By Prince Debo Luwaji
I have many comments but my first take here is on the recent Osun State elections. Surely, you couldn’t have missed the interesting picture of a clearly prideful Governor Ademola Adeleke’s visit to Aso Rock in which he presented his INEC Certificate of Return to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu GCFR and his quick reaffirmation of his total support for PBAT’s re-election in the 2027. The Osun election was generally adjudged peaceful and successful, in some ways an anticlimax considering the troubling political heat that preceded it, with 29 people reportedly killed at the height of the disturbances.
In the end, Bola Oyebamiji of APC – the President’s party, polled 444,815 votes against Adeleke’s 511,067 while Najeem Saleem of ADC came a distant third with 17,180 votes. Despite the role played by the reported exchanges of obscene amount of money, the jubilant crowds everywhere in Osun State in the aftermath of the elections, the general commendation of INEC’s performance and the dominant tone that most public commentary have sounded clearly indicate a consensus that the outcome was a true reflection of the people’s votes.
Oyebamiji’s immediate reaction was to reject the result, claiming irregularities in many of Adeleke’s strongholds. This is not unexpected. In Nigerian politics, a loser conceding gracefully that an opponent won fair and square is a very rare occurrence, with the case of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan and Muhamadu Buhari in the 2015 Presidential elections being an exception in our long history of political contests.
Foreshadowed by fiery and intemperate campaign, the Osun elections at a point had the rumoured bias of the federal government. Thus, President Tinubu must have seen the wisdom in establishing his neutrality beyond doubts. Apart from calling Governor Adeleke to assure him of his impartiality, he ordered the unfreezing of Osun State funds blocked at the instance of EFCC close to the election, this at the risk of playing into the hands of those who had always accused the anti-graft agency of being a tool in the hands of his administration. In addition, on the eve of the elections, he made a broadcast in which he admonished INEC to use the election to demonstrate its credibility while also assuring voters of adequate security as they freely exercise their rights to vote for any candidate of their choice. Interestingly the president was also the first to call and congratulate Adeleke on his hard-won victory.
Nasarawa State Governor Abdullahi Sule is one of those who believe that it is difficult to unseat an incumbent executive in an election he is interested in winning, with the Osun election, and that of Anambra State before it – which gave Governor Charles Chukwuma Soludo another 4 years at the Government house in Awka as empirical examples. Governor Sule debunks the claim that APC’s loss of Osun is a referendum on the unpopularity of the administration at the centre. Instead, he said Adeleke’s victory must be seen within the broader context of the influence of incumbency in state politics.
Interestingly, not many of those who agree to the swinging power of incumbency would give PBAT a chance of winning in 2027. How can he win, with so much hunger and anger in the land, poverty and hardship so palpable and unsparing one could literally see a daily queue of increasing scavengers at our refuse dumps!
Even Chief Dele Momodu, publisher of Ovation and former presidential candidate whose post went viral more than three years ago on how difficult it would be to wrestle power from Tinubu should he win the APC ticket, now believes otherwise. He aligns himself with those who consider as hogwash the settled view of the North and South sharing power to prevent the dominance of a majority! I agree. Democracy, if it must be practiced properly, remains a game of numbers. No one prevents the minority from having their say so long as the majority have their way. If forever, so be it!
Now, I have a riddle that bothers me. Looking back at the last presidential elections, if a man still emerged victorious in spite of the unimaginable odds arraigned against his candidacy by even his own party, including literally setting the nation on fire with a disruptive eleventh hour currency change all in a bid to render a BAT immobile, I am trying to buy into the reasoning behind the confidence of the opposition that it is now a lot easier to defeat him as incumbent, with the majority in the National Assembly and near two-third of the states either in the ruling party or in other parties who have openly pledged to support his re-election. In any case, I must not forget that a hungry man is an angry man. Where a whole people are hungry, the effects at the polls for the man who caused their misery is a foregone conclusion!
It is true that none of the present crop of presidential hopefuls appear to have presented Nigerians with clear-cut plans regarding alternative policies, and they don’t need to really, except perhaps for the ongoing debate of fuel subsidy reintroduction – which is good music to the ears, considering that this was exactly where our challenges were exacerbated by an insensitive executive on his very first day in office.
People don t understand Nigeria’s politics. Those who posited that Tinubu would not have been our president today if PDP and leading opposition figures had gotten their acts together in 2023 and rally round a single candidate with the highest probability of winning instead of splinting into factions – Obi to Labour, Atiku in mainstream PDP, the all- powerful G5 with enormous resources working for Tinubu and the rest. That Obi, Atiku, Amechi, and Kwankwaso appear to be repeating the exact same divisions that handed PBAT the presidency is puerile reasoning.
From all indications, it doesn’t appear that the leading opposition figures today are as firmly in control in their new parties as they were in the old. Obi’s popularity and cult followership remains ever so strong among the very youth that matter in our elections. It does not matter that he could not resolve the simple issues of leadership tussle within the Labour party he almost single-handedly brought to political limelight. If elected, you can trust his ingenuity and trustworthiness to solve in four years much of the challenges that had bedeviled the nation for decades, including the monumental debts incurred by Tinubu’s free spending administration.
