Fellow Nigerians, we Are the Problem, By Simon Kolawole

Here we go again: the next presidential election is set to be a re-enactment of the 2023 fixture. It was a three-way fight involving Candidates Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and Peter Obi of the Labour Party — with an honourable mention of Dr Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP). The trio are back as presidential candidates in 2027, with Tinubu still of the APC, while Atiku is now of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), and Obi of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) — and Kwankwaso has teamed up with Obi and is poised to be his vice-presidential candidate.

I cannot pretend to be surprised by the 2027 presidential fixture. In August 2025, I wrote, in an article entitled ‘Looking Like Tinubu vs Atiku vs Obi Again’, that Tinubu would pick the APC ticket (really, that was a no-brainer) but added: “It also looks certain that Atiku will pick the ticket of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), where opposition figures are coalescing. Mr Peter Obi, who put up an incredible performance in 2023, is still weighing his options. Should he leave the Labour Party for the ADC? Does he stand a chance of getting the ADC ticket? The elephant in the room, though, is: should he accept to be running mate to Atiku again?” Obi left for the ADC but later moved to the NDC.

The picture is fairly clear now, but there may yet be another candidate on the ballot: Dr Goodluck Jonathan, former president. I still don’t understand his game, but a faction of the PDP led by Mallam Kabiru Turaki, his former minister of special duties, has picked him as its own flag bearer and he has not openly dissociated himself from the drama, despite the best efforts of some of his well-wishers. The other PDP, marshalled by Chief Nyesom Wike, Tinubu’s FCT minister, has picked Senator Sandy Onor as its own candidate. I never heard the name before now. One Stanley Osifo also ran against Tinubu in the APC. We play too much in this country, but it may be good for our mental health.

While the APC primary was devoid of drama, the ADC was slightly spicy. Atiku, predictably, won the primary, polling 1,846,370 votes. Rt Hon Rotimi Amaechi came second with 504,117 — a figure he described as “concocted” and promptly rejected. Mr Mohammed Hayatu-Deen polled 177,120 votes — a tally he also rejected. Amaechi and Hayatu-Deen boycotted the announcement of the result by the ADC leadership. Obi did not go through any primary election — he was simply screened and announced as the candidate, with no other aspirants in the NDC. Obi has never hidden his aversion to primary elections: he believes he has street popularity and moneybags might not let him get the ticket.

Many things I believe about our beloved Nigeria and fellow Nigerians were confirmed during the primaries. One, some of us are deluded about the solutions to our problems. On countless occasions, I have heard say: “Open ballot system is the best way to curb irregularities”. Some even call it “Option A4”. For the record, Option A4, which the electoral commission experimented with in the 1993 presidential election, was a system in which aspirants had to contest via four-level primaries — ward, council, state and national — to become party flagbearers. That meant every state produced a presidential candidate for the national convention, where the ultimate flagbearer was then elected.

The primaries we just witnessed churned out amazing figures. Tinubu got 10,999,162 votes from APC members alone, whereas he polled 8,794,726 in the 2023 election when the general public voted. Wonderful. In the ADC primary, we saw videos on social media showing an unbelievable counting technology, mostly astronomical. The counter would jump from 100 to 200. Some who had been counted in front of the line would go and queue to be counted again and again. So, how has the open ballot system curbed irregularities? Amaechi was very brutal in his comment, alleging widespread disenfranchisement and rigging. Yet open ballot was supposed to be the super antidote to rigging!

Two, I have confirmed again that we only consider an election rigged when we are not the principal beneficiaries. As long as the outcome favours us, it is the best election since Adam and Eve! I watched the videos of the comical counting of votes and was amused how people were bantering and laughing when party officials were jumping from 100 to 200 and 400 in their comical counting. It was fun to almost all of them in the queues. I have a feeling that some of those counted as voting for other candidates were prearranged to create the impression of a contest. We would travel to any length to condone the manipulation of elections as long as we are the beneficiaries. All is fair in war, right?

Three, we blame the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) or its chairman for all our electoral maleficence, but the commission was a mere observer in these primaries. The parties conducted the elections themselves. We saw the joke of the counting and the gigantic figures from many remote parts of the country. If the parties cannot be transparent and honest within themselves, what do we expect when it comes to a general election? Even elections conducted by student unions and road transport workers are often disputed and violent, leading to court cases. Yet, we have managed to convince ourselves that INEC is the only obstacle to democracy in our beloved Nigeria.

