Although structural, political, and economic conditions appear to constrain any credibly concerted impediment to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s 2027 reelection chances, at least from my admittedly imperfect reading of the auguries, Tinubu still seems so insecure that he is borrowing a leaf from former Head of State Sani Abacha, his arch enemy, to annihilate the opposition and smooth his path to reelection.

There are at least three reasons why I think the odds are, at least for now, in Tinubu’s favor.

First, the opposition hasn’t coalesced around a single, powerful, unifying candidate, such as the APC did with Muhammadu Buhari in 2015, less than a year before the next presidential election. Meanwhile, Tinubu is already the undisputed candidate of his party and has effectively been in campaign mode, with all the advantages that incumbency confers.

Second, Tinubu’s economic policies have so pauperized a vast swath of the electorate that many voters are even more susceptible to financial inducement in exchange for their votes than at any time in recent memory. In a context where hunger and desperation shape electoral behavior, the moral calculus of voting changes.

Given that Tinubu commands a larger financial war chest than any individual opposition figure and perhaps more than all of them combined, he is better positioned to prevail in a contest defined by voter inducement. It often makes little difference to voters that the source of their hardship is also the source of the money offered to temporarily alleviate it.

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Third, the institutions of the state that determine electoral outcomes inspire little confidence in their independence. INEC, which showed flashes of autonomy during Professor Attahiru Jega’s tenure, particularly in overseeing the 2015 transition, no longer enjoys the same level of public trust.

The judiciary, which ought to serve as the final arbiter of electoral disputes, is widely perceived as susceptible to political manipulation. Whether this perception is entirely fair is beside the point; what matters is that it is widespread and shapes expectations about electoral outcomes.

Given these seemingly insurmountable advantages, one might expect Tinubu to sit comfortably and await what could amount to an electoral formality. Yet his actions suggest a deep, crippling anxiety about 2027. He appears determined not just to win an election but to eliminate the possibility of a meaningful contest.

He is stealthily but systematically weakening all the political parties that could provide viable platforms for his opponents in 2027.

The Labor Party, which rode the crest of the wave of Peter Obi’s popularity to emerge from near obscurity to national prominence in 2024, has been mired in irresolvably debilitating internal crises. These crises may have internal origins, but their persistence and intensity have effectively neutralized the party as a coherent opposition force.

The Peoples Democratic Party is also deeply fractured. Through the outsized influence of FCT Minister Nyesom Wike, who retains significant leverage within the party despite serving in an APC administration, the PDP has been thrown into a prolonged internal dissension that has eroded its capacity to function as a credible opposition platform.

It would be an exaggeration to say that only APC sympathizers remain in the PDP, but it is accurate to say that its internal divisions have weakened its ability to mount a coordinated challenge.

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The African Democratic Congress (ADC) had begun to present itself as a refuge for politicians displaced from the PDP, the Labour Party, and even factions within the APC. That possibility now appears imperiled by an emerging leadership crisis.

While David Mark is widely recognized as the party’s national chairman, Nafiu Bala Gombe, a former deputy national chairman, is contesting that leadership in court. Given how the courts have ruled in the past in respect of the PDP and LP, which many people suspect is induced from the Tinubu camp, it won’t come to me as a surprise if Gombe gets judicial imprimatur to displace Mark.

Allegations that Gombe is aligned with Tinubu or with interests sympathetic to him come primarily from partisan sources within the ADC and have not been independently substantiated. Still, given the pattern observable in other opposition parties, such suspicions are not entirely surprising. If the courts eventually validate Gombe’s claim, the ADC could become inhospitable to the very opposition figures who had begun to see it as a viable platform, as a safe political asylum.

The cumulative effect of these developments is that major opposition figures such as Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi, and Rotimi Amaechi may find themselves without stable or credible party platforms on which to base presidential bids. Even if parties remain on paper, they risk becoming hollow shells, fielding “dummy” candidates who pose no real threat and merely sustain the illusion of competition. That’s banana-republic-level perversion of basic democratic norms.

This trajectory calls to mind the 1998 transition program under Sani Abacha. In that case, the regime licensed and controlled the only legal political parties, suppressed dissent, and orchestrated a process in which all five parties eventually adopted Abacha as their sole presidential candidate. It was a carefully managed political ritual dubiously designed to legitimize continued rule. Abacha didn’t get elected because he died before that could happen.

Nigeria is not under military rule, and the present circumstances are not, by any means, wholly identical. But the logic of narrowing the political field to the point where competition becomes illusory bears an uncomfortable resemblance.

There is no point in pretending to be a democracy if something as basic as the latitude to run for the office of president is strewn with avoidable cataracts and oxbow lakes, to paraphrase Nigeria’s most famous sesquipedalian Patrick Obahiagbon.

The danger for Tinubu is that such a strategy, even if it succeeds electorally, could strip his reelection of the faintest scintilla of credibility and render his administration vulnerable to an enervating crisis of legitimacy, including possible international scrutiny. Electoral victory is one thing; perceived legitimacy is another, and the latter is harder to manufacture.

It is true that incumbents often seek every available advantage. Olusegun Obasanjo’s 2003 reelection was marred by widely reported irregularities. He was so intent on extracting electoral insurance against Muhammadu Buhari in 2003(even though Buhari was actually unelectable at that time) that he got more votes in native Ogun State than there were registered voters. But at least he allowed Buhari to run against him on a prominent political platform.

Goodluck Jonathan also benefited from incumbency advantages. Like Obasanjo, he faced recognizable opposition candidates on functioning party platforms. Even in 2019, when Atiku Abubakar mounted a serious challenge to Muhammadu Buhari, the contest, despite its controversies, retained the basic structure of competitive politics.

Tinubu risks earning a dubious distinction as Nigeria’s only civilian president who appears unwilling to tolerate even the minimum conditions for credible electoral competition. That is a striking departure for a man whose political reputation was built, in part, on opposition to military authoritarianism.

He still has time to recalibrate. The more prudent path is to allow opposition parties to organize freely and to make his case for reelection on the basis of his record. That, more than any tactical maneuvering, is what confers durable political legitimacy.