It was in 2013/14, weaker political parties hitherto confined to few localities fused together to birth what came to be known as All Progressives Congress (APC). Their primary objective was to wrest power from the strongest party in power, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) but lacking the pre-requisite knowledge and experience on how to manage power to justify the merger for the seizure of power. It was an exercise spiced with greed and negative consequences on Nigeria’s progress and human development.
APC has spent over 10 years as of May 29, 2025 on the saddle of power with virtually nothing to show other than escalated insecurity, rising poverty and marginalization of other components of the federation in governance.
Nigeria, a beloved country with tremendous endowments and abundant resources, is sadly passing through the worst turbulent times of its history, courtesy of the cluelessness of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) that sprouted in the political space with a baggage of greed and selfish interest.
Like a dying patient, Nigeria is struggling with deployed vigor for survival after it had been injected with the deadly vaccine of bad governance by APC quack political doctors, who are incapable, inexperienced, and extremely insincere in diagnosing the symptoms, let alone the deadly infection.
The laughable thing is their usual demonstration of confidence, pomposity, crudity, primitiveness and very notorious insistence on being the craftiest creation as the condition deteriorates further with a claimed Renewed Hope Agenda under an ailing president!
2023 general elections, was like a clinical operation in a democratic theatre for the convalescence of Nigeria or otherwise. Twisted emotions of hopes and fears are already and consistently hiked unabated as the day of 2027 political reckoning gathers momentum to finalize who will be the outstanding political therapists to recover and reposition the ailing nation appropriately.
The attractive stage we are about to observe must ensure eroding the scams of those who mix morality with factual lies and wrongful truths to attain the status of political lords.
It is this judgment day that is putting many politicians asunder and the electorates watching with rapt attention and keen interest to reject their tormentors, deceivers and disappoint looters and thieves that destroyed the economy for personal advantage just within 10 years of claimed Change and Renewed Hope.
It is this golden opportunity that the electorates ought to manipulate and assert their arrogance, kingship, and real power to bestow on Nigeria the journey to a fresh, secure, and healthy living.
It is the right time to discontinue paying political subsidy to those politicians, who are not passionate to subsidize our lives through selfless services for which they are mandated and will be accountable to both their creator and the people. It is the material time to save the next generations the dooms and ruins of poor elections and selection of looting leaders.
We would have to be influenced by the mere realistic word ‘select’ instead of ‘choose’ in matters of elections because the former is politically indispensable owing to the fact that it is more discerning, while the latter is contextually dormant and too mild that cannot invoke the required political spirit of thoughts and scrutiny.
In the busy election era and process, voters should cunningly select between rewriting a new history for the country and consolidating on the eerie and shocking narrative of the APC era.
In summing the protracted dooms, our dysfunctional systems that have inflicted untold hardships on the masses are the products of mainly corruption and un-jingoism perpetuated with impunity overtly by the reactionary pundits in power.
The fierce assault on these mechanisms has resulted in institutional collapse, consummate decomposition of national development, and the country has inevitably been rendered the republic of mass insecurity, mass poverty, mass dislocations, and mass destruction.
And the eventual remnant of this is the evolution of two distinct nations within the same polity. But a country of two conflicting nations is not feasible and unfit for consistent sustenance.
We must fight those who facilitate and condone inimical disparities between the secured and the unsecured; between ubiquitous deprivation and conspicuous ostentation; between juggernaut political classes conquering national vision and a systematic and overwhelming assail of the wretched of democracy.
We must sack the political country where nothing is functioning 24/7 and respected except corruption, the only kingmaker that has remained unconquerable in Nigeria, the long-time evil of the land, albeit a loyal ally of Nigerian leaders. Who will not often find it unbelievable that we will stand on this despicable position for this long?
Against this backdrop therefore, 2027 election will be the mother of all elections in the history of polls in the country for reasons best known to Nigerians thrown into second slavery unconsciously by their looting leaders.
The country is yearning a paradigm shift from adversity to prosperity. Its people, for the first time, are fervently praying for the defeat of APC and replaced with good leaders regardless of party affiliation.
It is also a sign of protest that ethno-religious and regional dichotomies will never be catalysts for voting behavior again. The core North that voted massively for APC, has learnt a bitter lesson from the Tinubu Muslim-Muslim ticket governing style of marginalization and pauperization of the region. One has to salute those voters who from the onset rejected the deceitful mechanism of a Muslim-Muslim ticket with genuine reasons. They had a good vision blended with patriotism that guided them in voting the right candidate for the presidency, Atiku Abubakar of the PDP. If not for the judicial robbery of his victory, Wazirin Adamawa could have been the sitting president, and Nigeria could have been better-off than enmeshed in the mess it has found itself today.
Majority of the electorate are now more conversant, wiser and will outrightly denounce the syndrome of ‘stomach infrastructure’ and appointment seeking despite the prevailing circumstance.
It will also be to the credit of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) that an improved technological device for curtailing rigging is to be operated to enhance election validity. If that is not put in place, there may be bloodshed, for oppositions are prepared more than ever to resist any rigging mechanism that may be deployed by the rattled APC.
But on the other hand, there are elated fears of rising insecurity which may hamper the smooth conduct of the elections in several parts of the country most especially in parts of Abia, Imo, Ebonyi, Zamfara, Niger, Benue, Kebbi, Rivers, and possibly Plateau.
Notwithstanding, Nigerians are determined to resist rigging under any claim. Where elections are not conducted, there should be no results, but once fake results are declared in favor of any candidate, Somalia’s situation would be a child’s play.
