2027: Propaganda Cannot Rewrite History, Peter Obi Will Lose Again, By Segun Dipe

The noise is loud again. The same crowd that discovered politics on Twitter in 2022 is back chanting the same fiction that Peter Obi won the 2023 election. Facts do not care about chants, and history will not be rewritten by hashtags.

Let us ask the simple question his supporters have never answered: How did your messiah win?

A man who lost 25 out of 36 states is being packaged as a national winner. That is delusion elevated to strategy. You cannot lose the entire North East, you cannot lose the entire North West, you cannot be rejected in the North Central, you cannot be humiliated in your supposed South South strongholds like Rivers, Bayelsa and Akwa Ibom, you cannot lose Kano and Kaduna and Katsina and Borno and Sokoto, and then turn around to claim you won Nigeria. That is not victory. That is electoral illiteracy.

The numbers are stubborn. In Adamawa he lost. In Bauchi he lost. In Benue he lost. In Kano, where elections are won and lost, he was nowhere. In Rivers, where he claimed dominance, he was beaten. This was not a narrow loss. This was a national rejection.

That is the propaganda his handlers want you to forget. They want to replace result sheets with Photoshop and polling unit figures with emotional blackmail. But propaganda does not win elections. Hashtags do not count ballots. He lost in 2023, and he lost woefully. He came a distant third.

And 2027 will be worse for him.

Here is the lesson they refused to learn. Obi contested against Bola Ahmed Tinubu in 2023 when Tinubu was not the incumbent. Tinubu had no presidential power, no federal might, no Aso Rock advantage. In fact, the odds were stacked against him — naira scarcity, fuel scarcity, a deliberate policy trap designed to make him unelectable. His chances in 2023 were not half as bright as they are today. Yet even in that condition, Obi could not beat him. Obi still came third.

Now, how does he plan to beat Tinubu in 2027 when Tinubu is the incumbent President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, when he controls the national structure, when he has the record of reforms to campaign with, and when he has over 31 governors in his corner?

Politics is not about trending on X. Politics is structure. Politics is spread. Politics is governors who can mobilise, state assemblies who can deliver wards, local government chairmen who can deliver polling units, and party agents who can defend votes. Today, what does Peter Obi have? No governor. No senator with a structure. No House of Assembly majority anywhere. No local government machinery. He has podcasts and Twitter spaces. You cannot use Twitter spaces to beat a man who knows the road to every ward in Nigeria.

Obi and his supporters had their moment of internet noise. It ended in a distant third position. In 2027, with a more organized APC, a more experienced President Tinubu, and a more realistic electorate that has now seen through the packaging, the defeat will be more brutal.

Nigeria needs governance, not gaslighting. It needs results, not rhetoric. The delusional faces chanting that he won will peel when reality hits again at the ballot.

He lost before. He will suffer more loss in 2027.

-Segun Dipe writes about politics and governance.