NDC remains deeply divided, recently losing the only Northern senator Rufus Hanga to APC in one of the latest switches of camps that have led the opposition to cry foul regarding a one-party state. None of this matter anyway. With Atiku Abubakar in the North, Rotimi Amechi in the South-South and Rauf Aregbesola in the South-West, the ADC has the most popular politicians in those regions, their poor, almost anonymous showing in Osun election notwithstanding. Real power is demonstrated at the federal level, and at the appropriate time men would be separated from the boys.
The opposition parties do not need to put their acts together. The present administration has so self-destruct with the pervasive hardship in the land that success at the next polls has been handed to the opposition on a platter. Which of the splinters of the opposition doesn’t matter. Nigerians would be too glad to vote for anyone, but Tinubu come 2027!
Significantly, PBAT has not fulfilled most of his pre-election promises to justify a return to power. Nigeria’s long-standing electricity problems which he pointedly assured he would either fix or be booted out remains comatose. That verdict is now on him. The rate of kidnapping and general insecurity in the land is dire and concerning, even if we must acknowledge the victories recorded on different fronts in the West, Southeast and parts of the North recently.
Tony Elumelu, one of the big investors benefiting immensely from the policies of the present administration, expectedly added his voice to the few people praising PBAT. He reports that Nigeria’s oil losses plunged from a whopping 97% before President Bola Tinubu assumed office in 2023 to 2% as at July 2026. The improvement in crude oil production, which has enabled Nigeria meet and exceeded OPEC’s quota in recent years, was largely due to continued efforts by security agencies to tackle oil theft and illegal refining, thus improving capacity of the nation meeting its revenue and budget projections. But what would Elumelu have said differently? The Yorubas have a saying which, literally translated, means the buzzing flies would always cast their lot with the open wounds. The thousands working in his many enterprises may be mostly Nigerians, including those of his billionaire friends, but how do these numbers compare with the impoverished millions scattered across the country?
In any case, our gallant men and women in the military, police and Intelligence should be credited for this gradual but undeniable improvement in security, not their Commander-in-Chief. Forget the hype about the commendation from President Trump on Tinubu. The US leader’s earlier threat to come bombing Nigeria carried more weight than this total switch for which Nigerians on ground, who are still smarting under the weight of widespread insecurity see no justification.
The presidency recently directed that all seized funds by EFCC as well as all unclaimed dividends for the capital market in the Dormant Acct Trust Fund should be directed to the National Education Fund, expanding both the resources available for distribution and and numbers of beneficiaries. However, this is suspicious, to say the least, coming so close to the 2027 elections. Students may have continued to benefit from the NELFUND Students Loan scheme, and we may have enjoyed uninterrupted academic calendar in our universities in the last three years. But shouldn’t the credit go to ASSU and related unions whose current leaderships have probably realized the futility of the old frequent strikes?
It was in the news recently that Nigeria’s 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory have increased their combined budgets by 47.5 per cent, from N27.22tn in 2025 to N40.14tn in 2026. Yet, in real terms, apart from the increase in minimum wage and the regular payment of Civil service salaries, what else have the different states done with the humongous monies earned from the federation account because of the increased allocations and bloated budgets? Even the president warned state governors recently against constructing wasteful but needless bridges instead of roads and infrastructure that truly impact the people.
Oby Ezekwesili, former minister of education and economic policy, one of President Tinubu’s ardent critics admitted recently that current improvements in some microeconomic indicators are noteworthy. There is microeconomic stability especially the reduced volatility in the foreign exchange market. But who cares really, when “the real pain is that the cost of living for the average citizen is still pretty high”
So, no one is intimidated by the recently publicised 500-man election campaign team of the APC, with all the key stakeholders firmly in their positions – stakeholders who are as desperate to keep their jobs as the president and his vice who led the list? History has a way of repeating itself. Was Ebele Jonathan not shed of his Goodluck 11 years ago, along with a dominant PDP that once boasted of being in power ad infinitum?
For all the parts he played in the election of his uncle, Davido has directed our attention to the power of youth and social media in today’s politics. Also, thanks to INEC, the days of manipulating results at the collation centre are gone forever. The IREV worked real time in the Osun Elections. No voter apathy too. Over a million of the 1.9m registered voters turned up to vote, showing that the people’s interest in politics and those who rule them is now heightened. We are all eager for 2027. I agree with Bob Dee that the ruling party is in panic mode already. I would not be surprised if Tinubu and Iya Alakara are already making plans for their return to Bourdillion from whence they came to turn FCT into something else – an audacious piece of national capital through Nyesom Wike.
No one is asking President Tinubu to lay a red carpet for his opponent to beat him, and he has said he wouldn’t. All we ask of him is to be a true statesman and allow a free and fair election in 2027. It won’t be so difficult to determine if he has done this. He must lose. No one wins a truly free and fair election with such heavy baggage that he carries as an incumbent at the moment.
Prince Debo Luwaji, an entrepreneur and Public Affairs Analyst writes from Lagos