Despite the harsh economic situation and its after effect on the polity, there is the danger of vote buying by unscrupulous and nasty politicians who hate the survival of Nigeria in a genuine democracy. There will be a demonstration of public apathy by some of the electorates as their yearnings and aspirations have been decimated.
As usual, the menace of political thugs and their compromised security agents on the payroll of nasty politicians will not be a foregone conclusion.
For instance, in Bauchi State, the Sen. Bala Muhammed led administration has witnessed the highest climax of character defamation, abuse of privilege and breach of security by those desperate to access power without an action plan for the good of the state or what power entails other than greed amongst the opposing sides.
Some of those masquerading as gubernatorial candidates in Bauchi State as of today if carefully examined are not more than undertakers on a deadly mission against the ongoing steady progress of the state.
I most humbly find it extremely difficult to understand the political value of character assassination, trading in lies and breach of the peace by opposition parties in Bauchi and Plateau States just to access power for end abuse. APC wasted eight years in Plateau State masquerading as the ruling party without tangible results other than a mockery of service under the guise of restoration of peace. Lalong exited power as a fulfilled undertaker who underdeveloped the state and left it in ruins only to be awarded a senatorial seat by the Court of Appeal after a glaring defeat at the poll.
Lest I forget, Wase local government in Plateau State has the largest land mass in the entire state and with All Progressives Congress (APC) then in control of the local government council administration. Despite that, the voting pattern of the majority favored Lalong for governor in 2015 and repeated in 2019 for his second term with expectation of performance from majority voters.
But surprisingly, for the eight years of the Lalong administration, Wase was treated as a valueless abandoned entity without a single project or state-sponsored economic empowerment, other than being left to cast their votes for APC in all elections, typical of robots.
As if APC supporters in Wase were conquered slaves, not conscious of the glaring abandonment to fate and marginalization by Lalong, they still massively voted Lalong for senate in 2023 for continuation of their ‘admired’ retrogression. While his ancestral home of Shendam was rejecting him at the poll, Wase APC supporters were sheepishly cuing behind him for only God Knows signifying the high level of docility and unconsciousness. Fortunately enough, the remaining highly conscious voters in the other local governments of the senatorial zone, gave Lalong a sitting governor a bloody nose. He was defeated hands down by the PDP candidate. What a pity!
It is also a season of the usual and newly recruited merchants of ethno-religious chauvinism as they have long started deploying their deadly weapons of ethnicity and faith destructions that the 2027 elections will be a referendum between Muslims and Christians, North and South to establish numerical power and so on and so forth.
The coming polls can rightly be defined in terms of what the nation deserves and what certain aspiring politicians do not deserve in connection with power and its misuse. Just imagine, a whole retired Nigeria’s Chief of Air Staff descending so low to be a gubernatorial candidate in 2023? What did he want to achieve in governing a state he failed to achieve in the Nigeria Air Force and what were his contributions to the development of the state he, desperately wanted to govern? This was a clear case of wonders shall never end!
As of this moment, in Bauchi State, the APC as the main opposition party, has a long list of gubernatorial aspirants and day-dreamers that include; Amb. Yusuf Maitama Tugga, Senator Shehu Buba Umar, Nura Manu-soro, Dr Musa Babayo and few others while the ruling party, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), parades titans like Sen. Abdul Ahmed Ningi, Yakubu Adamu, Mahmood Baba Ma’aji and possibly Usman Adamu Sufee while the new bride in town, African Democratic Congress (ADC) for now, has Air Marshal Sadeeq Baba Abubakar (rtd) and former Sen. Halliru Dauda Jika.
This paradoxical hypothesis best suits the general atmosphere of the elections vis-à-vis the rapid drifting of the country to an unknown destination if caution and decorum are not applied.
If the country’s tomorrow is worth preserving and revering, then the coming elections will be a political bulldozer to wreck enormous havocs on the enemies of progress masquerading as politicians and their comrades in syndicate in the thieving business while pretending to be God fearing.
If on the other hand, the country is again surrendered to the politically unfit and rogues as we have today, there will definitely be a more complicated ailment and the nation’s chance of survival cannot be guaranteed.
By historical re-visitation to generate great lessons therefore, the coming elections will be a trial of political errors of the past to eschew the mistakes of tomorrow on the part of the voters. It is often said that machines never make mistakes, but the make errors.
This is succinctly modeled in the sense that voters should not be liable to committing mistakes that they will regret forever and persecuted if they allow the ghost of today’s errors to reincarnate, horrify and rob their constructive voting idiosyncrasy in the 2027 elections.
Notwithstanding the encroaching agencies of hopes and fears on our political space, 2027 elections stand as the rebirth year of Nigeria through patriotic utilization of votes by the electorates. Once offered any financial inducement or Greek gift by contesting candidates, the option is to accept without appreciation and vote for the right candidate with the quality to serve not to be served. It will be the most ideal time to repay those who abandoned you in their own coin. Reject their calls and have your peace. Yours was ignored when they were busy sharing the loot or begging for contracts and bowing before Tinubu for snapshots to perfect deceit of closeness to the president. And so what if you are close to Tinubu? Will that foolery change anything? Will it bring food to empty table of the shortchanged electorates? We cannot be fooled by our fools!
Voting APC out of power at all levels shall restore the fading glory of Nigeria and a brighter future for Nigerians guaranteed and assured! I Come in Peace!
Muhammad is a Commentator on National Issues
