Nigeria 2027: The battle lines are being drawn, but where are the people?

It is 2025, and some of you might have noticed the lines being drawn in the sand. These lines may seem scattered at this point, random even, but in the end, they will all be pointing in one direction in the next few months. These are the battle lines for Nigeria in 2027. I wish […]

It is 2025, and some of you might have noticed the lines being drawn in the sand. These lines may seem scattered at this point, random even, but in the end, they will all be pointing in one direction in the next few months. These are the battle lines for Nigeria in 2027.

I wish I could say, like the optimist I am, that it is for the soul of Nigeria. But the reality, as we have seen so often in the past, in the last 25 years of uninterrupted democracy in Nigeria, is that it is simply and plainly put, for power.

Politicians have already begun to shift and move ground; positions are gradually shifting, and politicians who have felt left out of the corridors of power, by design or oversight, are beginning to realign, rekindle old alliances, or toot old bugles to rouse some waiting political soldiers to arms. Yet, the most vital cog in this system, the people of Nigeria, the taxpayers, the electorate, have remained aloof, as they have always done in these early stages when they should make it clear exactly what kind of leadership they want.

The most high-profile political move that has played out this week has to be the visit of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar to his former boss, President Olusegun Obasanjo. Everyone knows that the relationship between those two men, who helped transition Nigeria from military to civil rule in 1999, did not end well. It was perhaps the most acrimonious falling out of a president and his vice and has remained so ever since, spawning a book and some of those famous Obasanjo open letters.

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If Obasanjo was to be believed, he fell out with Atiku over corruption, as he has claimed in writings he has authored and public statements he has made. However, reading between the lines, it would seem that Atiku’s crime was being too ambitious at the expense of Obasanjo and then not being bold enough to take power when he had the chance. The irony is that Obasanjo confirmed, just a few short years later and in ways that were more obvious than ever, that he too was a man of inordinate ambitions when he attempted to subvert the constitution and retain power as president for a third term. Somehow, Obasanjo had not forgiven Atiku for sharing the same drive as him and has fought Atiku’s attempts to be president in every election from 2007 until 2023, except for 2019. Will 2027 be different?

Who knows? Atiku, with a retinue of politicians, met Obasanjo recently in Abeokuta, in what has been branded as a “courtesy call” on his former boss, which is political speak for political manoeuvering. Atiku would welcome Obasanjo’s support in the next elections, no doubt. After 2003, Obasanjo learned to make himself the most influential politician in the country and was instrumental in the emergence of several successive presidents after him—Yar’adua and Jonathan for sure. But clearly, he is no longer the force that he was then. His endorsement of Peter Obi in the last elections did not translate to a victory.

He also endorsed Atiku for president in 2019 and that too did not augur well for his chosen man. If anything, Obasanjo, in his long career as a military politician, has demonstrated his understanding of the maxim of having no permanent friends but interests in politics. He had fought Buhari tooth and nail and stood in the way of his presidency until 2015. He opposed Atiku until 2019. And who knows where he will turn in 2027? The question is will it matter? Should it, really?

But the lines are not only being drawn in the PDP because the scuffle between the APC and former Kaduna State governor, Nasir El-Rufai, once the golden boy of the ruling party, has turned very public and very dirty too quickly. It has been the most dominant discourse in the political space recently. We have heard and read that death threats have been made and that the prospects of arrest and torture have been tabled. It all sounds rather dramatic and Nollywoodish, to be honest. The threats have been going both ways, if I am to be honest. Insinuations have been made of the APC missing out on the block vote of the North as well. The northerners, who own the votes, were not consulted when this claim was made.

There is no doubt that El-Rufai was instrumental in the coalition that led to the formation of the APC ahead of the 2015 elections, that after his two terms as governor of Kaduna State, where he was succeeded by his handpicked successor, he expected better treatment than he got from both.

Is the scuffle indicative of a tear in the fabric of the APC? Or are the words of the intrepid Kenneth Okwonkwo, former spokesman of the Labour Party the death knell for a party that became the eye candy in 2023 when Peter Obi decamped to it and gave it some life?

Okwonkwo, the veteran Nollywood actor turned politician had said in a recent TV interview that in leaving the Labour Party, he wasn’t “jumping ship, but escaping a sinking ship.” Those words did not come to me as a surprise. The Labour Party grew too quickly without the requisite foundation or even a strategy or framework to maintain the party’s growth.

Peter Obi, who gave the party that much-needed impetus only two short years ago, has clearly demonstrated that his interest is principally in running for president, not leading the party. He did not get the Obasanjo memo that in Nigeria, being a party’s leading man also means being its leader. Perhaps that explained his nonchalance in having other officials elected to office under the banner of the party. It was the mistake Buhari made in all his previous runs for president, most notably in that woefully failed experiment that the short-lived CPC was. If Peter Obi is not learning that political lesson already, and is now more concerned about issuing sympathy statements over terror attacks in parts of Nigeria, while ignoring those in his home base, it will indicate that he still has some political growing to do.

So, while the scene looks chaotic at the moment, because it is, and has always been in the midterm stages in Nigerian politics, the saddest truth for me is that Nigerians are not growing as political animals. We are mostly preoccupied with surviving the hardships and current realities that we are unbothered about the clear lack of direction of our political future and are not really invested in it. While generally speaking, we have always been culturally disposed to gerontocracy, the generations of the Obasanjos who hijacked the destiny of this country from the 1960s and haven’t really let go since, should finally do so and enjoy their retirement in peace.

The current flux and chaos in our political system—wherein decisions are made by power-seeking entities on behalf of Nigerians who always seem disinterested in who leads them until there are names on ballot papers—is one mistake we need to take responsibility for.

We simply can’t be entertained by the scuffles and scrambles for power without realizing that it is our futures that are being determined. If the political system is going to be our saving grace, Nigerians need to look beyond the entertainment value of these kerfuffles and stake their claims on their futures just at the time politicians are staking their claims for power. If you don’t state exactly what kind of meal you want before the chef starts cooking, surely, you shouldn’t complain about whatever you are served, should you?