Nigeria’s political landscape in the run up to Nigeria’s 2027 general election is exceedingly fluid and mercurial. While cyclical elections should be routine, Nigeria’s simmering political environment and extremely polarized country, are not exactly the most conducive atmosphere for holding what is certain to be very fiercely contentious elections. The unyielding contention that the 2023 presidential elections were tantamount to a stolen mandate further compounds the electoral outlook. Some troubling shenanigans are already unfolding.
What will perhaps make the 2027 elections even far more problematic is the surfeit of national disgruntlement with the ruling APC’s attempt to foist one party on the nation. Add to that broader discontent with the national elite and intelligentsia, for continually disenfranchising Nigerians. The overarching consensus is that the national leadership elite has gone rogue on the people they are supposed to lead, serve and protect. Another consensus is that the 2027 election will be between Tinubu’s APC alliance and the alliance of suffering Nigerian masses. Whatever be the case, Nigeria’s democracy is far too precious to be sacrificed on the caprices of a few.
The fact remains that present crop of Nigerian leaders are fully engaged in political idiocy. They can hardly conduct respectful foreign policy. Neither can they conduct credible and sufficiently free national elections, even though the broad echelon of our electoral establishments are encumbered by supposedly the “best and the brightest” professors drawn from our tertiary institutions. Incidentally, they, too, have long gone rogue. They now represent insidious national security risk. But it does make sense, after all. Those who require “sorting” by cash or sex to pass their students certainly will engage in “sorting” to elevate charlatans into national public offices.
In our politics, we are now fully transactional. It’s known that in politics and leadership, the ruling party has commoditized every elective and appointive position; they have subjugated every potentially good candidate, except the thieves and looters. Recently published APC election nomination fees, speaks volumes. INEC’s recent decision to singularly and statutorily play court and misinterpret a court’s decision, by delisting ADC leaders with a view to destabilizing and destroying Nigeria’s main opposition party, speaks volumes. Ironically, it’s against this dubious political landscape that some are clamoring for a second term for the incumbent administration.
The heady question is whether the Nigeria’s populace will extract their pound of flesh by the way the cast their protest votes and deliver their message of annoyance? This naturally, leads to another critical question. What is Nigeria’s 2027 offramp? These questions are pertinent, considering that the national leadership has gone rogue.
Nigeria has always been circumstantial. That’s the literal truth. Nigeria has also long suffered due to lack of elite consensus. And Nigerians continue to suffer immeasurably, as their national elite and intelligentsia has become complicit on matters of undermining good governance, national interest and nation-building. This is more so, as the national elite and intelligentsia willfully abdicate their moral, statutory and civic obligations, thus making the nation a tough minefield to navigate.
Sadly, some Nigerians seem to be missing the red flag. Most gloss over full implications of the national elite and intelligentsia going rogue on them and their posterity, with unfettered impunity. Presently, Nigeria is not just being looted to the point strangulation and implosion, but also, being sold to external speculators. The nation is also subscribing to foreclosure or re-colonization. If unchecked, when this process ends, there will perhaps be no nation called Nigeria. The country would have gone the way of Yugoslavia and hundreds other countries that were dissolved. This assertion is hardly speculative. It is a serious, hard-stuff conclusion, founded on factuality, realty, credibility and certainty.
First and foremost, it’s indisputable that present day Nigeria functions in a globule of leadership recklessness, profligacy, and over indulgence. The enabling variables are evident; prebendalism coupled with endless bloodletting, visceral violence, insecurity, multi-dimensional poverty, raid and rape of the national coffers. There is an expansive distrust gap between the rich and the poor, and between ethnicities. Insidious bigotry is now common place. Above all, the government keeps failing in her responsibility to protect all her citizens equally. Some unfolding events, point to rogue government agencies or rogue government agents being complicity entangled with bandits and other non-state actors.
Whilst our leadership elite and intelligentsia covet national greatness, they work assiduously against true nation building. In their self-serving interest, they foster public policies that demonize, rather than humanize Nigerians. They’ve been characterized as “brutes, who take delight in the suffering of the common masses.” Through their extravagant devotion to profligacy, they have foisted on Nigerians the price of blood by successfully weaponizing poverty and hunger.
But on the flip side, there is also an emergent self-inflicted corollary. A broad cadre of the national elite and intelligentsia has progressively become victims of our worsening national situation. Now that the nation seems to have reached the coda, the national elite and intelligentsia are just as susceptible to banditry, violence and kidnapping, and their homesteads being pillaged by armed bandits. Some are now being stoned in their villages.
Our leadership elite and intelligentsia have not just squandered our national wealth; they have hardly built regenerative industries and projects that really empower the populace with employment and poverty alleviation. Under their watch, public expenditures are vastly disproportional to the national revenue. Without remorse or reserve, Nigeria is being publicly consigned and outsourced; and not with a modicum of national interest in mind. They liquidated subsidy, only to borrow profligately, even to the point of ensnaring future generations into indebtedness. Poor national planning has led to sustained structural stress, most notably, in the power sector. Access to potable water and rudimentary healthcare services remains dismal.
