The most recent of these occurred in Plateau. On Palm Sunday, 29 March 2026, armed bandits/assailants on motorcycles attacked Angwan Rukuba in Jos North, Plateau. At last count, at least 26 people were reported dead, including women, children and a pregnant woman. The state is governed by the APC, boasts the APC national chair, and is politically significant within the Middle Belt, which has often been a bellwether for Nigerian electoral results. But when President Bola Tinubu arrived, he briefly remained at the airport while the bereaved and victims were brought to meet him. His spokesperson confirmed an overrun meeting with the Chadian President and a need to leave before sunset due to poor visibility for outgoing aircraft. But the messaging was clear—this was a meet-and-greet packaged as a condolence visit.

Ten months earlier, the Yelwata massacre in Benue reportedly killed between 100 and 200 people, mostly at an internally displaced persons shelter at a Catholic mission. Pope Leo XIV denounced the killings and prayed for the victims. Again, Benue is governed by the APC and boasts of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation. Again, Tinubu visited the state, but could not reach the affected community because the roads were impassable. Children were lined up on the pathway to welcome the president. Another meet-and-greet packaged as a condolence visit.

These examples might give the wrong impression that Insecurity is exclusive to the Middle Belt fixture. But Nigeria faces so much chronic insecurity, and there are instances in many parts of the country. What emerges is a system, a machine, defined by who runs it, why it exists, how it is funded, and what it is ultimately used for. It also informs how Nigerians relate to security forces and the deployment of those forces as political instruments rather than protective ones. Sadly, it is also why the question is no longer if your state will receive a condolence visit, but when it will.

Who Runs the Machine?

To understand how the security forces operate, it is worth examining their original intentions. The origins of the Nigerian Police Force can be traced to the Hausa Constabulary, established in 1820 as a 1,200-member armed paramilitary force to protect British commercial interests. Other local police groups followed: Lagos Police in 1896 and the Niger Coast Constabulary in 1894. These were instruments to reinforce colonial control.

Etannibi Alemika, a prominent Nigerian scholar, argues that police brutality and oppression in Nigeria resulted more from the legacy of political authoritarianism and social exploitation. This was especially glaring because many Nigerian cultures and communities had their own forms of law enforcement and dispute resolution. But the colonial police destroyed these, along with the homegrown notions of security and justice. In its place, communities got a system geared towards commercial extraction and the suppression of protest movements. The 1929 Aba Women’s War, where colonial police violently enforced exploitative taxes, and the widespread resistance to Native Authority police in the 1930s and 1940s are part of its foundation.

After independence, the force was centralised further during the Civil War (1967-70), while decades of military rule stunted its institutional development. Nigeria’s postcolonial political class then replaced the colonists as the beneficiaries of a system designed to protect the elite from the masses. Military governments (1966-79; 1983-99) routinely deployed the police and the army to enforce compliance. When democracy returned in 1999, civilian leaders largely inherited this structure, replacing military leaders as its new patrons.

The result is a police force whose institutional culture is oriented toward control rather than service. It also reflects expectations. According to Afrobarometer’s 2023 survey, only 15% of citizens trust the police ‘somewhat’ or ‘a lot’, and only 13% say the police “often” or “always” operate in a professional manner and respect citizens’ rights. This sentiment is reinforced in the sad incident in Angwan Rukuba —residents mistook their attackers for security operatives, ostensibly because they dressed as armed personnel. Police stationed in Yelwata were similarly overwhelmed. It is telling that the most recent and publicised debate on security, at least in the National Assembly, occurred when police orderlies were being withdrawn from ‘VIPS’ due to poor personnel allocation.

Why the Machine prevails

After understanding who runs the machine, unpacking how it works helps explain why this system is sustained. Officials, from military service chiefs to intelligence heads, serve at the pleasure of the president and, by extension, the political leadership. Most presidents ensure that kinsfolk serve in the strategic roles of chief of army staff, inspector-general of police and director-general of the state security services.

The nature of political management of security leadership means there is a clear case of who they are accountable to. There is a similar argument around the Minister of the F.C.T—since they owe their position to the president, there is really no need to cater to citizens as a governor seeking re-election might. If security chiefs owe their careers not just to their political leaders, but also to the places these leaders come from, they become politicised. This also ensures that they become not just defenders, but champions of this system since, in time, they too will become beneficiaries. It also means they are more likely to push for recruitment from their part of the country to shore up ‘loyalty’ in the service.

It is worth noting that the most extensive reform of Nigeria’s intelligence structure was not in response to a spate of attacks or failures, but to worries of coup plotting. The National Security Organisation (NSO) was established under the Olusegun Obasanjo regime in 1976 to consolidate intelligence. But it soon became the embodiment of domestic repression, surveillance of political opponents, arbitrary detention and regime protection. Citizens had long protested and decried it and its efforts. But when it was dissolved in 1986 by Ibrahim Babangida, it was not because of citizen concerns but his own fear. It had become a threat to the military regime’s security.

Its division into three—the State Security Service for domestic intelligence, the National Intelligence Agency for external intelligence, and the Defence Intelligence Agency for military intelligence—was intended to ensure intelligence was dispersed, preventing any one body from accumulating enough leverage to threaten the head of state. Nigeria’s most substantial intelligence sector reform was not a governance solution; it was a coup-proofing one.

The opacity in reviewing the activities of the military and intelligence space, all due to ‘state security’, has made it an authority in itself. It also means there is little extensive research carried out to enable its policymakers to break out of their groupthink and take on board external feedback on their processes. This opacity also extends to one of its more well-known powers—access to restricted government funding.

How the Machine is funded

Nigeria has committed an estimated ₦32.88 trillion to defence over the past fifteen years. In the 2025 budget, security and defence received ₦6.57 trillion—the largest single sectoral allocation. For 2026, President Tinubu proposed a budget of ₦5.41 trillion. These are not trivial sums. At current exchange rates, the 2026 allocation is approximately $3.9 billion. Nigeria spends on security; the question is around what the spending buys.

BudgIT’s breakdown of the 2025 security budget is revealing. Of the ₦6.57 trillion total, ₦4.07 trillion—roughly 62 per cent—went to personnel costs. Capital expenditure accounted for ₦1.50 trillion, and overhead expenses amounted to ₦642 billion. The 2026 defence allocation follows the same pattern: of the Ministry of Defence’s ₦3.15 trillion, ₦2.39 trillion is for personnel and ₦464 billion for capital expenditure. The Nigerian Army alone receives ₦1.504 trillion, of which the overwhelming majority goes to salaries and allowances. Over the last 11 years, 2026 marked the first time the defence and security budget allocation did not increase, and even then, the raw amount was higher than it was in 2024, with a higher budget percentage. But citizens cannot tangibly point to the impact of such investments.

This budget structure tells a story. It is a budget which prioritises maintaining a large standing force rather than building preventive capacity: intelligence networks, rapid-response capabilities, and community-level presence. Capital expenditure—which covers equipment, technology, and operational infrastructure—is consistently dwarfed by recurrent spending. The money sustains the apparatus; it does not redirect it. Nigeria’s Chief of Defence Staff, General Olufemi Oluyede, said as much: ‘The armed forces alone cannot address all security challenges, and if civilian institutions are not strengthened, military gains in conflict areas cannot be held.’ He is, in effect, describing a system that allocates most of its resources to a hammer while acknowledging that the problem is not a nail.

Meanwhile, the Africa Center for Strategic Studies has documented the diversion of police officers to guard political elites and VIPs—over 100,000 by some estimates—reducing the force available for public safety. The Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Abubakar, acknowledged in 2012 that police duties had become “commercialised,” with officers deployed to rich individuals and corporate entities while lacking manpower to provide security for ordinary citizens. The budget feeds the apparatus; the apparatus serves the elite.

What is the Machine used for?

There are arguments that Nigeria’s low revenue, high population density, and significant challenges make it difficult to carry out proactive, decisive security measures. But the evidence supports the contrary. Nigeria has repeatedly demonstrated that, when motivated, it can and will work for whom it wants to work for. The sad, unstated truth is that this system does not often serve the citizens it is meant to protect.

No recent event best exemplifies this more than the Lekki Toll Gate shooting on 20 October 2020. Young Nigerians, gathering peacefully to protest police brutality under #EndSARS, were attacked by the state’s swift, coordinated and lethal response. CCTV cameras were dismantled in advance, electricity was cut, and the Nigerian Army opened fire on unarmed protesters, according to multiple eyewitness accounts and investigations. Amnesty International confirmed at least 12 deaths at two locations in Lagos. The Army denied involvement and then, 34 days later, acknowledged it had deployed servicemen with live and blank ammunition. The ECOWAS Court of Justice ruled against the government in 2024, and several state commissions of inquiry ruled in favour of victims. No one has been prosecuted, and no one has been remotely compensated.

More recently, Nigeria’s most documented intelligence win was stymying the attempted coup of October 2025. This was done as a result of effective coordination between different intelligence services, despite not knowing which officers or departments could be trusted. Service chiefs were reassigned, and suspects were detained swiftly. Information was only confirmed months later, and the services involved have been on a belated celebratory tour in the media. But such ‘swift’ and ‘quick’ action was not applied to either Yelwata or Angwan Rukuba. No masterminds or groups have been detained or arrested months or weeks after. No one likely will.

This use of the machine also extends to the biggest advantage enjoyed by the democratic elite compared to their colonial and military counterparts—election management. Ebenezer Obadare has noted that a former state governor proudly recounted using his commissioner of police to manipulate elections. The police have been deployed during electoral processes not to secure them but to influence outcomes. In the Southeast, the military response to the IPOB/ESN crisis has produced its own cycle of violence, with Amnesty International documenting extrajudicial killings, torture, and extortion by the Tiger Base police unit in Imo State, a unit whose officers now collect bribes via point-of-sale machines. In the Northeast, over a decade of military operations against Boko Haram and ISWAP have consumed enormous resources while the insurgency persists. A pattern has emerged: the security apparatus is deployed where political interests demand it, and withdrawn or absent where only citizens are at risk.

There is only one part where the machine is meant to ‘work for citizens’: the checkpoint. But for most Nigerians, encountering a security operative is not an experience of protection but of extraction. Human Rights Watch documented how police roadblocks, ostensibly established to combat crime, function in practice as toll stations—a “lucrative criminal venture” where officers demand bribes from drivers and passengers under threat of arrest, detention, and physical injury. One civil society group in Anambra State estimated that police collected approximately ₦540 million in illegal tolls from 70 checkpoints in a single year. Former Inspector General of Police, Olukayode Egbetokun, stated that the force “cannot vacate the checkpoints,” calling them a crucial part of “visibility policing.” But what does that say for many who do not trust those who man the checkpoints?

