By Iniubong Sam
For the Nigerian who leaves home every morning to look for what to eat, the 2027 election will not be decided by press releases, campaign jingles or the number of governors standing on a podium. It will be decided by a simpler, harder question, has this government made life easier for Nigerians? A civil servant knows what his salary can buy. A trader knows how much it now costs to restock. A parent knows what it costs to feed a family and keep a child in school. A young graduate knows the humiliation of sending out applications that never get a reply. Those realities cannot be argued away by a campaign speech, and no amount of political theatre will change what people feel in their pockets.
That is why the economy will be on the ballot in 2027, whether or not any party wants it there.
But this election will also be about something bigger than inflation and unemployment figures. It will be about whether Nigeria still believes that power belongs to the people who vote for it, or whether the country is quietly sliding into a season where political loyalty is treated as a condition of citizenship. Watching the last few months of political activity, I do not think that fear is exaggerated.
In August, a video surfaced of Danjuma Samuel Shekwolo, Chairman of the Kuje Area Council in the Federal Capital Territory, telling residents that they must vote for the All Progressives Congress or leave the council area. “I have said in my area council, it’s either you are doing APC or leave the area council,” he declared, tying his position to development projects he credited to President Bola Tinubu and FCT Minister Nyesom Wike. Amnesty International condemned the remarks as a call to violence and a direct attack on freedom of association, and demanded that authorities hold him accountable. Shekwolo later claimed the comments were made to a gathering of APC youths and loyalists and were taken out of context.
I am glad the clarification came. But a clarification does not undo the message that was sent, and the message was unmistakable, support the ruling party, or your place in your own community is no longer guaranteed. That is intimidation dressed up as governance, and it should worry every Nigerian regardless of who they vote for. A Nigerian must be free to support APC today, PDP tomorrow, another party next year, or no party at all, without that choice determining whether he belongs where he lives.
Religion has not been spared either. Islamic cleric Sheikh Sani Yahaya Jingir has been campaigning for another Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket in 2027, and in doing so he has described Christians as “infidels” and urged Muslims to vote in a way that proves their numerical strength. The remarks drew condemnation from figures including Rabiu Kwankwaso, Pastor Paul Enenche, Arise News commentators Reuben Abati and Ayo Mario-Ese were among those who called the comments hateful. What troubles me most is not only what Jingir said, but also who chose to stay silent. Government and Public figures who should have called out that kind of language, and who had the platform to do so, largely looked away. Silence, in moments like that, is also a political choice.
Whether it is a council chairman threatening to expel non-supporters or a cleric setting one faith above another, the pattern is the same, turning political competition into a loyalty test and turning fellow Nigerians into targets for disagreeing. A hungry Nigerian does not become less hungry because his neighbor prays differently or votes differently. A bad road does not spare the vehicle of an APC supporter and damage only the opposition’s. Whoever is stoking these divisions is not doing it for Nigeria’s sake.
Then there is Nyesom Wike, who remains, on paper, a member of the PDP, while serving in President Tinubu’s administration and openly campaigning for Tinubu’s 2027 re-election. I do not claim to fully understand what Wike believes in politically anymore. What I do understand is the effect his conduct has had on the party he still claims to belong to.
If you remove a pest from a healthy plant, that plant has a real chance to grow, flourish, and bear fruit. But if the pest is allowed to remain, it feeds off the plant from within until the plant can no longer sustain itself. That, to me, is the clearest way to describe what Wike and the political minions around him have done to the PDP. Whatever his personal ambitions may be, the practical result of his conduct has been confusion within the party and a weakened, destabilized opposition, at a time when Nigeria needed that opposition to be at its strongest.
In Akwa Ibom State, the same instinct to punish disagreement rather than answer it has become harder to ignore. It is my view that the state’s APC establishment has, in various ways, made political dissent costly for those who express it, from how public opportunities are shared to how criticism of government is received. I say this as an opinion formed from watching how political space in the state has narrowed, and it is exactly the kind of claim journalism exist to test. But the pattern fits a wider national story, a governing party that appears more interested in eliminating opposition than in earning support.
Governor Umo Eno’s claim that his akara and bread business (Akara burger) once generated more than ₦10 million a month belongs in this same conversation about credibility. The Guardian reported the claim, and also noted what was missing from it, no details of the period involved, and no clarity on whether the figure referred to revenue or profit. A governor is entitled to tell his story (LIES). But when the missing details are not supplied, it invites more doubt, not less. My own conclusion, for what it is worth, is that the claim cannot be independently assessed on the information currently available. Nigerians deserve leaders who can withstand questions about their own biography without needing a defence squad (Media aides fighting for their income).
INEC’s official calendar puts the 2027 presidential and National Assembly elections on January 16, and governorship and state assembly elections on February 6. Before that national test, Osun offered a preview, INEC declared Ademola Adeleke winner of the August 2026 governorship election over the APC’s Bola Oyebamiji, and the APC said it was reviewing the outcome. I will be honest about my own doubts here. I am not fully convinced Adeleke’s victory would have stood without the scale of unity and vigilance opposition supporters mounted around that election, which suggests just how much still depends on citizens policing the process themselves rather than trusting it to run cleanly on its own.
No group has more at stake in 2027, and less to show for previous elections, than young Nigerians. Politicians know how to find young people when they need bodies to fill a stadium, defend them online or confront opposing camps in the street. When the campaign ends, those same young people return to unemployment and uncertainty. At the same time, the politician’s own children study abroad or are quietly handed chairmanship seats, National Assembly tickets, and government contracts they did not have to fight the streets for.
The youth are the ones who have allowed themselves to be politician’s instruments. A young Nigerian should never be more useful to a politician during election season than at any other time. No politician will fight for a young person’s future harder than that young person can fight for it himself, and no cause is worth becoming a thug, a cultist, or cannon fodder for someone else’s ambition. For many young Nigerians, the deeper problem is not captured by the unemployment rate alone, it is the difficulty of finding stable, productive, and adequately paid work. That is precisely why the answer cannot be to hand young people over to the very politicians who have failed them, to be used as instruments of chaos. Political participation should mean asking hard questions, organising, voting and holding leaders accountable, not lending your body to a fight you will be left to answer for alone once the campaign is over.
The media has its own part to play in this, and I do not think it should look away either. Watching how APC officials have handled scrutiny on channels like Arise TV has been instructive; there have been moments, including one interview where an anchor had to cut a guest short for repeatedly dodging a direct question, that suggested a government struggling to defend its own record when pressed. Journalists are not required to insult power to hold it accountable. They are required to ask, and to keep asking until the answers are given.
By January 16, 2027, none of the noise will matter anymore. There will be no rally, no campaign jingle, no social media argument standing beside the voter. There will only be a Nigerian, in Uyo, Kuje, Kano, Port Harcourt, Lagos or anywhere else, standing before a ballot paper and making a choice that the rest of the country will have to live with.
The bigger question was never only who wins the presidency. It is whether Nigerians will still believe in the process once the votes are counted, whether a party that loses fairly will accept it, whether INEC will earn the trust its own numbers say it has been losing, and whether young Nigerians will finally refuse to be anyone’s tool. Political parties will come and go. But it is citizens, not parties, who will live with whatever Nigeria becomes after 2027. That is the standard this election has to meet, and it is the one Nigerians, especially the youth, cannot afford to sit out.
