The Opposition Wants Nigeria’s Presidency. It Must Explain What It Will Do With It
There comes a point in every presidential campaign when opposition stops being a platform and becomes a passive reliance on the incumbent’s failures. Identifying the hardship of the present hour requires no vision; explaining how to govern past it requires a blueprint.
Nigeria has reached that threshold.
The failures of the Tinubu administration are neither subtle nor difficult to catalogue. Food inflation, transport overheads and energy costs continue to exert pressure on family incomes. The naira’s historic market adjustment has altered the basic calculus of small-business survival. Across vast parts of the country, persistent insecurity remains an oppressive brake on agriculture and commerce. Nigerians have legitimate, urgent questions about public debt, taxation, grid stability, youth employment and whether the promised dividends of economic shock therapy will ever reach ordinary homes.
The opposition is entitled, and indeed duty-bound, to prosecute that record vigorously.
But the 2027 presidential election cannot be reduced to a national catalogue of everything that is wrong with Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s government. Removing a government is merely an electoral act, governing a nation of more than 200 million people within severe fiscal constraints is something else entirely.
The people asking Nigerians to replace the driver must show that they have thought through how to repair the vehicle.
The Independent National Electoral Commission has published the final list of 18 presidential candidates for the January 16, 2027 election. They do not propose the same Nigeria. That is precisely why this election must transcend personality clashes and opposition grievances and undergo a rigorous policy audit.
Atiku Abubakar’s ADC presents a platform rooted in structural federalism and institutional reform, alongside a proposal for a transparent, audited production subsidy on domestically refined petroleum products. That is a concrete policy proposition. But it must survive concrete policy questions. What is the hard ceiling on this expenditure? How will the state prevent the new regime from morphing into another vehicle for regulatory capture? If domestic refining output experiences operational downtime, what fiscal mechanism cushions the shock? How will Nigerians know that the subsidy is reaching consumers rather than simply increasing margins along the production chain?
Peter Obi’s NDC promises a production-driven economy, with emphasis on agriculture, industrialisation, exports and infrastructure, while he has said he would retain the floating exchange-rate framework and seek to strengthen the naira through higher productivity. But building export-oriented industrial capacity takes time: years spent upgrading port logistics, expanding transmission capacity, improving commercial agriculture and creating an environment in which businesses can invest with confidence. How does an Obi administration buffer low-income households against currency volatility during that transition? Which three industrial sectors receive immediate capital allocation, and what spending gets deferred to finance them?
Seyi Makinde of the APM and Adewole Adebayo of the SDP have offered structured frameworks built around delivery missions, lead institutions and, in Adebayo’s case, quarterly performance tracking. Their challenge is operational. How will their agendas survive contact with a federal civil service that has historically frustrated structural reform? What is their explicit strategy for negotiating constitutional devolution through a contentious National Assembly? Which responsibilities should move closer to states and local governments, and how will those governments be made accountable for delivering them?
Omoyele Sowore’s AAC platform offers expansive social guarantees, including a ₦500,000 minimum living wage, public housing and universal free education. The response to such promises must be arithmetic rather than emotional. What is the total cost on the national balance sheet? Which tax categories will be raised? Which expenditure will be cut? What happens when projected revenues fall short? How will a large nominal increase in wages be protected from being swallowed by inflation?
These are not hostile questions. They are governing questions.
The demand for clarity does not apply to the opposition alone.
President Bola Tinubu cannot campaign as though Nigerians owe his administration a second term simply because reforms are painful or necessary. The administration’s economic framework and its programmes for health, education, social protection, food security and infrastructure must be defended with hard metrics.
The incumbent faces an equally demanding burden: account clearly for where public funds and fiscal space created by subsidy removal and foreign-exchange reforms have been deployed, down to verifiable outputs. Acknowledge where implementation gaps occurred in food security initiatives and grid stabilisation, and provide a compelling, data-backed explanation of why another four years under the current trajectory would produce structural stability rather than prolonged distress.
The opposition does not have a monopoly on the burden of explanation. Neither does the incumbent.
Campaign rhetoric often assumes that winning an election resets state capacity. It does not.
On the morning after inauguration, Nigeria’s next president—whether incumbent or challenger—will inherit the same Constitution, the same institutional friction between federal, state and local governments, the same civil-service bureaucracy, the same legacy debt obligations and many of the same infrastructure deficits. They will confront the same power-transmission bottlenecks, port inefficiencies, porous borders and millions of young Nigerians requiring immediate, high-productivity employment in a capital-constrained economy.
Changing political leadership does not automatically fix the state’s structural mechanics. If the opposition campaigns as if swapping the driver repairs the transmission, it sets the country up for another cycle of post-election disillusionment.
This is why Nigerian voters, civic organisations and debate moderators should subject every candidate to the same simple governing audit.
First, demand the price tag and the financing mechanism. What does each major promise cost, and which specific revenue stream or expenditure cut pays for it?
Second, demand an implementation timeline. What is delivered within the first 100 days? What requires legislation? What requires constitutional amendment? What will take the full four-year term?
Third, interrogate the institutional machinery. Which specific ministry, department or agency is held accountable for delivery, and how will it be reformed to execute?
Fourth, demand a contingency plan. What happens to the plan if global oil prices slump, foreign investment slows, exchange-rate pressures return or revenue projections fail?
There should be one more question: what will you stop doing?
No government has unlimited money, administrative capacity or political attention. Everymo. serious governing programme therefore involves choices. If a candidate promises more spending on education, power, healthcare, security, infrastructure, housing and wages simultaneously, Nigerians should ask what gets postponed, what gets reduced and what gets redesigned to make the numbers work.
That is what a presidential manifesto should be: not a catalogue of aspirations, but a governing contract capable of surviving contact with arithmetic, institutions and reality.
Nigeria cannot afford an election cycle spent trapped between accusation and defence where one side lists grievances while the other pleads for patience.
The country has heard enough reasons why the incumbent should lose, and enough reasons why he should stay. What the Nigerian people deserve now is something more demanding: a complete, transparent and mathematically grounded account of what everyone asking to lead intends to do with the Federal Republic.
Tell us your plan.
Show us your balance sheet.
Name your delivery machinery.
And tell us what happens when the numbers change.
Stop campaigning against the incumbent, and start explaining how you intend to govern Nigeria.
Stephanie Shaakaa shaakaastephanie02@gmail.com
08034861434