Can the Machine be changed?

A lingering question concerning the relationship between security and citizens is how the recent push for state police will affect the current state of insecurity. As we’ve traced, this is a return to the foundation elements of the Nigerian police. This is what Jimi Disu, Nigeria’s new top police officer, will be expected to deliver on.

The state police debate, which dominates the reform conversation, deserves scrutiny rather than quick endorsement or dismissal. Because security threats are local and nuanced, and communities understand their terrain better than distant command structures, there is merit in decentralising security management. Northern governors who historically opposed state police have reversed their position and called for the constitutional amendment. President Tinubu has publicly urged its passage. The case that an estimated 240 million people cannot be secured from the centre with fewer than 400,000 federal police officers is strong.

But Nigeria’s security has not suffered primarily from its centralised nature. It is because there is barely any accountability. Localisation without accountability replicates the same problem at a smaller scale and creates a space for more direct touchpoints. This is in the wake of what history has already shown us through their use of regional security outfits—Amotekun in the Southwest, Ebubeagu in the Southeast—as political tools. We have also seen community vigilante groups commit abuses. The O’odua People’s Congress, which emerged to challenge federal authority after the 1993 election annulment, became more feared than the criminals it was established to confront.

The concern, which security experts and civil society leaders have raised consistently, is that state police controlled by governors who already manipulate federal police commissioners will simply decentralise impunity rather than improve protection. There is a case of devolving beyond state police to local police at the local government level. Otherwise, there is the risk of replicating the same disconnect between federal and state and between state and local levels.

Who the Machine sees

Everything above flows towards a single endpoint—the earlier categorisation of what citizens are given in exchange for silence about the machine’s failure. Some receive the aforementioned social media posts from presidents and political leaders, decrying the mess and seeking a way out. Others see their dead ones become numbers that are contested because ‘31 freed is better than none’. And yes, some do get presidential condolence visits meant to show how ‘important’ this is to elected officials, not the worry of shoring up votes ahead of elections.

But the biggest issue remains where the messages do not arrive, where there is no contest and where the president or a representative might never visit. The Nigerian experience is filled with instances where security lapses and attacks do not even get documented, where deaths are seldom recorded and where killings do not make top-level news. A major consequence of this recent spate of insecurity is desensitisation to numbers, given how many there are and how often they occur. Numbers blur into one another, and cities become distant memories the farther they appear. But this situation is never truly far away. And the more these experiences become commonplace, the easier it is to affect more people. The easier it is for it to reach you.

Ultimately, this is a question of how the Nigerian state values human life, and the answer is structural rather than sentimental. If true security is reflective of proximity to power, then insecurity is not a bug in the system — it is the system telling you where you stand. It reinforces every division the country already carries: ethnicity, religion, region, and class. The further you are from the centre, the less your life is worth to the state. The condolence visit is not simply a failure of compassion. It is the only product a machine built for elite protection can offer to everyone else. The only variable is where next.

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Written by: Afolabi Adekaiyaoja

Edited by: Kunle Adewumi, Temitayo Akinyemi, ChiAmaka Dike and Hillary Essien

APC heads into 2027 with supermajorities across the board. The more troubling question is not how these numbers came to be, but what their imbalance signifies. In the absence of a credible opposition, who holds a struggling government to account? There is no clean answer.

The collapse of Nigeria’s opposition is neither sudden nor accidental. It is the product of decades of institutional erosion, a steady misdirection of political talent, and structural choices in party financing, in the design of government, and in the state’s treatment of organised dissent. Together, these have made viable opposition extraordinarily difficult to build and even harder to sustain.

The Architecture of Opposition

Before asking why opposition in Nigeria has failed, it is worth being precise about what the opposition is actually supposed to do. The easy answer is that it provides an alternative: if citizens dislike the current government, they can choose another. But this is quite a simplistic definition, and it sets the bar too low.

Oppositions perform two distinct functions: they offer an alternative government and constrain the one in power. A party that can replace a government but cannot hold one to account is not performing the full democratic function. As the history that follows shows, Nigeria has occasionally achieved the former while failing almost entirely at the latter.

That failure begins with structure. Nigeria’s First Republic operated under a Westminster parliamentary model, which creates a formal architecture for opposition: a recognised leader, a shadow cabinet, and a built-in expectation that the opposition is a government in waiting. In practice, the three major parties were anchored in regional bases where their majority membership resided, meaning opposition functioned primarily as a coalition of those excluded from federal power rather than as a structured alternative to it.

Awolowo’s Action Group, through his programme of free primary education, industrialisation, and social welfare, came closest to functioning as a genuine national opposition by presenting a serious policy alternative. But when that national project began to threaten the dominant coalition’s hold, the response was not political competition but political destruction. The Western Region crisis of 1962, the state of emergency, the treason charges, all of it ended the only party attempting to build opposition on programmatic rather than ethnic grounds.

The move to a presidential system in the Second Republic of 1979 was meant to correct this by forcing candidates to build national coalitions, rather than rely on regional blocs. It did not. The structural pressure of the presidency, the concentration of resources and patronage at the federal centre, made controlling that centre the primary political objective for every significant actor.

The Unity Party of Nigeria held five southwestern states and advanced a distinct policy platform, but without access to federal patronage, it remained a regional force. The same was true of the Nigerian People’s Party, which drew largely from Igbo political networks in the east without meaningfully expanding beyond them. Organised opposition could hold states; it could not, under this architecture, constrain the centre.

The lesson was clear: opposition that threatened power would not be met with competition, but dismantled. That lesson has never been unlearned.

Opposition Under the Military

Ibrahim Babangida’s governance style explains much of how opposition capacity was dismantled. Babangida earned the nickname ‘Maradona’, not just as praise but as a description of his political style. His most effective tool was not censorship or outright repression, but co-optation, used deliberately and consistently. His administration cultivated relationships with editors and columnists, offering access in exchange for coverage that softened criticism. Technocrats became the public face of controversial policies, giving them a veneer of neutrality that blunted resistance.

Independent student unions, professional bodies, and media organisations were either taken over or broken. Newswatch, The Guardian, and Concord were raided or shut down. Dele Giwa, who co-founded Newswatch, was killed by a letter bomb. The aim was simply to weaken the broader network of institutions that enabled organised opposition. The same approach, drawing critics inward through appointments, contracts, and access, has been used by every government since, though rarely as systematically.

Ironically, it was Babangida’s own transition process, marked by repeated delays and culminating in the annulment of the 1993 election, widely believed to have been won by MKO Abiola, that produced Nigeria’s most significant opposition movement.

The National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) did not emerge spontaneously. Earlier pro-democracy formations had been organising around the question of power shift and democratic reform well before the 12 June crisis. When Babangida annulled the election, and Abacha subsequently seized power from the Interim National Government of Ernest Shonekan, these groups converged into a single, nationwide coalition with a clear objective: the restoration of Abiola’s mandate and the return of democratic rule. Its leadership and membership cut across regions and professions.

The movement drew on a broader ecosystem of support. International pressure from Western governments, diaspora advocacy networks, and foreign-funded civil society organisations gave NADECO both resources and visibility at a moment when domestic institutions were being systematically repressed. The Campaign for Democracy coordinated street protests. The National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers mounted industrial action that placed direct economic pressure on Abacha’s regime. And crucially, the opposition understood that controlling the information environment was as important as controlling the streets.

The pioneers of NADECO operated at considerable personal risk. Alfred Rewane, widely acknowledged as the main financier of the movement, was assassinated. Kudirat Abiola, who was adept at mobilising rallies and was directly involved in the 1994 oil workers’ strike, was killed. James Bagauda Kaltho, a prominent investigative journalist, went missing. Others were imprisoned or forced into exile. NADECO sustained pressure, absorbed cost, and kept the democratic argument alive.

But, in 1998, it was not a decisive opposition victory but Abacha’s sudden death that broke the impasse. The transition that followed was managed by the military on its own terms, through a process it designed and controlled. What NADECO had done was narrow the regime’s options and raise the cost of continued repression. It did not compel the handover. The distinction matters because it means 1999 established a template: not of opposition winning, but of opposition outlasting, and outlasting is a much harder and more fragile form of political success.

Building the Machine

The energy that had sustained the anti-Abacha struggle seemed to fuel active opposition when democracy arrived in 1999. Labour unions, civil society organisations, and an increasingly assertive media, all of which had been forged in the resistance to military rule, became the primary sites of opposition in the early Fourth Republic.

The Nigeria Labour Congress, under Adams Oshiomole, mounted confrontations over fuel subsidy removals and economic policy, demonstrating that opposition could be waged through institutions rather than simply through party structures. The rise of independent newspapers and broadcast outlets, many with direct ties to opposition political figures, gave the opposition a communication infrastructure the PDP could not easily neutralise. Most prominent southwestern politicians owned or were closely associated with media houses. Politicians who understood opposition understood that narrative infrastructure and political infrastructure had to be built together.

What was still missing was a political structure capable of converting resistance into electoral power. Bola Tinubu set out to close that gap. After surviving the 2003 elections as the only opposition governor in the southwest, he rebuilt the Action Congress and pursued consolidation through patient legal strategy and direct financial intervention. After the contested 2007 elections, he financed challenges to disputed results in Osun, Ondo, Ekiti, and Edo, restoring mandates through the courts. Each victory added a state. Each state added resources and credibility.

In the north, Muhammadu Buhari’s failed election bids had produced a constituency that treated his losses as manufactured and his candidacy as a moral cause. That loyalty, accumulated across years of defeat, was not the product of legal strategy or media architecture but was a form of political commitment rooted in personal trust and regional grievances.

This opposition was tested twice, each proving the fallibility of the PDP’s machine. First was empowering Jonathan to assume office when Yar’Adua was sick and unable to constitutionally hand over the presidency. Second was against Jonathan himself when he sought to remove the subsidy. Both showed the organisational capacity that this newfound democratic opposition had built. This coalition included civil society and organised labour and was able to draw international pressure. By the time it coalesced into a functional political party, with its divergent but allied components, it was ready to win.

The Paradox of Winning

The APC’s victory in 2015 was, in structural terms, the worst thing that could have happened to Nigerian opposition politics. The transition brought the entire ecosystem of Nigerian opposition expertise into government in a single transfer, and there was no mechanism to replace it.

Over two decades, the institutional knowledge required to challenge power had been concentrated in a relatively small network of individuals. When the APC won, that network walked into the executive branch, state houses, and cabinet rooms.

