The next four months or thereabouts will tint with electoral fireworks as presidential and National Assembly campaigns for the 2027 elections begin in earnest. The hitherto muffled electioneering train has begun to roar full throttle, rousing the relatively dank landscape into a 150-day window of nationwide political mobilization and effervescence.
Campaigns for the two elections are scheduled to run from August 19, 2026 (last Wednesday) to January 15, 2027 in line with the timetable released by the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC).
The two polls are slated for January 16, 2028, while those of the governorship and State Assembly will hold on Saturday, February 6, 2028. Campaigns for both the governorship and State Assembly elections will commence on September 9, 2026. They will end on February 5, 2028.
Section 98(1) of the Electoral Act provides that public campaigns by every political party shall begin 150 days before polling day and end 24 hours before the election.
From the blast of the whistle, a tinge of the trajectory of the campaigns is already raveling. Incumbent President Bola Tinubu seeks a second term amid robust early grassroots rallies, while opposition figures like Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi are testing diverging policy platforms against the backdrop of severe economic hardship.
President Tinubu on Saturday unveiled a formidable 108-member Presidential Campaign Council to formally signal the commencement of the electoral battle. The other candidates are expected to follow suit days ahead.
Issues that are likely to drive the campaigns are also relatively predictable and somehow easy pickings. The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), for example, is vigorously defending hard-fought policies like fuel subsidy removal and currency adjustments as foundational structures for long-term growth.
Opposition figures have predictably latched heavily onto soaring inflation and widespread financial strain as a deliberate campaign weapon to rattle the incumbent and put him on the defensive.
Thus, the African Development Congress (ADC) candidate, Atiku Abubakar, has, quite controversially, pledged a reversal of the fuel subsidy withdrawn by the incumbent in 2023. This is a major volt face because one of his (Atiku’s) major campaign issues in 2023 was to remove fuel subsidy.
Atiku’s desperate launch into early populist pledges momentarily sparked fierce debate and tetchy interjections, drawing sharp rebukes and pushback from the presidency.
The Special Adviser to the President on Media and Public Communication, Sunday Dare, lampooned the former vice-president, describing his proposal as deceptive and capable of undermining the country’s economic recovery.
Dare, in a statement last Thursday, accused Atiku of attempting to manipulate Nigerians for political gain, saying the ADC candidate’s position could halt what he described as ongoing recovery across various sectors of the economy.
“Atiku Abubakar: Your pronouncement that you will bring back fuel subsidy is drenched in hypocrisy and deceit. It is an unpardonable manipulation of the public psyche, designed to hoodwink unsuspecting Nigerians into voting for you,” Dare said.
Persistent security concerns, kidnapping, and institutional stability also remain central talking points as candidates vie for voter confidence during the campaigns that are expected to gradually hot up weeks ahead.
The Media Office of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) candidate, Peter Obi, in his own case, released statements challenging the electorate to look past superficial slogans, presenting their platform as an accountable alternative focused on public welfare.
Key regional strongholds like Kano State are also witnessing intense pre-election realignments and mini-rallies as major opposition figures and local governors realign their loyalties ahead of the January 16 presidential poll battle.
The political landscape promises to be quite rumbustious in the weeks and months ahead as the presidential candidates crisscross the land selling themselves and their parties to the electorate. This is one of the finest tenets of democracy.
However, going by antecedents, the campaigns are portentous of combustible tendencies capacity of rendering this beautiful democratic ritual, in which political actors get off their high horse to court the people, nugatory.
It is, therefore, imperative to avoid the 2023 scenario in which the elections, especially at the presidential level, were prosecuted like a war. The polls, before, during and after, were punctuated by an unprecedented orgy of slugfest and pettish inclinations both online and offline.
Supporters of a particular presidential candidate, who incidentally is running again, crossed the Rubicon many times, causing anxious moments, in their desperation to have their principal win at all cost.
Of course, there were excesses in the camps of some of the other candidates too, but theirs were milder compared to the monstrous insobriety displayed by the particular candidate’s band of unruly supporters.
The degree of their outpouring of invectives, vitriols and incendiary rhetorics in the name of protesting the outcome of the 2023 election, even while the judiciary was still adjucating, was rather ludicrous and outlandish.
Their bestial displays went beyond merely exercising their rights of protest in a democracy, as allowed within the confines of the law. Theirs assumed a life of its own, as a perilous binge tending towards the rule of the jungle. The nation was actually inches away from plunging into the sludge and outright anarchy!
Such deleterious behaviours should never be allowed to repeat themselves as our democracy matures. The relatively free and fair Osun governorship poll is a pointer to the hope that the system will continue to sanitize itself as we grow with it.
We, therefore, admonish all our presidential candidates and other political actors across all the parties to avoid hate speech or character assassination and pull-him-down desperation such as witnessed in 2023. Let them maintain peaceful, persuasive and issue-based engagements rather than resorting to inflammatory rhetorics.
Politics is like any other game, in a broad sense, which demands the exercise of the spirit of sportsmanship, in a civil and decorous setting shorn of beastly passions. So, naturally submitting to a game is willy-nilly submitting to its rules as well.
Mercifully, political parties and presidential and National Assembly candidates last Tuesday signed the first National Peace Accord on issue-based campaigns ahead of the 2027 general elections. They pledged to shun violence, hate speech, misinformation, personal attacks and other conduct capable of undermining the electoral process.
The accord, according to reports, was signed in Abuja at a ceremony organised by the Gen. Abdulasami Abubakar-led National Peace Committee, in partnership with The Kukah Centre, 24 hours to the statutory commencement of public campaigns and rallies for the elections.
Those who signed the accord included President Bola Tinubu, represented by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Senator George Akume; the NDC presidential candidate, Peter Obi; the Social Democratic Party (SDP) candidate, Adewole Adebayo and his African Action Congress (AAC) counterpart, Omoyele Sowore.
Other participants in the accord signing included the APC National Chairman, Prof. Nentawe Yilwatda; the presidential candidates of the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) and Labour Party (LP), Donald Duke and Chibuzor Okereke. Others were the Deputy President of the Senate, Barau Jibrin; the PRP National Chairman, Hakeem Baba-Ahmed; federal and state lawmakers, party leaders and other candidates.
But the ADC presidential candidate, Atiku, and that of Allied Peoples Movement (APM) and current Oyo State Governor, Seyi Makinde, stayed away from the event; neither were they represented. This is rather curious. Nigerians should demand explanations and a commitment to peace from them.
All the political actors should be faithful to the peace deal they signed. In the words of former President Goodluck Jonathan, no political ambition is worth the blood of any Nigerian. Let every political actor play by the rules of the political game and save our dear nation needless tension, rancour and bloodshed.
