PDP should be coming under a united front to demand change in governance, there still appears to be so much in-fighting left to do. And with Atiku Abubakar having defected from the Party for a third time in 28 years, and his runner-up in the May 2022 primaries, Nyesom Wike, having been expelled for ‘Anti-Party activities’ in the wake of his implicit support for Bola Ahmed Tinubu of APC in the 2023 Presidential elections, it remains to be seen which PDP candidates can capture the national imagination like these men, in a bid to unseating an APC that has become deeply entrenched in governance over the past decade.
Two persons who certainly have courted glory are the now-ADC men—Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi. Atiku first expressed an interest in the Presidency in the 1993 Social Democratic Party primaries which he lost to the late Moshood Kashimawo Abiola, and has made five attempts since. The perennial bridesmaid who turns 80 this year may well be past his prime, and there will be doubts around his ability to shepherd the country through a transition period as Nigeria bids to recover from economic and political mismanagement. Yet, the octogenarian remains politically active and has expressed an interest in returning to this race come 2027.
While Obi captured the interests of the country—especially the younger demographic seeking a decisive change in public policy and national ethos—in 2023, his ill-fated marriage to Labour Party has placed him in the crosshairs coming into 2027, with still no major Party backing amidst reports that sections of the party elite prefer Atiku as ADC presidential candidate. Obi only formally registered with ADC in March of 2026, ending months-long speculation following his December 2025 defection from Labour Party in the aftermath of criticism from party leadership in late 2025. In fact, Labour Party factional Publicity Secretary, Abayomi Arabambi, had gone as far as demanding the expulsion of Obi, Otti, Kingibe and others in May 2025, alleging ‘anti-party activities’ of the supposedly suspended members—a common dog-whistle within Nigerian politics. This factionalisation of Labour Party as well mirrored events in PDP, auguring poorly for the outcomes of the party in the next elections, especially as they were almost single-handedly propelled by the candidacy of Peter Obi and his hordes of supporters—Obidients—during the last elections.
In any case, with much of Nigerian social and political infrastructure in control of the All Progressives Congress, there remains very little hope that the opposition can make a contest of the 2027 elections, especially in the absence of a united front. And should APC indeed win again, how much more can Nigerians really expect of the Renewed Hope Agenda, even as the poaching of opposition leaders and more high-profile defections begin to establish Nigeria as a one-party state? So while Tinubu faces criticism that his economic policies have hurt Nigerians and his failure to end insecurity, including the long-running Islamist insurgency and banditry, which has spread from the North-Eastern Chad border to Southern strongholds such as Owo and Edo in recent years, has seen many slain in ignoble fashion, the opposition is seen as too divided and weak to mount a serious challenge. If this arrangement is to continue and the opposition is to shrink further, can we in the future expect a more clearly defined ideology and direction from the ruling Party? There doesn’t yet seem to be any indications of this, with vague political machinations and coalitions continuing to drive party activities. The party appears still to represent the Nigerian elite, similarly to PDP, ADC, LP and most Nigerian political parties even, and continues to revolve around a single personality—that is, the President—a Nigerianism that will continue long after Mr Tinubu serves his term(s).
Consistent political philosophy that doesn’t simply revolve around the specific personalities at the helm of affairs remains incompatible with the present Nigerian political model of Godfatherism and interest-driven politics, and any significant change will likely result not from the ballot, but from the rifle.
With one coup attempt already foiled in October 2025, there exists a very real risk of a successful coup d’état in Nigeria, especially should those who come into power following Tinubu’s expected second term lack the nous to manage the agitations of the military and, like Presidents before them, reshuffle the leadership in a bid to prevent power from consolidating with any particular persons. And indeed, while this approach, first introduced by Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999 upon assuming civilian rule following the fortuitous collapse of General Sani Abacha’s military regime, has sufficed thus far, one could argue that Nigeria is due for another military revolt in light of increasing global political instability—with the USA and Russia making out to be aggressors in conflicts that could portend a wider-reaching war with Africa and the global south as a proxy—and indeed, regional instability which has seen the Alliance des États du Sahel (AES), a coalition of nations ruled by military junta emerge from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
Led by the increasingly viral Burkinabe autocrat, Ibrahim Traoré, the AES, or Coup Belt as some refer to it, is a coalition of military-led states in West Africa formed as a mutual defence pact in the face of possible ECOWAS aggression in efforts to reinstate civilian governments, finding ideological middle-ground in Anti-West foreign policy and defence against jihadist insurgency. In truth, the AES has made significant strides in fostering regional unity and intercultural relations, even organising a Mali-hosted AES games in 2025, and crucially, has come to present a more united front than ECOWAS merely two years since its founding, collaborating on matters of travel, identification, currency and foreign policy.
This has not gone unnoticed within the region, with Chad, adjoining the Alliance of Sahel States to the East and Nigeria to the North, also increasingly aligned with the novel bloc. Critically, Chad is Francophone like the states of the AES, and like Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, Chad is ruled by a young military despot—41-year-old Mahamat Déby, who assumed office by force following the death of his father, Idriss Déby, on the frontlines, fighting the northern rebel incursion by the Front for Change and Concord in Chad (FACT). Idriss Deby had 20 years prior to his passing in 2021 assumed power in a coup of his own. At the time of his death, Chadians had boycotted the elections and protested his rule as he stormed to a sixth presidential term with 79.32% of the vote. Go figure.
Given this situation, then, with Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and Chad, news of an impending coup in Francophone Benin Republic, bordering Nigeria to the West, was received with great displeasure in Abuja. Within 18 hours of the announcement of the coup on Beninese national television by Benin Armed Forces soldiers led by Lieutenant Colonel Pascal Tigri, a joint ECOWAS deployment of Nigerian, Sierra Leonean, Ivorian and Ghanaian soldiers were on ground to aid the Beninese Government, with Nigerian Air Force fighter jets deployed to secure the airspace over Cotonou at the urging of immediate past ECOWAS Chairman, Bola Ahmed Tinubu. The picture at this point was vivid—a successful Beninese coup would have spelt disaster for Nigeria, with the West-African giant entirely separated from the rest of ECOWAS by land and encircled by the Coup Belt.
But despite this successful intervention, West African democracy remains exceedingly fragile. Rising nationalistic and anti-imperialistic sentiment will always go hand-in-glove with militaristic fervour—and these winds have spread to Nigeria, erasing memory of our catastrophic brush with military rule in the past century, the history of which we teach far too little in schools. Should a World War then wash up on the shores of the Gulf of Guinea, either diplomatically or more overtly in the form of missiles and bombs, this could almost certainly spell death for democracy as we know it.
In light of global geopolitics and Nigeria’s role in this theatre, the importance of the next elections to this nation still seems to be grossly understated today. And as we continue to blur the lines between a genuine multi-party democracy and a one-party system that is democratic only nominally, it remains to be seen the impact of APC governance on our collective futures. But as Portable himself opined, “Daddy Tinubu, wọn máa ń gbọ́ ọ̀rọ̀ tàa bá sọ.”