Kayode Fayemi, who had built his political credentials through democratic reform networks, became a minister. Adams Oshiomole, whose mastery of mass mobilisation had been forged on the picket lines of the Nigeria Labour Congress, became the APC party chair. Nasir el-Rufai, long a critic of PDP governance, became Kaduna governor. Rotimi Amaechi, who had fought a celebrated legal battle to reclaim his own governorship in Rivers State, became a cabinet minister. The people who had spent careers studying how to challenge power now had power. No architecture remained to challenge them.

Beyond this, the fact that they had perfected the playbook meant they were more adept at countering it. Oshiomhole, who had led several major strikes against the Obasanjo government, was now adept at talking groups down, and he was branded a traitor by a labour union. While many APC leaders had played key roles in opposition protests, they presided over a crushing response to the #EndSARS protests. They even leveraged Buhari’s military background and complacency in managing military promotions to co-opt retired officers, including former army chiefs.

The media followed the same logic. Journalists and commentators who had chronicled, and in some cases actively championed, the opposition cause over the preceding decade found themselves, after 2015, inside the new establishment. Babafemi Ojudu ran for the Senate, and Bayo Onanuga headed NAN before becoming Tinubu’s spokesperson. Some moved into government communications. Others became editors and anchors at outlets now aligned with the ruling party. The media ecosystem that had helped bring the APC to power did not survive the transition as an independent force. It was absorbed.

The PDP, reduced to opposition, discovered it had no usable toolkit. Its membership was largely composed of career incumbents, politicians who had governed rather than organised, whose institutional memory ran to managing state resources rather than contesting them from the outside. Opposition was not a craft they had developed but a condition they had never imagined inhabiting. They did not know how to organise without incumbency, how to fundraise without state resources, how to build alliances that did not rest on shared access to government patronage. They also did not know how to hold governments to account, because they were aware of how the system had benefited them and that accusations could easily be traced to their time in office. And when the distance from power proved too much to bear, many of them simply crossed.

Lastly, civil society organisations pivoted towards institutional capacity-building to benefit from the increasing foreign donor largesse allocated to these efforts. As a result, it became hard for many organisations to actively engage when their criticism of PDP and tacit endorsement of APC also meant they bore some of the responsibility for the government in power. It left the opposition without allies precisely when it needed them most.

APC’s victory came at a moment when it manoeuvred two structural factors that explain the current fragility of the Nigerian opposition, and they are not independent of each other. Current opposition parties have failed to adapt the playbook.

The first is resources. Opposition costs money: for legal challenges, for candidate recruitment, for maintaining party structures between election cycles. Tinubu’s Lagos resources sustained the legal battles that preserved Action Congress gains across the southwest after 2007. Rotimi Amaechi’s Rivers State became a significant source of funding for the 2015 campaign. Without a comparable financial architecture, opposition exists mostly on paper and disintegrates under pressure. Since 2015, the PDP’s wealthiest governors have either left office or defected to the APC, leaving the party's financial base in disarray. The party’s most reliable backer in recent years has been Nyesom Wike, but a single wealthy patron is not a party finance operation. It is an unhealthy dependency.

The second factor is organisational capacity. Effective opposition requires people with transferable skills. It needs lawyers capable of electoral litigation, mobilisers with union or community organising experience, and communicators who can frame political arguments for mass consumption. It needs strategists who understand the patience required to build durable coalitions. It also requires media operations, relationships with editors, the capacity to place stories, and a narrative architecture that can withstand a news cycle hostile to the opposition’s interests. The PDP has had governors, senators, and former ministers in abundance, but it has rarely had any of these things. Its internal elections have been characterised by violence, litigation, and faction warfare rather than competitive politics that produce leadership capable of running a national campaign.

A third factor, unique to opposition politics post-2015, is interference. Every major opposition party currently contesting the APC’s dominance is simultaneously embroiled in internal conflict severe enough to render it functionally impaired, and this is worth examining carefully rather than attributing entirely to self-infliction. Some of it genuinely is. The Labour Party’s post-2023 internal crisis reflects real tensions over resources and political identity that its rapid growth made inevitable. But external pressure has also played a role. A party long in power understands opposition tactics intimately. The mechanisms available to the state are numerous: electoral commission rulings, court proceedings, financial regulation, and the selective deployment of regulatory pressure against sympathetic media outlets. Each can be deployed in ways that are difficult to prove and easy to observe.

Where Today’s Opposition is Failing

The current opposition appears to coalesce around ADC chieftains such as Atiku Abubakar, Rotimi Amaechi, Nasir El-Rufai and Aminu Tambuwal. But Atiku and Tambuwal sought electoral office under the APC, and Amaechi and El-Rufai thrived under Buhari’s presidency. Their ambition is largely seen as self-serving because they’ve been schemed out of the party.

This is why the most instructive opposition role, at least now, belongs to the one person who built the closest movement to previous opposition successes. It is also why his failure to maintain it is the biggest tragedy.

In 2023, Obi built something genuinely rare in Nigerian politics: a multi-ethnic, youth-driven movement that disrupted the traditional two-party contest and delivered a credible third-place finish by official count, with strong evidence of far deeper support across the south and among urban voters. The Obidient movement was not merely a campaign. It was, briefly, the closest thing Nigeria had seen since NADECO to a politically energised popular coalition operating entirely outside the established patronage networks. It also had something NADECO never had: an organic digital media operation, driven by young volunteers who flooded timelines, organised viewing parties, and produced content that outpaced anything the major parties were doing online.

Regrettably, what followed was a masterclass in how not to consolidate a movement. The years between 2023 and 2027 demanded one thing above all else: converting energy into institutions. Obi did not do it.

Instead, he became consumed by legal battles over the election result and by the Labour Party’s increasingly bitter internal feuds, which descended into parallel executive crises and open warfare between factions that had never agreed on much beyond his candidacy. He failed to build on the gains he did have: a Labour Party governorship in Abia, a wave of legislators who owed their seats to his coattails. He neither expanded his legislative footprint through targeted recruitment nor strengthened the loyalty of those already in his camp. Figures who had invested genuinely in his 2023 campaign, among them Valentine Ozigbo, drifted away. The digital energy that had made the Obidient movement so visible dissipated without any institutional structure to channel it. The movement that had looked, briefly, like the seedbed of a new political force was allowed to idle.

To be fair to Obi and the movement he built, that failure is not unique to newer entrants. Even the architects of the 2015 coalition, some of whom now find themselves on the wrong side of the party they helped build, have struggled to apply the lessons of that success to the task of rebuilding opposition.

Obi eventually left the Labour Party, citing fears that the federal government was engineering his exclusion from the 2027 ballot, and decamped to the African Democratic Congress. That choice has since been complicated further: INEC has suspended ADC’s recognition, rendering it, for now, a discontinued political party. Whether Obi’s bet on that platform will pay off through a legal challenge, a reversal, or a further move elsewhere remains deeply uncertain. A man who mobilised millions in 2023 now finds himself negotiating for relevance in a vehicle that is not currently permitted to field candidates, and dependent on the goodwill of allies whose interests do not straightforwardly align with his.

Nigerian politics has a habit of eventually producing what it needs. The APC itself was unthinkable in 2003 and inevitable by 2014. The forces that will eventually challenge the current government are probably already in motion: in state houses where governors are quietly building networks, in courts where lawyers are testing electoral precedents, and in a young, deeply frustrated population that is running out of patience with all of them.

NADECO showed that organised, disciplined opposition can challenge even a military dictatorship. It also showed that such a movement requires more than aggrieved former insiders relaunching themselves under a different banner. It requires a cause that is larger than the ambitions of those carrying it, institutional anchors capable of outlasting any single election cycle, and figures whose authority does not depend on voters forgetting what they were doing five years ago.

The country that produced NADECO still exists. So is the need for another one. Whether the opposition figures currently assembled around the ADC can build that, or whether they will prove to be a gathering of men who understand opposition as theory and cannot quite execute it as practice, is the question that will define Nigeria’s next political chapter.

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Written by: Kunle Adewumi

Edited by: Afolabi Adekaiyaoja, ChiAmaka Dike, and Hillary Essien

Parties largely achieved the former. APC convened at Eagle Square, Abuja, with 31 governors and over 8,000 delegates on the floor. PDP met at the National Velodrome and notably endorsed Nyesom Wike as its de facto national leader by installing his loyalists in party leadership roles. ADC will convene later in April, but will spend most of this week welcoming defections from Kano, led by former presidential candidate Rabiu Kwankwaso. Elections have virtually arrived, and parties are finalising arrangements ahead of formally confirming nominees before INEC’s May deadline.

But parties failed on the latter point. Neither APC nor PDP utilised their conventions and the public’s watchful eyes to articulate their plans for the future. Tinubu acknowledged the challenges with electricity but remained bullish about the party’s ascendancy. PDP’s Wike notably focused on opposition member Peter Obi, former governors Bukola Saraki and Sule Lamido preached party unity, and Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan christened Wike as the party’s ‘national leader’.

The messaging from these conventions largely reinforces the notion that Nigeria’s political parties, at least in the Fourth Republic, do not function the way they should. They are vehicles for accessing power, not institutions for exercising it.

The Dual Functions of the Party

Parties fulfil two major roles: presenting a vision for society and helping citizens gather around shared political aims. Giovanni Sartori is a well-cited scholar in this field, highlighting that they present candidates for election and are “the institutional channel through which and by which the citizens are represented in modern democracies”. Citizens do not just need parties to win elections, but to provide the outlet to express how they feel society should be run.

By this standard, Nigeria’s political parties used to deliver. In the First Republic, each party had clear ideological aims, even if couched in identity and regionalism. Awolowo’s Action Group had a social democratic programme, pushed forward through free education and regional development. Azikiwe’s National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons advocated for pan-Nigerian nationalism and a centrist economic policy. Even Bello and Balewa’s Northern People’s Congress had conservatism and federalism at the heart of its campaign. All parties were clear about the responsibilities of the federal and regional governments and proceeded accordingly.

The Second Republic had ideological successors to these parties. Awolowo and Azikiwe led the Unity Party of Nigeria and the Nigerian People’s Party, respectively, with the same beliefs they held in the 1960s. Shehu Shagari was the nominee of the National Party of Nigeria, which had many ties to the NPC government he had served under as a minister. Even the Third Republic created two parties ‘a little to the left and a little to the right’ to highlight these discussions.

These divisions help provide robust debate. Nigeria’s more contentious discussions are not really debates; they are just well-couched presentations for groups to make money. State creation is simply a means of gaining access to the federal purse. State of origin or state of residence is used to manage fears among some groups that they will be ‘overrun’ by others. Religious arguments around laws to carry out are tied to waning fears around influence. The country is deprived of tangible solutions because honest discussions are not had to begin with. Political parties are meant to provide the platforms for these discussions; they have largely failed to do so.