Our national infrastructure is diametrically so backward and decrepit, for a country tending towards seventy years of independence- an enviable span of lifetime in real terms. Nigeria’s overall national development is so laggardly; we might as well be a twenty-five year old least developed country (LDC). The leadership elite and intelligentsia have turned our once productive and proud nation into a “fantastically corrupt” and “disgraced” country. We are now net consumers of the good, bad and ugly; in imported foreign food and other manufactured products. We have not earned such opprobrium and adjectival qualifications by default, but by brazen actions, conduct, insincerity and insensate greed of our self-promoting, self-protecting and self-aggrandizing national elite and intelligentsia.
Unquestionably, our leadership, politics, governance and national direction have all been clearly corrupted by greed that is bereft of consequences. And so long as there are no consequences for greed, corruption and grand larceny, impunity will reign. This is particularly so, for those well-aligned with the ruling APC government.
Clearly, it has also become public policy of sorts, to abet scoff-laws and shield criminals. As a political vessel, the ruling APC is akin to the Titanic, in terms of its enormity, population, and seeming invincibility. Like the great Titanic, APC’s trajectory, size, vulnerability and fate, seems all too obvious. But the long-term negative impact is already unfurling. Most Nigerians, who feel extremely betrayed by the leadership elite and intelligentsia, are conscious that the chicken has finally come home to roost. As the bubble seems all set to burst, the great risk posed to the elite and intelligentsia, stems from their betrayed constituents.
It is inconceivable to think that a few good men and women of conscience and courage no longer exist in Nigeria. That is not so. However, the inexplicable nexus between the governing powers and Nigeria’s well-to-do, presents a deeply troubling paradox. Most people of means in Nigeria are witnesses and already have it seared deeply in their minds, what happens to those who refuse to align with the ruling government and party. You either acquiesce to the leadership’s dictates, or lose your perks and perquisites. State institutions including law, security and electoral agencies have been extremely weaponized. This explains the spasm of political defections to the ruling APC. Yet; Nigeria’s “refuseniks” who don’t like or support APC are in the legions.
Self-preservation may have become the norm for some. But the price of such acquiescence is awfully prejudicial. The national degenerative consequences respect no social strata. Whereas poverty might be stratified, insecurity is not. Decrepit infrastructure affects everyone alike. Our national elite and intelligentsia are like hooked junkies, badly in need of quick fixes and palliatives. They now project the same pangs to the hungry masses. And for these reasons, Nigerians hold them collectively in no esteem. They have become national objects of reproach.
Nigeria is at a very dangerous juncture. It requires to be reset urgently. Sadly, the damage being done to corporate Nigeria is being masked by rhetoric and orchestrated political narratives designed to confuse and present faux facades of a nation well-grounded on a trajectory of renewed hope. What an irony? Blatant lies are easy to tell and sell. Yet, the inconvenient truth hits hard. The national elite and intelligentsia have chosen the easier and lesser paths that are wrong, instead of the harder rights required for true nation building. They are reaping from the national coffers, in places where they never speculated nor invested. But we need to bear this in mind. There will be consequences; and consequence has no expiry date. Contextually, one will find these views by Obi J. Iwuchukwu, instructive: “Tomorrow has a way of arriving uninvited and when it does, wealth will not buy time, influence will not manufacture oxygen and power will not negotiate with morality.”
As those in charge of governance and public coffers continue to go rogue, their “power will not negotiate with morality.” Their actions will elicit the worst possible ramifications ahead of the 2027 elections. The question is: what’s Nigeria’s safest offramp from the present national quandary?
All kinds of permutations exist for 2027. But the process and outcome will be markedly different from 2023. There will be only two choices. The first is Bola Tinubu, representing the state quo and discredited national elite and intelligentsia. The second is Peter Obi, representing Nigerian disenfranchised population and those still committed to resetting the system. By way of analogy, where we are, endemic corruption is now suitably a national pastime just as the game of soccer, which we all love so much. Sadly, in the present instance, the players, referees, VAR umpires, league officials are all in for the loot as the national population watch. What is clear but many refuse to see it, is the inevitable mob action and chaos that will ensue in the arena were the “on your mandate we stand” game to go dubiously into overtime.
Given the two choices confronting Nigeria, the decision will be stark. It’s either to support Tinubu or a core Northerner, and let the music play on. Or as has been averred, support a Southeast-North alignment. The latter case will mean the support of Peter Obi from the Southeast, twined with a deputy from the core north. Presently, Peter Obi, despite his imperfections, remains Nigeria‘s most consequential politician. Yet, the ant in Nigeria’s ointment is not Peter Obi or whether he becomes Nigeria’s president or not. The system must reset.
Nigeria is immersed in a debilitating morass. The historically enlightened southwest has inexplicably capitulated to ethnic bigotry of a very few on the fringe. The once redoubtable southsouth still wallows in its self-imposed schizophrenia. The core North, Middle Belt and Southeast, are by fate mired in the same quagmire. They need each other to escape from the cesspit. Saving Nigeria dictates that they must forge a robust redemptive alliance girded on sacrifice and consensus. Only they can reset Nigeria and reverse prevailing damages. The battle will be fierce. The choice is really up to the North. It may seem like the devil’s alternative for the North; but they can’t eat their cake and have it. There’s a clear offramp. They need to take it.
Obaze is MD/CEO, Selonnes Consult – a policy, governance and management consulting firm in Awka
