2027: Can Nigeria finally get electioneering right?

Campaigns for the 2027 general elections officially kicked off on Wednesday, August 19, 2026. The political parties have concluded the formal submission of aspirants’ details to the Independent National Electoral Commission. For some, the road to INEC’s list was a long one, littered with factional crises and protracted court battles before their platforms and candidates were finally recognised.

That alone tells the story of Nigerian politics: turbulent, litigious, and exhausting even before the first whistle.

Since 1999, our electioneering has followed a depressingly familiar script. From primaries to the main polls, it has been a cycle of bickering, bitterness, hate speech, and the weaponisation of our deepest fault lines.

In 2003, as former President Olusegun Obasanjo sought re-election, his PDP primaries were dismissed by his main challenger, former Vice President Alex Ekwueme, as a charade. The campaign that followed was defined by ethnic and religious appeals. A statement allegedly credited to former Head of State, Major General Muhammadu Buhari, that Muslims should not vote for Christians, went viral. To date there has been no verifiable proof of those exact words, but the damage was done. The message travelled faster than the truth, even without social media.

In 2007, the stakes were raised further. Obasanjo himself described the contest as “do or die.” He was campaigning for his preferred successor, the late President Umaru Yar’Adua, who faced Buhari, and his former deputy, Atiku Abubakar. Yar’Adua would later fall ill mid-campaign and be flown abroad, triggering weeks of speculation about his health and even his survival. The election was won, but the process left deep scars. Yar’Adua was later to admit publicly that the process that brought him to power was substantially flawed. Consequently, he wasted no time in setting up the Justice Muhammed Uwaise-led National Electoral Reforms Committee.

2011 was no different. The PDP primaries that produced President Goodluck Jonathan were contentious. Atiku, who had left for the AC and returned to the PDP on the eve of the primaries, was quoted as warning that the country would be made “ungovernable” if he was not made the party’s flag bearer. Whether he meant it literally or not, the quote entered our political lexicon and has been recycled ever since.

By 2015, insecurity had become the central issue. The Boko Haram insurgency defined the campaigns. Jonathan’s PDP was judged to have failed the test of protecting lives, and that judgment, more than any slogan, shaped the outcome. Nigerians voted largely on the question of survival.

In 2023, the confusion shifted inward. The ruling APC could not agree on zoning or a consensus candidate. The result was an open primary with dozens of aspirants and the now familiar theatre of last-minute “stepping down for a senior brother.” The party survived the process, but the image of disarray lingered.

Now we are here again. 2027.

What, then, are the issues that should define this electioneering, and what must we do differently?

First, the economy and the cost of living must be on the front burner. This is no longer abstract. Nigerians are asking basic questions: the price of food, fuel, transport, and rent. The 2027 campaigns must move beyond slogans to specifics. How will parties tame inflation? What is the plan for job creation, especially for the millions of young people? How will the gains and pains of subsidy removal and tax reforms be managed so that growth is felt in homes, not just in macro data?

Second is the lingering issue of security.  From banditry in the Northwest, to kidnapping on our highways, to separatist agitations in the Southeast, and farmer-herder clashes across the Middle Belt, the state still struggles to guarantee safety. The next government must present a credible, funded, and accountable plan for policing, intelligence, and community security. Voters should demand more than “we will deal with it.”

The third concern that must be flagged is  restructuring and governance.The question of local government autonomy and state police must be clearly defined  amid the current confusion. It was deferred in 2023 but it will return in 2027, because citizens are tired of a center that is too powerful and too distant. Parties must state clearly what powers they intend to devolve and how.

Fourth, electoral integrity should worry all of us. With functioal BVAS, and visible security, elections can be peaceful and credible. But at the moment, vote buying, misinformation, and pre-election violence persist. For 2027, therefore, INEC must scale up technology, publish results transparently, and prosecute offenders. Also, parties must fund campaigns legitimately. And voters must reject the N5,000 that buys four years of bad governance.

Fifth, our campaigns have too often exploited religion and ethnicity. From 2003 to 2023, we saw how a sentence, real or fabricated, can set a region ablaze. In 2027, leaders must be held to account for their language. The National Peace Committee, the media, and citizens must reject hate speech and reward issue-based debate.

Finally, more than 60 percent of Nigerians are under 35. They are online, unemployed, and impatient. They do not want recycled promises. They want education that leads to work, digital infrastructure, affordable credit, and a government that does not treat them as a problem to be managed. Any party that ignores this bloc does so at its peril.

This newspaper wishes to emphasis that elections are not war. They are a job interview. For 28 years we have conducted them like battles. The result is a country that is tired, poorer, and more divided.

Therefore, as campaigns open today, August 19, 2026, the challenge before politicians, the electorate, and institutions is: can we make 2027 the election where issues, not insults, decide the outcome? Where competence, not connections, and records, not rhetoric, carry the day?

The choice, as always, will be ours.