What Institutional Work Looks Elsewhere?

If Nigerian parties have abandoned the dual functions Sartori describes, it is worth asking what it looks like when parties actually do the institutional work. We do not have to speculate. Other African parties have done it—with instructive successes and failures.

There are strengths to how electorally successful Nigerian political parties have been able to function. For starters, it is not easy to establish ward, local, state, zonal, and national structures in a country as large and as populous as Nigeria. It is why PDP can stretch its comatose status—there are many villages and hamlets where there are still PDP signboards from its successful ’99 campaign. These structures make it easy for the political elite to guarantee elections. So what if we retcon them to work for party engagement and effective governance?

APC and PDP have, at some point or another, presented the spectre of a one-party state. What they have not presented is the thinking behind how to really entrench it. The Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) governed for an uninterrupted 58 years, from independence in 1965 till it was defeated in the 2024 elections. It did so, winning elections acknowledged as free and fair, because it put in the institutional work to operate. It maintained policy coherence across leadership transitions and invested in independent policy research through the Botswana Institute for Development Policy Analysis (BIDPA). It governed through well-documented, engaged National Development Plans that were debated. At its core, the tradition of consultative governance is rooted in the kgotla, public forums where leaders actively engage with citizens. The absence of such forums, aside from perhaps town halls during elections, shows how differently Nigerian parties perform their functions. Interestingly, BDP’s failure came from the political environment that it created, which enabled effective opposition efforts.

Other examples, such as Tanzania’s Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) and Ethiopia’s Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), offer further variations. The CCM embedded itself in a network of local cells and policy committees, giving it a grassroots presence unmatched in East Africa. The EPRDF, despite its authoritarian tendencies, operated an extensive system of internal study groups and cadre development that ensured its members were at least conversant with the party’s developmental state ideology. Its successor, the Prosperity Party, was formed in 2019 when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed merged three of the EPRDF’s four constituent parties into a single national organisation, a deliberate break from the coalition’s ethnic federalist structure that the TPLF rejected as illegal, and one of the catalysts for the Tigray war. Much of the EPRDF’s cadre infrastructure has not survived the transition.

These are not models to import wholesale, especially given the different outcomes and consequences of the absence of dissent and engagement. But they share a trait Nigerian parties lack entirely: the party is understood as an institution that does ongoing intellectual and organisational work between elections, not merely as a machine that activates every four years to process ambitions.

Nigeria’s political parties are short-sighted, working only over electoral cycles rather than planning for decades to ensure structured institutional change. This is why, despite 16 years of PDP rule and an upcoming 12-year anniversary for APC, there has been an uneven approach to governance. PDP’s manifesto, as appears on its website, still cites the hope of becoming one of the top 20 economies by 2020—a target that would make it a pioneer in time-travel politics. APC, Nigeria’s ruling party, does not even have a manifesto page on its website; instead, it focuses on its electoral superiority and an AI-generated image of the president. Because there is little accountability, they can afford to remain holding companies for electoral ambition.

The Consequence of Parties Failing

Functioning political parties are important to how democracy works for both citizens and the governing elite. In an article called ‘Ruling the Void: The Hollowing of Western Democracy’, Peter Mair argues that parties in the West have largely abandoned the representative and expressive roles in favour of governing. The masses are no longer engaging with politics, and the elite are moving towards the protected sides of the state.

For the masses, this represents reduced electoral turnout, partisan identification, and greater electoral volatility. They do not see parties or politicians as relevant. For the elite, they create structures that allow them to both maintain access to state resources and avoid electoral competition. The outcome is a ‘hollowed democracy’ where parties retain the illusion of membership but are really just dictated by a smaller group, and there is no real deliberation. This also means there is no real accountability.

If this sounds familiar, consider what this means in a Nigerian context. Historically, and elsewhere, parties have worked because there are internal structures to hold leaders accountable. Resources are owned by the party, not by individuals. Strongholds are the party’s, not an individual’s—there are U.S. states where simply having a Republican or Democratic label beside a candidacy guarantees their election.

But in Nigeria, these are owned by individuals. Wale Adebanwi refers to it as ‘the corporate agency of elites’, where they can negotiate between ethnic groups and the states. Parties are no longer platforms for citizens to express their political engagement; they are ways for elite individuals to do so. There is no bigger example than the recent wave of defections. Instead of parties negotiating, campaigning and gaining followers across states, they simply have to try and flip a governor. Parties have been built on the absorption of elites—we demonstrated it here through the ways APC and PDP were built—and the growing opposition coalition, ADC, is following the same blueprint by hoovering up opposition candidates.

Sadly, the responsibility of functioning political parties is not just on politicians; it is for everyone. The middle class has also withdrawn from the spaces where these decisions and negotiations are made. Ebenezer Obadare and Wale Adebanwi argue that the Nigerian state has lost its restorative and redemptive powers as a result. Party leaders determine the narrow options of candidates we have in elections. But these leaders do not often represent the wide range of experiences and lived conditions in society. The result is parties and politics left to the very people whose interests are best served by keeping the system exactly as it is.

To summarise, Nigerian political parties do not provide citizens with space to express themselves politically. This manifests in three ways: there is little active participation in politics, leading to weak political accountability and, eventually, compromised governance. In a more mature democracy, a party able to leverage these gaps would get rewarded electorally. For 2027, we’ll need to focus on fixing what we currently have.

The Messiah Trap

The oft-cited solution is to pray for a messiah. This is why political movements and defections have often been seen in a bigger light. In 2014, Buhari was seen as the single force capable of leading an opposition not only to defeat Jonathan but also to address corruption and insecurity. In 2018, Obasanjo’s Coalition for Nigeria Movement was meant to help coordinate opposition to Buhari’s re-election. Ironically, it briefly adopted the ADC as its vehicle. In 2022, Obi’s Obidient movement generated mass enthusiasm driven by its digital and decentralised approach in engaging young people. Buhari secured the election but was unable to rise to the demands of the office and the moment. Obi’s movement elected legislators who have since defected to the ruling party. Ahead of 2027, fanfare has erupted over the defections of Atiku, Obi and Kwankwaso to the ADC.

The pattern is always the same: a charismatic figure attracts popular enthusiasm, channels it through an existing party structure, and then either captures the party for personal purposes or is captured by the party’s existing logic. But this means that movements are subsumed by individuals. The ADC’s current coalition is built entirely on the same recycled principals who spent decades rotating through Nigeria’s other parties. If they lose, they will retrace their steps. If they win, they will follow the same pattern we have seen before.

The uncomfortable truth is that this implicates citizens, especially those in the middle class who are in the unique position to engage with both awareness and context. The Nigerian condition means that it is often difficult to combine living conditions and show up at ward meetings, engage, organise and build.

This was not always the case in Nigeria. The Nigerian Youth Movement of the 1930s and 1940s succeeded precisely because educated, professional Nigerians saw party formation as their responsibility. Awolowo’s Action Group was built by lawyers, teachers, and journalists who did the ward-level organising themselves. That tradition has been almost entirely abandoned. The result is that parties are left to the very people whose interests are best served by keeping the system exactly as it is. We produce brilliant analyses of why things are broken while leaving the actual machinery of power to the people who benefit from the breakage.

The System Works As Designed

The instinct, at this point, is to prescribe: mandate costed manifestos, reform party financing, and strengthen INEC oversight. These are reasonable proposals. They have also been stated, in various forms, by every governance reform report and donor assessment of Nigeria for the past two decades. The reason they have not been implemented is not that they lack merit. It is that they threaten the incentive structure that makes Nigerian parties function the way they do.

Nigeria’s federal government controls the vast majority of national revenue, distributing it downward through a federation account that makes governorships the primary mechanism for accessing resources. Elections are winner-takes-all: there is no proportional representation, no coalition incentive, no reward for coming second. In this structure, parties do not need policy platforms because policy is not what wins elections. Patron acquisition is what wins elections. A governor who defects brings his state’s political machinery with him. But a manifesto brings nothing.

This is not a failure of the system. It is the system working exactly as designed. The conventions at Eagle Square and the Velodrome were not empty because politicians are lazy or corrupt, though some are both. They were empty of policy because the political economy does not reward policy. It rewards control.

Ethnicity can operate within this structure, not as a barrier to ideology but as its substitute: where parties offer no programmatic reason to support them, ethnic and regional identity becomes the only available heuristic for voters deciding where their interests lie. The prebendal logic that Joseph identified in 1987 is not a cultural pathology. It is a rational response to an incentive structure that has remained fundamentally unchanged across four republics.

This means that telling Nigerians to simply participate more—to show up at ward meetings, to contest party positions, to demand better candidates—is, by itself, insufficient. It is like telling someone to reform a company whose business model is designed to exploit them. The system needs to change so that participation becomes consequential. The question is what that change looks like.

Where the work is happening

One place to look is not at the parties themselves, but at the spaces where Nigerians are already doing the work that parties should be doing. BudgIT tracks government spending at the state and local levels and makes the data publicly accessible, a function a party’s policy research unit should perform, if any party had one. Tracka monitors whether constituency projects are actually delivered, the accountability role that a functioning party structure would fulfil internally. During EndSARS, the Feminist Coalition crowdfunded over $400,000 for legal fees, medical costs, and logistics, the mobilisation infrastructure a party’s grassroots network is supposed to provide.

In each case, technology enabled citizens to perform functions that parties have abdicated. And in each case, the party system did not absorb the capacity. It either ignored it, co-opted the figureheads, or actively resisted it. This is not accidental. A party that adopted BudgIT’s transparency model would constrain its own ability to distribute prebends.

This is not to suggest that technology is the answer. It plainly is not, at least not by itself. The same digital platforms that enabled EndSARS coordination are also vectors for disinformation, hate speech, and the echo chambers that deepen the ethnic and religious polarisation parties already exploit. Social media can organise a march, but it cannot, on its own, build the institutional architecture—the policy units, the internal accountability mechanisms, the cadre development systems—that parties in Botswana or South Africa built over decades.

The challenge is not to replace traditional party politics with digital activism. It is to recognise that Nigerians are already politically engaged—through their phones, their data, their civic organisations—and to ask why the party system remains structurally incapable of making that engagement matter.

That is the real question for 2027 and beyond. What would a political system designed to make parties accountable to citizens actually look like? Are Nigerians willing to build it, even when it means dismantling the machinery which the current elite, across all parties, depend on? These are questions that conventions should be addressing. Their inability to do so shows their limits.