Four, I also confirmed, yet again, that those promising to rescue our democracy may not be better than those they want to rescue us from. We are living witnesses to how the APC came to power in 2015 by promising to rescue our democracy. Here we are! And now, the ADC and NDC are promising to rescue our democracy from the current rescuers. I am here laughing in Yagba, having witnessed how the newly anointed rescuers are manhandling democracy. It seems the saints are not better than the sinners. The party primaries have been filled with lamentations of imposition, intimidation, violence, subversion, and impunity. Is this how they want to rescue our democracy and move Nigeria forward?

A party like the NDC is not even hiding its politics of imposition. It has shown so far that internal democracy is not in its character. Many NDC aspirants across the country, including the FCT, are complaining that they were unfairly edged out. Names of candidates are announced without any legitimate process. For instance, Dr Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, the presumptive vice-presidential candidate of the party, randomly announced that Comrade Aminu Abdussalam Gwarzo had been “selected” as the Kano gubernatorial candidate. By the way, I have nothing against consensus candidacy as long as it is indeed a consensus and not a product of impunity from the rescuers.

Overall, our craze for super solutions may not solve our problems if we do not change ourselves from deep within. We always think the problem is the systems, rules and laws — and the solution is to have more rules and more laws. We lose sight of the fundamental fact: that the problem is actually the person in the mirror. We always amend electoral laws and propose technological innovations, wholly forgetting that a system does not run itself. It is humans that run the system and apply the laws. If they conspire to undermine the process, we cannot blame the system. As the arms dealer in James Bond’s ‘The Man with the Golden Gun’ said: “Bullets do not kill. It is the finger that pulls the trigger.”

Many countries do not have half the technological and legal safeguards we have put in place for credible elections, yet their elections are more credible. The UK, for instance, does not use BVAS or IReV. No restriction of movement. No thumbprinting. No deployment of police. No redeployment of police commissioners. You walk into a polling station, identify your name on the register with a government-issued ID, collect the ballot paper, go to a barely covered cubicle and vote with a pen or pencil. But you walk away knowing that your vote will count. But in Nigeria, we think open ballot or IReV is what will do the magic. Hopefully, we will one day accept that we are missing the point.

AND FOUR OTHER THINGS…

SAVE OUR SOULS

I have been so disheartened by the Ogbomoso school kidnappings. All I want to hear is that the pupils and their teachers have been released and reunited with their families. The brutal killing of one of the teachers by the terrorists for their propaganda video was apparently to raise the stakes. And to think this has been happening regularly in northern Nigeria for the past 12 years! Same day of the Ogbomoso incident, 42 people, including 32 pupils and toddlers, were kidnapped in Borno state. I will keep saying this: whatever the government is doing to protect Nigerians against bandits and terrorists is clearly not working well. We need a total rethink. Nigerians deserve better protection. Distressing.

TIME WASTING

A federal high court in Abuja on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit challenging the eligibility of Dr Goodluck Jonathan to contest in the 2027 presidential election. Justice Peter Lifu fined the plaintiff, Mr Johnmary Jideobi, N20 million for abuse of court process. Two courts had already ruled on this issue, determining that amendments to the constitution do not take retroactive effect. This same lawyer filed a lawsuit in 2022 seeking to declare Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, a former vice-president of Nigeria, as a Cameroonian who was ineligible to contest in the 2023 presidential election. While I am okay with the hefty fine, I wish there was a stricter penalty for abuse of court process. Irritating.

BURKINA SUFFER

I hope the Nigerian fans of Captain Ibrahim Traoré, the Burkina Faso dictator, are following the latest developments? He has just banned L’union Générale des Étudiants Burkinabè (UGEB), the country’s largest student union, for “glorifying terrorism” because they complained about insecurity. Traoré has done very well with his propaganda of African nationalism, replacing French “imperialists” with Russian overlords and saturating social media with imaginations of how he has turned Burkina Faso to heaven, but those who live in the country tell stories of torture and enforced disappearances. May I advise those Nigerians celebrating him to relocate to Burkina Faso to enjoy his paradise? Delusion.

NO COMMENT

Prof Isa Pantami, former minister of communications and digital economy, was on Tuesday suddenly announced as the governorship candidate of the PDP in Gombe state in a move that shocked both his fans and foes. Pantami was a member of the APC for ages but recently defected from the party when he met a brick wall in his bid for the party’s ticket. Other aspirants in the PDP are complaining bitterly that he was imposed on the party as he did not go through screening, describing his candidature as “political jamboree” and a “clear act of injustice”. A video has surfaced on social media showing the Islamic cleric passionately cursing the PDP in 2014. Fellow Nigerians, it is all politics! Hahahaha…