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Written by: Afolabi Adekaiyaoja

Edited by: Temitayo Akinyemi, ChiAmaka Dike, and Hillary Essien

APC’s state control goes against conventional Nigerian and multiethnic African democratic logic: people vote along identity lines, and these are often ethnic, religious and regional. This also runs counter to the results of the last presidential election. In 2023, the frontrunners won the most votes in their home zones. It also means that if a party does well in say, North West, it should not be as dominant or strong in the South East. Yet APC controls governors in zones won by Peter Obi, Atiku Abubakar and Bola Tinubu.

It reinforces the idea that identities overlap closely with economic circumstances and political history. This sudden ‘dawn of a one-party state’ reveals a trap to simplify what Nigerians want from their governments and why they vote the way they do.

The Identity Trap

In the earlier Republics, conservative parties, such as the Northern People’s Congress (1960-66) and National Party of Nigeria (1979-83), drew their strength from the North. Similarly, Obafemi Awolowo’s Action Group (1960-66) and Unity Party of Nigeria (1979-83) pursued a more socialist and relatively liberal programme rooted in the South. Voters could distinguish between parties not just by who led them, but by what they stood for.

This pattern partially resurfaced in the Third Republic. The Babangida regime created two state-created parties that followed expected ideological lines. The National Republican Convention, positioned “a little to the right,” drew from the conservative northern establishment. The Social Democratic Party, “a little to the left”, attracted a broader, more progressive coalition anchored in the South. Yet the distinction was shallow: both parties were imposed from above rather than built around genuine programmatic differences, and the annulment of the 12 June 1993 election ensured the experiment never matured.

Notably, these distinctions have largely disappeared in the Fourth Republic. Sa’eed Husaini argues that Nigeria’s governing parties have converged on centre-right economic positions since 1999, a consensus so thorough that manifestos across parties now read as variations on the same theme.

But this convergence is not truly national; it only happens among the elite. The parties agree at the top; the voters they represent do not. Leila Demarest has shown that Nigerian parties incentivise politicians to direct resources towards party elites rather than to constituents. This weakens the ties between legislators and the citizens who elected them.

The result is a political class that has settled its internal disagreements over economic policy and the basic terms of access to power. However, the ethnic, religious, and regional fractures that shape how citizens actually vote remain unresolved. People know parties less by policies and more by personnel. This gap, between what elites have agreed on and what citizens experience, continues to widen.

This disconnect is part of what shapes the party system. Most established democracies coalesce around two broad tents or positions. In Nigeria, those tents are not ideological: they are the ruling party and everyone else. The pattern has repeated itself: PDP dominated from 1999 to 2015, and the opposition consolidated into the APC specifically to dislodge it. Now that the APC holds the centre, the same gravitational pull draws politicians towards it, not out of conviction, but because proximity to power and resources are the primary incentives.

APC currently has a supermajority. But this situation sits atop every unresolved identity claim, regional grievance, and factional ambition that Nigerian politics has always produced. Context matters in understanding whether this is a true reflection of the country or a temporary alignment that its own contradictions will undo.

The Map vs The Mandate

The biggest mistake the APC would make is to mistake the gale of defections for sudden mass support. The more apt description is that governors have made calculated decisions to protect their careers. That decision means little to everyday citizens, who can still punish leaders seen as distant or out of touch.

The maps above show where votes went in 2023 and where power currently sits in 2026. A party’s strength is better considered by looking at the state of play in these states. After all, a governor’s defection tells us who controls the machinery, but not who is more familiar with it.

Nigeria has also had controversial electoral processes in past contests, including the 2023 election. Election observers documented discrepancies in declared results in several states. This means the reliability of some declared results remains in question.

The maps reveal a consistent pattern. While APC has absorbed new governors, the actual voter dynamics in some states remain uncertain. In states like Adamawa, where Atiku’s political leaning has been influential, and Bayelsa, where Senator and former Governor Seriake Dickson’s newly formed Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) will contest, there may be a stronger contest than expected. This is because consolidations, consultations, and defections do not confirm shifts in the electorate.

A major question APC will have to address is how to manage incumbencies without mandates. It will defend in states where it swept both presidential and gubernatorial seats. These include Borno, Ogun and Kwara, with stalwart governors who have assumed national profiles.

It will also have to contend with the South East and South South zones, where it has governors in states the party has never organically held before. The question will be how to appeal to citizens accustomed to decades of supporting other parties. It might benefit from governors who are seeking re-election, but a handful of them are in states that already voted for another presidential candidate in 2023.

The state of play, in short, looks unassailable. But looking and being unassailable are different things. This gap between the two concepts is where the real story of Nigerian democracy lies today.

Hollow Ground

The mathematics of the APC’s true strength conceals issues that defection headlines have hidden. APC will have ten governors term-limited in 2027, both general and off-cycle, and will have to manage these key succession contests. Some of these will be in states such as Imo, Lagos, and Ogun, with the added issue of managing the different factions and ambitions seeking the post. This will include legacy APC members and those accompanying defectors. Each of these distinct political networks, with different stakeholders, will come with competing claims on the narrow pool of offices and appointments.

Beyond those who are term-limited, some first-term defectors will likely be working with those they defeated in 2023. Reconciling both groups and ambitions will not be easy, and this issue was at the heart of PDP’s own implosion on an even smaller scale. This is without even considering previous ‘next-in-line’ candidates with the preferred successors of newly added governors. The succession ladder will see several rungs replaced, and it won’t be a clean transition.

All these will be conducted under the looming spectre of a presidential and party leadership transition in 2031. Tinubu has deftly managed Lagos APC, but a national party will be a different situation. Northern politicians and platforms have accused the president of supporting and platforming fellow Southerners, in particular Yoruba. To do this ordinarily is hard, but to do this alongside governing, to varying degrees, is a unique and daunting challenge.

APC has so far been able to skirt this challenge because viable alternatives do not seem to exist. APC has at least handled the basic functions of the party, including conducting primaries, litigating when necessary, and coordinating campaigns. Politicians have defected because they can trust that, but this trust can easily run out.

Tinubu’s administration has had to reconcile with the impacts of an uneven fuel subsidy removal, the harmonisation of foreign exchange windows, and years of unresolved fiscal pressure. The result is one of the hardest cost-of-living crises in Nigerian history. Difficult situations sow doubt, and an opposition that can articulate that doubt can reap the benefits.

But the flip side of this economic situation is that it also serves the ruling party. Harsher economic conditions mean the patronage pipeline is narrow, and this favours an incumbent that controls these resources. It results in more would-be defectors staying in line since a half-loaf is better than none.

This situation shows the party is on hollow ground. But there is an even clearer example: the upsets that dotted the 2023 elections. Obi defeated Tinubu in a state he had represented three times, as a senator and a two-term governor. Kwankwaso’s upstart party dislodged APC from Kano’s governorship house. The oft-cited APC-PDP lost the presidential vote in 12 states and the FCT. These were not isolated aberrations. It was proof that Nigerian voters, when given viable alternatives, will exercise genuine electoral agency.

The question hanging over 2027 is whether the energy of 2023 can be replicated. Major opposition figures have since defected to the African Democratic Congress (ADC), making it a major opposition party. Whether this represents a genuinely new political formation or simply another phase of elite realignment remains to be seen.

ADC has not been tested and will need to hit the ground running by uniting, choosing a candidate, and actively courting members to run in down-ballot races. This is what APC did in 2014, on its way to earning the electorate’s trust. This is especially likely if economic conditions continue to test citizens, as the country faces a cost-of-living crisis and electricity shortages. An opposition can leverage this to their advantage if trained carefully.

The hollowness of this one-party-state argument is that it is not composed of strongholds. They do not guarantee inevitability, and there will be opposition politicians who feel confident enough to contest. And while the government can still rely on patronage to help fuel its campaigns, this has never been a durable method for party management.

Nigeria, however, has one example of durable subnational dominance. It looks nothing like what APC has built.

The APGA Model

Only one party has held power at state level for nearly two decades without federal patronage as its primary engine. The All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) has governed Anambra since 2006, with all three of its governors—Peter Obi, Willie Obiano, and now Charles Soludo—winning two terms. Notably, in an off-cycle election that tends to attract more attention, Soludo was recently re-elected, sweeping all 21 local government areas.

Soludo’s victory is especially ironic given that he ran for governor in 2010 as a member of the then-ruling PDP and, after a term as governor of the central bank, still lost to Obi under APGA. Chris Ngige, a former governor and future minister, ran for his old seat in 2013 as an APC member and still lost to Obiano. Senators, Ministers and prominent politicians have sought to dislodge APGA, but have lost to a ‘third party’ that has remained relevant due to its strength in the state.

What APGA lacks in federal support, it makes up for in identity. The party was founded around Odumegwu Ojukwu, leader of the secessionist Biafran state and former military governor of the Eastern Region. At the 2003 elections, Ojukwu represented the unfulfilled aspirations of Igbo political consciousness. And while he lost that year’s presidential race to Obasanjo, the party has pursued a programme that has appealed to Ndi Anambra. Citizens vote for APGA as a platform and not just for individual personalities. Its strong grassroots campaign, well-vetted candidates, and ability to maximise state resources sustain it. These build trust and ensure citizens back the party’s choice.

It was evident when Soludo’s victory only came once he moved to the party, despite trying and failing before. It was further demonstrated when Obi, who carried the state in 2023, was unable to dislodge the party after endorsing PDP and LP candidates. The platform had outlasted his personality.

This pattern, a platform that outlasts its personalities, is what the APC will meet in several states. The absence of a clear identity continues to haunt the party. After all, it can count former PDP members, Buhari-era conservatives, Tinubu-era progressives and recent political defectors with no clear unifying trait other than a desire to be in power. This shallow unity means that it can be sold out, and there is no similar strength of platform at the expense of the individual.

APGA’s limitations present differently. It has been a consistent force in the South East but has only been able to extend beyond Anambra once, when Rochas Okorocha was elected governor of Imo before he defected to the APC. Moreover, identity-based dominance is durable but also geographically bounded and has a narrow ceiling. APC can operate beyond its networks and cross multiple ethnic lines. But while it is dependent on patronage, APGA survives contact with voters. A successful Nigerian political party will need to move beyond these models to succeed.

The Limits of Ambition

APC survives nationally because it controls what people need access to. The economic pressures already described continue to narrow that access. If and when patronage runs thin, or the presidency favours a faction that did not recruit the current wave of defectors, there is no residual loyalty to fall back on.

A formal one-party state is not the destination Nigeria is heading towards. The PDP’s era of near-total dominance ended because internal contradictions became irreconcilable. Nigeria’s large ethnic blocs, multiple sub-regional interests, an increasing cadre of politicians, and an uneasy political settlement through power alternation make one-party dominance structurally impossible. Because every group believes its turn is due, and that guarantee of unrealised, unbridled ambition will likely lead to splintering.

Citizens, too, have tools beyond the ballot. Despite being weak electorally, Occupy Nigeria’s protests in 2012 against the PDP government drove the then-Goodluck Jonathan to the negotiating table.

What is dangerous is not the number of states APC controls, but the gap between the party’s map and the country’s actual political temperature. APC is consolidating elite control against the direction of voter sentiment. The gubernatorial map shows dominance; the 2023 results and the cost-of-living crisis show discontent. When these two realities collide, as they will in 2027 and beyond, the correction will be significant.

APC has built Muhammadu Buhari House, so it does not have to deal with the empty monument to PDP’s unfulfilled ambition. But it has not built an idea base that makes us understand what it has sought to achieve. It has acquired governors and prioritised them over numbers. APGA survives in Anambra because its voters know who the party is for, and that is why they trust the individuals running it.

The spectre of a one-party state is just that — a spectre. APC’s dominance rests on defections rather than mandates, sustained by patronage rather than ideology, and stretched across regions where it has never organically won voter trust. History offers no precedent for this arrangement surviving. But what should concern Nigerians is not the constitutional question; it is the democratic one. The distance between who holds power and who the electorate would choose grows wider with each defection, each tilted primary, each weakened institution. If that gap continues to widen, it will not matter how many governors the APC claims. What will matter is whether citizens still believe that their vote can close it.

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Written by: Afolabi Adekaiyaoja

Edited by: Temitayo Akinyemi, ChiAmaka Dike, and Hillary Essien

There is a timeline in which, today in 2026, the PDP is about halfway through fulfilling Ogbulafor’s prophecy. Instead, the party is down to two state governorships, Oyo’s Seyi Makinde and Bauchi’s Bala Mohammed, and the latter is reportedly negotiating an exit to the All Progressives Congress. After a raft of defections on 12 March 2026, the PDP has been reduced to just eight senators, relegating the former party to third place in the Senate.

That we are even discussing the demise of a party once as dominant as the PDP should be perplexing. With a different set of actions, it could easily have won the 2023 elections and been in power today. Just before its presidential primaries, it lost Peter Obi and Rabiu Kwankwaso, who secured the Labour Party (LP) and New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) presidential nominations, respectively, and together secured an estimated 7.6 million votes. If we add the roughly 7 million votes that Atiku Abubakar—whom the PDP fielded—gained, all three opposition candidates received well over the 9 million votes attributed to Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

The PDP has become the template for the lifecycle of a ruling party. A combination of poor party administration and complacency in power has left the umbrella unable to provide shelter when it might have been most effective.

The PDP, at least as we know it, is dead.'

The Midwife of the Fourth Republic

Led by former Vice-President Alex Ekwueme (1979-1983), a group of political elders and ex-military officers began coordinating to oppose General Sani Abacha’s attempt to legitimise his rule through a democratic transition. After Abacha’s death in June 1998 and the lifting of the ban on democratic activities, this group—G34—became the PDP and leveraged its national union to provide the most viable political platform ahead of forthcoming elections.

The PDP was a convenient vehicle for the transition because its membership attracted elite agreement and the necessary acceptance of the military regime, and, compared with its rivals, had a genuine national profile. But PDP, from the outset, also struggled with the same issues that would befall many Nigerian political parties: despite having a manifesto, it was unclear which set of ideologies would inform its governance style. It was first and foremost a vehicle to gain political power, which is why two presidential candidates, Abubakar Rimi (PRP) and Alex Ekwueme (NPN), and its founding national chair, Solomon Lar (NPP), could come together under one umbrella despite representing parties with distinct ideological differences in the Second Republic. It also struggled to ensure proper party administration, which would have insulated it from select interests. This second point is best exemplified by Olusegun Obasanjo being sprung from prison and virtually imposed on the PDP as their presidential candidate to satisfy the anxiety of some key officers in the military regime.

PDP owed its victory to its national network, but it maintained loyalty by governing in its stakeholders’ interests. This brought the term ‘zoning’ into Nigerian political lingo. It ensured that geopolitical zones were adequately represented in the government and the party’s top leadership. It even extended this to positions expected to be insulated from such political considerations, such as secretary to the government of the federation and head of the civil service.

Obasanjo’s management of the party and the country demonstrated the confidence of someone who had served before, but also highlighted the limitations of a former military general coming to terms with more oversight and accountability. He carried out at least five major reshuffles during his tenure, merging and splitting ministries at will. He also went through five party chairs, beginning a pattern of inconsistent party leadership. His role in the growth of the telecom sector, the 2005 Paris Club debt relief, the transition of the OAU to the African Union, and even the rebuffing of the 2003 coup attempt in São Tomé and Príncipe showed his strengths in government coordination and foreign policy nous. His roles in the Odi massacre, several states of emergency, and several intra-party issues, such as in Anambra and Ekiti, also saw him push the limits of his powers as president and party leader.

History is full of intriguing ‘what ifs’. One of the most consequential for PDP concerns an oft-cited rumour that Atiku Abubakar, an influential vice-president, once had the leverage to challenge Obasanjo for the party ticket in 2003, leading the president to beg his deputy to enjoy a second term. What followed was a dramatic breakdown in relations between the two men, leading to Obasanjo hounding Atiku out of the party and nearly out of the vice presidency and the 2007 elections.

A Term too far?

A lot has been made of PDP’s inflection point, the exact moment things started going down. And while some will argue about later issues concerning presidential nominee choices in 2015 and 2023, there is a case to be made about 2007. The party had just beaten forces that sought to give a powerful president a third term. PDP’s stature was such that, if it were truly a party move, the constitution could have been changed. This showed the power of officials to check the ambitions of a dominating leader. The right move would have been to consolidate party primacy by further ensuring its control over the nominating process for its next presidential flagbearer. This was key because, again, given PDP’s power, this would likely be the next president.

Instead, Obasanjo fought back and regained control. By most accounts, he determined the Umaru Yar’Adua-Goodluck Jonathan ticket, utilising the financial crimes watchdog to disqualify most of the other candidates. He also overruled the choice of Kaduna Governor Ahmed Makarfi (1999 – 2007), who by several accounts was the preference of the party’s governors to become president, because he “was too smart and would not be easily controlled”. The party’s inability to ensure such a choice contrasts with that of APC governors when faced with a similar choice in 2023.

Yar’Adua would seek to distance himself from Obasanjo’s administration, with little overlap in terms of appointees. But his health challenges negated a proper fight for control of the party. This led to the growth of opposition parties, with increasing court-backed rulings that systematically weakened the PDP. Jonathan’s succession to the presidency after Yar’Adua’s death was another chance for older leaders to fight back through their influence over a ‘weak’ president.

Against the growing disillusionment of northern politicians who felt cheated out of their time in power, Jonathan sought and won a full term in office in 2011. But a subsidy rollout that faced considerable, coordinated civil society opposition sapped him of much of his good luck. He gained control of the party, especially after Obasanjo’s resignation as chair of the board of trustees, but this meant alienating strong party members. This included his ill-advised fight with Rotimi Amaechi, the influential chair of the governors’ forum, and his efforts to ensure a coronation at the primary in 2014.

The emergence of the APC, through the merger of opposition forces, provided the first real alternative to the PDP for many Nigerians, but even its success owed as much to its campaign prowess as to the PDP’s internal dysfunction. There was no clear ideological basis for the party, no think tank or policy pipeline to help communicate and strategise its project. It relied on favourable patronage networks and served as a convenient cover while different factions competed for control in their states and, later, nationally. This ‘hollowness’ meant that reform could achieve little. It also meant that the party drew no real loyalty, allowing pragmatic politicians to discard it when convenient. This would happen in 2015, en route to its defeat in the polls.

Ill-suited for opposition

After leaving power, it became clear that its control of the presidency masked a lot of its challenges. The party barely carried out an effective autopsy of its defeat and, within a year, was embroiled in a battle for control between Ali Modu Sheriff and Ahmed Makarfi, which further complicated its ability to hold the government to account. Obasanjo had resigned his membership and endorsed Buhari before the 2015 elections, which meant that, coupled with Jonathan’s seeming political retirement, the PDP had no former leader to rally around or help lead its transition.

This situation created a vacuum that its governors filled. The party became beholden to the interests of those who controlled any of the states in which it still commanded influence. But it also meant that these governors could easily sacrifice group success on the expedient altar of their personal ambitions. It meant that while they were content to let Atiku run for president in 2019, there were concerns over actions he took that were ‘independent’, such as picking Obi as his running mate. By the time preparations for 2023 came, it was impossible to attend to the ambitions and interests of all the governors who were term-limited.

The irony of PDP’s complicated relationship with Nigerians is that, by 2023, it was actually possible for the party to regain power. Fuelled by nostalgia and anger with the present, Nigerians appeared ready to punish the APC. Because Buhari had ‘taken the turn of the north’, conventional politics dictated that the presidency move south, but there was no clear consensus on how to proceed. Rivers Governor Nyesom Wike schemed to replace the national chair, Uche Secondus, with Iyorchia Ayu from the north, because of a convention requiring that the party chair and the presidential nominee come from different parts of the country. But the Enugu Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi committee, tasked with settling the zoning arrangement, reached a stalemate under pressure from prominent candidates and declined to make a decision.

It meant that by the time the party assembled in Abuja, there was little guidance on what to do and more space for aggrieved participants to point to when seeking recompense. To build on this, Obi and Kwankwaso had concluded that they could not compete within the party and sought tickets from other parties, taking their considerable influence elsewhere. By the time Aminu Tambuwal encouraged his delegates to back Atiku, basically handing him the convention, Wike had begun his claim that the South was being marginalised. This rupture would see him lead five governors against the party and into the hands of Tinubu and the APC.

The third time might be the curse for the PDP as the party appears unable to muster enough strength to compete in 2027. Its unofficial leader, Nyesom Wike, is a member of the APC government and has already endorsed Tinubu’s re-election bid. Erstwhile leaders, including Atiku, Obi and Tambuwal, have chosen the African Democratic Congress (ADC) as the select vehicle for contesting future elections. Its representatives have dwindled in the National Assembly, and it is down to two governors, leaving only the question of who will turn off the lights.

A lot has been made of the wave of defections, mostly in PDP’s former ‘strongholds’ of the South South and South East, and in states that it had carried confidently in previous elections. But there is a point: PDP did not have these strongholds; it had individuals who controlled them and could act through whatever party structure was in place. Because PDP became beholden to governor-godfathers more than other parties, it was most susceptible to defections, which were more impactful.

Lessons from a life

Nigerian politics is interesting enough that this ‘obituary’ could be premature, with a miracle very much in the offing. But while some of the issues that plagued the PDP are fairly existential, others are at the core of the limits of Nigerian political parties.

The PDP’s patronage network relied on individuals, trusting a governor or minister to handle party mobilisation and to ensure members felt the party in their territories. But this dependence meant ambitious or incompetent officeholders could damage structures necessary for contests. It also meant that, because governors were virtually in charge in their states, they could act as godfathers and impose successors. This also affected the party at the national level, since officeholders in key positions fund political parties, and regular membership dues are virtually non-existent. As such, the party became beholden to these individual interests and Wike, who governed one of the country’s wealthier states, was in a position to take control of the party.

Another prevalent issue was the clear lack of party discipline or a reward for member loyalty. Defection was convenient until it was not, and members who stayed were not rewarded. Similarly, anti-party activities only mattered if you were not a prominent party member—it is ironic that Wike and Oyo Governor Seyi Makinde, two men competing for party control, both worked actively against the party and its nominee in 2023. None has been sanctioned or even reprimanded. Longstanding leaders, such as Sule Lamido, were not allowed to contest for the party chair, showing how contributions and commitments have been easily discarded and experience ignored.

No Nigerian institution has successfully solved the problem of grassroots revenue collection at scale — but one comes close. The Pentecostal church, with clear targets for weekly offerings and revenue funnelled up the chain for management, deftly manages these issues. In fact, given the level of reverence and obeisance that politicians show elected officials, it might be a comparable model. But a long-term solution to the financing gap, especially when not in power and without access to state or ministerial allocations, is key for any party seeking to survive. Paired with effective policies that encourage party commitment and investment, members can feel better about devoting time and resources to the party.

The biggest lesson from PDP’s travails is that no one person should be bigger than the party. This fixation on individuals also made it susceptible to encroachment and infiltration from other forces. After all, if all you need to gain influence is close proximity to a governor or minister, then what’s stopping you from parlaying that for tangible stakes elsewhere? At some point, PDP’s control of the centre papered over the necessary separation of state between running a government and managing a party. By the time this was necessary, during a contested election against a better coordinated party, it was unable to rely on its heritage and longstanding support.

In retrospect, PDP had lost its states long before it lost its power. What it had were not party structures, but ‘political managers’. Ironically, its 2019 vice-presidential nominee provides the best proof of this claim. Peter Obi’s ability to get the presidential nomination of another party, with less than a year to the elections, and make it competitive was primarily down to the PDP’s hollow state structures. Most of the states Obi won were gained from PDP, which is more impressive considering he did not move with party members or recognised state leaders. Tellingly, the party’s inability to woo back its members does not show a structure prepared to be competitive in 2027. It confirms that the PDP, at least in this iteration, is dead and will need to be drastically overhauled if it is to perform a miracle and return to relevance, let alone power.

Under the sun and in the rain

Before it was closed due to the party’s infighting and court litigation, PDP’s headquarters at Wadata Plaza remained a hub of activity. Yet the perfect metaphor for the party is the uncompleted building that was meant to house a training institute and think tank when it was the ruling party. That building in Abuja still has the PDP sign above it, but despite producing three presidents and winning four elections, it is unlikely to be completed.

This is the perfect, yet puzzling, symbolism of a party with the potential to dominate, which instead succumbed under the weight of poor planning and discipline. And while it is possible that it was always fated to follow the lifecycle of a Nigerian ruling party, it was also in a unique position to buck the trend.

In consecutive elections since it left power, the PDP was in a position to leverage national frustration against the government and a growing nostalgia for its years in control. Its failure is a warning to other parties, especially its successor as the ruling party, but it should also prompt reflection on the institution of political parties in Nigeria.

In the event that this ‘obituary’ proves premature, a PDP death is not just a casualty for those involved, but for the idea of sustained political competition in Nigeria.

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Written by: Afolabi Adekaiyaoja

Edited by: Kunle Adewumi, Temitayo Akinyemi, ChiAmaka Dike and Hillary Essien

APC will mark 12 years in power at the next election, and it will take a brave person to bet against it going at least four more. However, despite difficult economic and security situations, its ‘inevitability’ has been confirmed not through mass support for the government, but through a series of well-laid defections. This is not a new template or pattern: Nigeria’s dominant parties expand through opposition defection, bloat from internal competition, then break up when mega-mergers exploit divisions. If APC is trying to predict its future, it might be best placed to look to the past and the party it replaced.

Three-stage mushrooming cycle

Since Nigeria’s return to democracy in 1999, its politics has exhibited a predictable three-stage pattern. First, a ruling party consolidates power by eventually absorbing the opposition elite seeking access to federal resources. This often follows a sense of resignation about the prospects of electoral victory.

Second, opposition parties, which are usually strong in one or two zones, go through cycles of trying to merge and form a consolidated opposition to counter the ruling party. This goes through one or two failed attempts before a possible consensus is reached.

Third, this opposition is bolstered by disillusioned elements within the ruling party, as too many factions compete for diminishing patronage, leaving it vulnerable to defeat. There is academic research on how dominant parties in competitive politics consolidate control through appointments, funding, and access to state resources. In Nigeria, the patronage structure means this control is personalised, rather than institutional, flowing through personal loyalty arrangements rather than party structures. PDP fits this pathway.

Opposition parties were often influential only in specific geopolitical zones, and their governors, seeking the cover of federal power, defected to the PDP. Questions around zoning—especially when southern Christian Goodluck Jonathan succeeded northern Muslim Umaru Yar’Adua, who hadn’t completed his term in office, led to claims that the north was being ‘cheated’. Jonathan ran for re-election despite the clamour that it should be a northerner in office, and ambitious party opponents defected to join the successful merger of opposition parties. This led to PDP’s defeat and APC’s ascendancy.

APC is now at risk of the same fate. It relied on the cult of personality around Buhari, which helped it manage some organisational tensions and missteps, including allocation of key roles in government after Bukola Saraki and Yakubu Dogara outmanoeuvred the party’s picks to lead the National Assembly. It was just about able to afford losing Saraki, Sokoto Governor Aminu Tambuwal, and Kano Senator Rabiu Kwankwaso, who all contested the PDP presidential nomination, because it remained strong in its northern strongholds.

In the lead-up to the 2023 elections, the PDP governors of Cross River, Ebonyi, and Zamfara moved to the APC, building the momentum it needed to stave off a difficult transition as it prepared to field its second-ever presidential nominee. During the elections, it was even helped by five PDP governors who openly defied their party and supported Tinubu’s election bid. Research on party financing shows that opposition parties are more competitive when they have independent access to funding, with the alternative being a ruling party with sole access to state revenue. This adds to the value that Nigerian governors, with their access to state funds, are uniquely positioned to provide.

After electing a second president under the party’s banner, it has gained more governors through defections and is now facing intense internal competition. Today’s APC includes factions that are at odds with each other: Tinubu loyalists, which include former Action Congress members; Buhari loyalists, which include former Congress for Progressive Change members that have no uniting leader; former PDP members who have and continue to join the party; and new figures moving into politics and hoping to be competitive. There are only so many elective offices and appointments that a president and party can use to manage differing ambitions.

The Mechanics of Defection

In 2025, six governors defected from the PDP, with five joining the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and one joining Accord. This year has already started with three formalising similar moves to APC, two more from PDP and the sole New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) governor in Kano. Except for Bayelsa, all are first-term governors expected to seek re-election. Except for Rivers, all are from states that opposition presidential candidates won in the 2023 elections. On 9 March 2026, Zamfara Governor Dauda Lawal defected to the APC, which now controls 31 states. As of early 2026, no other party in Nigerian history has been as dominant or impervious.

While PDP’s gradual erosion was planned from the then-ACN’s grip on the South West and the strong ANPP presence in the North East and North West, there is barely any opposition ‘stronghold’ for such parties to assail APC from. Of the seven non-APC states, there are two in the South West (Osun, Oyo), two in the South East (Abia, Anambra), two in the North East (Adamawa and Bauchi) and one in the North West (Zamfara), with three governors – Adamawa, Bauchi, and Oyo – leaving office next year. The prospect of an even stronger ruling party, with elite consensus around a likely Tinubu re-election, should make good reading for any APC member.

APC now controls more states than any party has at any point in the Fourth Republic. The current wave of defections recalls the pre-2015 realignments, though its long-term consequences remain uncertain. It is distinct, however, because many of the states affected were long considered PDP states, having produced successive governors from the party. That these governors have decided to pitch their tents elsewhere speaks to the seeming unassailable strength of the APC as a ruling party.

Ahead of the 2003 elections, Anambra and Borno Governors Chinwoke Mbadinju and Mala Kachalla carried out the first defections in the Fourth Republic, largely citing opposition from party leaders and godfathers to their re-election. However, recent governors have tried to explain their reasons beyond just fighting for their political survival. Some defections, especially in Rivers, are still squarely in that camp. But others, such as Governors Peter Mbah (Enugu) and Abba Yusuf (Kano), were strong enough to win re-election, but they defected to further ‘align their states with a strong centre’.

Most governors have cited infighting in the PDP as a major reason, while also expressing support for President Tinubu’s decision to push ahead with subsidy removal, harmonised exchange rates and tax reform proposals. It surely helps that such moves have resulted in the highest financial allocations to states in Nigerian history, which they are the prime beneficiaries of.

They have also made careful efforts to engage stakeholders and move with a large retinue of aides and appointees to secure a foothold in the new party. This is not to cater to the electorate, but to ensure they are well-positioned for internal party contests. Most governors, such as Delta and Enugu, were careful to move alongside predecessors and key party stalwarts who had largely become disillusioned by the lack of effective coordination at the national level. It meant even in states where the party was still naturally strong, the impact of the national schism discouraged loyalty.

This system is also bolstered by Nigeria’s federal structure, where a defecting governor’s influence over appointments and revenue control can flip a state overnight. Most states remain fiscally dependent and rely heavily on federal resources and projects, with a few exceptions, such as oil-producing states or those with historic relevance, such as Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial nerve centre. As a result, politicians often try to force compliant, loyal successors to ensure they can retain some influence, which usually means there is either a rebellious governor or one affected by their godfather’s political fortunes when a defection occurs.

In a strong democracy, the biggest deterrent against defection would be voters being put off by such moves. But while this does happen in Nigeria, it takes different forms depending on the nature of the contest. Victor Agboga’s work has highlighted that most legislators who defected did so to the opposition, often to run when they were likely to lose party primaries. And, in most cases, they often performed worse than non-switchers. Interestingly, most governors who defect do so to the ruling party. Because governorship positions have largely been won by the APC and the PDP, the effect has been more rewarding. It explains why governors are often not as worried about going back to voters even after defecting.

As dominant parties bloat, they become a coalition of incompatible factions rather than coherent structures. Each new wave of elite defectors moves in numbers to help ensure influence in the new party, aiming to prove their utility instantly in wider contests. They will inevitably make friends and enemies as they navigate party candidates, in the hope of currying favour for future moves. If this move succeeds, their risk is rewarded, and their political acumen is praised. But if they back the wrong horse or fall even further behind peers, they are questioned by allies and followers. Politicians can quickly find their influence wasted if they are unable to deliver instant value for the move, and there are only so many bodies you can hire for a defection rally.

Likewise, when a presidential administration changes, old beneficiaries of the patronage system might feel shut out and consider contesting the party or even leaving it altogether. Several ministers and key aides of former President Buhari have since left the party and have become critics of the Tinubu administration.

The Implications for the current ruling party

APC’s ability to consolidate strong party administrators has been key in keeping most members in line. It has also ensured that governors joining the party are aware of the established hierarchy and their place within it. Mostly, it has also benefited from a fractured opposition. PDP is now a factional party, embroiled in legal battles over its actual leaders. The African Democratic Congress (ADC) has received 2023 runners-up Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi, as well as some Buhari ministers, but because it is led and populated by many established politicians with some issue or the other, it struggles to present a clear break from the past—made even clearer when David Mark, its national chair, is a three-term senate president and Rauf Aregbesola, the national secretary, was a Tinubu commissioner, and former APC Osun governor and minister under Buhari. How different can ADC be if many of the same figures from the past are now claiming they can lead Nigeria differently?

Yet if the cycle holds, APC is approaching its peak and will soon have to reconcile with the multiple ambitions of its large, fractious membership. In states where governors have defected to APC, former governorship nominees and party stalwarts have had to reconcile with the new state leadership, which has impacted their ambitions. After 2027, when many become term-limited, the party will have to find a way to handle transitions and keep its ambitious membership in line.

At some point, those within the party who expected to be attended to after ‘surviving’ the Buhari era will wonder why they have not fared any better under Tinubu. And while his likely re-election may be driven by the lack of feasible alternatives with sufficient elite support, the real drama will come when he and the party have to reconcile on who succeeds him in 2031. The many ambitious politicians seeking to move up might see other parties as viable options, and, leading their blocs, they could then merge with other opposition forces, mirroring the APC’s 2013-2015 breakthrough and presenting yet another ruling party.

Northern leaders, who will expect the presidency to move up, will weigh their options, and some might fancy their chances on other platforms. The party will also have to consider which ‘wing’ will produce the next president, since both major figures behind its merger would have finished serving their terms.

Party management was notably different under Buhari, who has been widely described as aloof in this regard, and Tinubu, who has been more hands-on and active. Yet, his firm grip over party structures, evident for years in Lagos politics, was largely absent under the Buhari administration. It is therefore possible that a post-Tinubu APC may struggle to retain the same internal cohesion, even if its strongest competition remains itself.

Vice President Kashim Shettima and National Security Advisor Nuhu Ribadu have been frequently cited in political commentary as likely successors, though no formal succession framework has emerged. The absence of a definite heir apparent leaves room for others to step forward. Likewise, Tinubu’s loyal acolytes from the south will have seen how Buhari’s team was largely chased out and will try to ensure an uncertain future does not affect their prospects.

The longer Nigeria’s democratic practice endures, and the more its political class grows, the less likely it is that someone with the reach and influence of a Tinubu will emerge. And then APC will face its true test: how will it survive Nigeria’s climate, notorious for empowering individuals, over well-structured and well-run parties? It has thrived on the back of two of the country’s best-known politicians, who became president, making it easier for followers to unite around, at least because of electoral prospects. What happens when the party does not have that option?’

The Consequences for Nigeria’s Democracy

This cycling does not provide much optimism about the quality of democracy. If Nigeria’s democratic progress is simply new parties prioritising appointments and resources over service delivery, then voters will never face genuine policy alternatives. Instead, Nigeria’s mushrooming cycle reflects politicians simply seeking power through interchangeable party vehicles.

There might not be a supply, but there is definitely demand. The number of ‘third-party’ candidates who won elections in 2023, and buttressed by Obi’s strong performance in the presidential election without an established party base, shows that Nigerians can break the duopoly and engage with other parties. Voters might want to punish defectors, but party structures and the absence of independent candidacies often leave them unable to do so.

Most times, these efforts are driven by proposals for electoral reform. The idea is that with democratised access to funding, followership, and factions, outsiders and underrepresented groups might feel confident about contesting, especially younger politicians who will fight to avoid ‘their turn’ slipping away. Sadly, without reform actually addressing how parties assume, retain, and lose power, it merely reinforces the pattern: today’s dominant party becomes tomorrow’s hollow opposition, ready to be defeated by the next mega-merger that presents itself as a vessel of hope with the same recycled elite.

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Written by: Afolabi Adekaiyaoja

Edited by: Temitayo Akinyemi, ChiAmaka Dike and Hillary Essien

def:

noun

something that leads or indicates a trend.

Hello, and welcome to The Bellwether.

Before diving into what this is, it’s important to start with a confession.

For the longest time, despite it being recommended reading in different classes and copies dotting the shelves of school libraries, I had not read Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. I always had the reputation of being a wide reader, a trait my parents built by first forcing and then feeding me newspapers and magazines at a young age, so people naturally assumed I had read one of the most important and significant pieces of African literature (at least for English or Nigerian readers). I did not discourage them from holding on to these ideas, and I continued to look for morsels and hot takes on this most important of books. I watched the play twice as a student, found the dramatisation on YouTube interesting, and deftly managed conversations when they came up.

At some point in university, I read Peter Ekeh’s ‘Colonialism and the Two Publics in Africa’. It is regarded as one of the most cited and well-read political science pieces on Africa. The piece argues that colonialism created a distinct political structure in Africa from that in the West. Here, there were two publics – the primordial public, which was governed by kinship, ethnicity and morality, and the civic public, which was the foreign, extractive and colonial imposed state. Africans, he argued, were more attuned and loyal to the primordial public, which is why there was often encouragement to take from the civic public and move to the primordial public that we are more familiar with. It helped his explanation of corruption and ethnic nepotism because the civic state did not acquire legitimacy, and people were more familiar with their ethnic bonds. In short, Ekeh seeks to explain the supposed ‘dysfunction’ that affected African states’ development and shows that it was a rational response to the colonial legacy.

Then I read Things Fall Apart.

Okonkwo is one of the most legendary characters in Nigerian literature because he embodies the tension between roots in culture and tradition and the struggle with an evolving, modernising world. Achebe is masterful at presenting an ‘everyman’ who becomes ‘yesterdayman’, someone who is venerated for his skills and prowess at all things manhood, who is faced with the fast-paced influence of Christianity and the demystification of culture and tradition. Okonkwo’s story is a path, an option for society, but it appears to be a relentless tussle between simple understanding and deep engagement. He chooses one side, for better or worse. But, decades on, we don’t have the luxury of a choice—we have to navigate an ongoing and uneasy balance.

I needed Ekeh to understand Achebe. I needed to get an idea of this binary beyond literature to see both the practical application and the complementary parts that might not have fit into a fiction piece. To see culture and modernity clash, to see the colonial legacy, and to see how that application still plays out today.

Some might have reached this conclusion or path in other ways. Many, probably smarter, did not need this unnecessary detour. That detour is, in a sense, the argument for what follows. In an era where calculated misinformation spreads faster than context, and where debates are shaped by the loudest rather than the most informed voices, there is a need for platforms that do what Ekeh did for me: ground the conversation in the structural context that makes it legible — whether that context comes from a political science text, music lyrics, or a social media trend.

Most knowledge production platforms fight to break the news, but fewer still synthesise it with the necessary background that helps a reader make sense of why yesterday informs today and what that means for tomorrow.

For us, The Bellwether is a couple of different things. First and foremost, it is an aspiration. The word means something that leads or indicates a trend. We hope to spotlight ambitious ideas, daring debates, and necessary conversations that eventually prove prescient and telling in how we engage with Nigerian analysis. It is also a bet that there is a willing public out there looking for depth and rigour over noise and pace. It is a belief that taking the long way, or, as I prefer to call it, the more scenic route, can help people better understand and engage with the key issues that will shape our times. It is a labour of love that seeks to challenge the notion that the Nigerian, and in time African, citizenry is uninterested, apathetic, or simply reactive to the workings of the state.

For us to succeed, The Bellwether will do two things.

One, we will write pieces that can be cited in days and decades to come. Not hot takes, but work grounded in enough rigour and detail that it holds up when the news cycle has moved on. We will platform diverse perspectives and guide conversations toward policy rather than noise. Two, we will challenge how Nigerians engage with the electoral process. Presidents should have to debate in order to earn our votes. Party manifestos should be dissected, not merely published. We will build this through projects and collaborations with like-minded institutions that share a vision of a more informed civic public (we love a callback).

We invite you on a journey today to challenge the more negative stereotypes of our current political environment. This is expressly important because it shapes lives, whether or not we engage. We also seek to show the politics in everything, because it is too important to ignore.

Nigerians are a political people. It is seen in Big Brother Naija, where voters continue to form tribes, herded by campaign handlers to ensure that a housemate emerges as the winner in the country's most uncontroversial and widely accepted democratic process. The absence of any part of the country from the Super Eagles’ starting XI goes unnoticed — unless the team is unsuccessful. It is telling in how particular conversations or public culture discourse, ranging from gender rights in the north or liberal moralism in the south, are segregated and focused on different parts of the country. And when protests erupt, they are framed through the lens of where they are based and where the sitting president is from, rather than a clear conversation about how the state and society are at odds. If there is to be a country, there needs to be dialogue – and the metaphorical handshake across the Niger must take place not just as a matter of political expedience, but as an insistence of mental engagement.

There is another reason why The Bellwether will be important. As a new generation of Nigerians, increasingly divided between the diaspora and geographical home, there is a need for a platform to engage in political discourse with the rigour and diverse contexts required. In the past, many publications catered to specific constituencies – either across geography, class, or ideology. It is the position of The Bellwether that we will, and if we must fail, will relentlessly keep striving to present a fair and honest account of the Nigeria that exists today — and a hopeful record of the Nigeria that can be, tomorrow.

For now, we will present one essay for your consideration every week. We will leave comments on and engage with posts respectfully and clearly. We hope to revisit this in a couple of months and see where we go from there.

We are writers and readers, dreamers and doers, and — honestly — we are scared. Imposter syndrome has delayed this project for longer than it should have. But that dread cannot compete with the fierce urgency of now. We want to build a community of readers, citizens and writers who will take this bell, ring it and make it their own.

In our own small way, we are doing our part to ensure the centre does hold, and things don’t fall apart.

Afolabi Adekaiyaoja

For The Bellwether.