I have just come across what I would like to call the most generous possible projection for Atiku Abubakar in the 2027 presidential election, and it comes from no less a person than his own campaign spokesperson, Kenneth Okonkwo. It is a projection that represents the absolute best-case scenario that Atiku can hardly surpass in real life, and it deserves a serious dissection not for emotions or fantasy, but for clarity and insight rooted in political reality.
The analysis was reported on Monday, September 15, 2026 by Gistmate Media, quoting Kenneth Okonkwo, spokesperson for the Atiku Abubakar presidential campaign under the African Democratic Congress (ADC), speaking on AIT’s Democracy Today.
According to Okonkwo, the 19 states of the North have fallen for ADC, settled, and beyond that Atiku will take three states in the South-West, namely, Osun, Ondo and Ogun, leveraging the fact that they won Osun in 2023 and the internal crises within the APC in Ondo and Ogun.
For the South-South, he projects more than two states and at least 25 percent in all South-South states, hinging this on the expectation that Atiku’s running mate has emerged from the region.
The justification he offers is the growing dissatisfaction with President Bola Tinubu’s economic policies, symbolized by the painful contrast of a N70,000 minimum wage against fuel at nearly N1,500 per litre, and he even argues that Tinubu lacks sufficient popularity in Lagos, his traditional stronghold.
It is a bold, thrilling, and politically seductive projection, but the central question remains, even if this generous prophecy comes true, does it automatically translate to victory?
This is where the flaw in Okonkwo’s logic becomes fascinating. He counted states won, but Nigerian electoral law, as enshrined in Section 134 of the 1999 Constitution, counts something far more brutal: total votes and national spread.
Political scientists call this the problem of vote efficiency, a concept brilliantly explored by scholars like Gary Cox and Matthew Shugart, where winning many states narrowly can be less valuable than coming second everywhere handsomely. It is what American strategists call the “Second Place Everywhere Strategy,” and it is exactly how a candidate who wins zero states can still win the presidency in popular vote terms.
To understand this, let us ground ourselves in real figures. According to INEC’s final register for 2023, Nigeria has 93,469,008 voters, with the 19 Northern states holding about 50.1 million, comprising North-West at 22.27 million, North-East at 12.54 million and North-Central at 15.36 million, while South-West has 17.95 million, South-South 14.44 million, South-East 10.9 million and the FCT 1.57 million.
Now, let us grant Okonkwo his scenario in full. Imagine Atiku sweeps all 19 Northern states, Tinubu comes second in all 19 Northern states and also second in the six South-West states, and Peter Obi sweeps the remaining 11 states in the South-East, South-South and parts of South-West including the FCT, with Tinubu again coming second in all of Obi’s strongholds.
If we apply a realistic 70 percent turnout and, crucially, give each winner only a narrow victory while Tinubu retains a high second-place share, the mathematics becomes intriguing and even counter-intuitive. In the 19 Northern states with about 35 million votes cast, Atiku gets 42 percent which is 14.7 million, Tinubu gets 38 percent which is 13.3 million, and Obi gets 20 percent which is 7 million.
In the South-West with 12 million votes, Obi takes 45 percent at 5.4 million, Tinubu takes 38 percent at 4.56 million, and Atiku takes 17 percent at 2.04 million. In the South-East with 8 million votes, Obi dominates with 55 percent at 4.4 million, Tinubu manages 30 percent at 2.4 million, and Atiku gets 15 percent at 1.2 million. In the South-South with 10 million votes, Obi gets 50 percent at 5 million, Tinubu gets 32 percent at 3.2 million, and Atiku gets 18 percent at 1.8 million. In the FCT with one million votes, Obi gets 45 percent at 450,000,
Tinubu gets 35 percent at 350,000, and Atiku gets 20 percent at 200,000. When you add this up, a thrilling paradox emerges: Atiku wins the most states with 19 and Okonkwo is technically correct, but Tinubu wins the popular vote with 23.81 million against Obi’s 22.25 million and Atiku’s 19.94 million.
The theoretical explanation for this lies in the concept of wasted votes, as elaborated by political scientist Richard Hofstadter and applied to Nigerian federalism by Larry Diamond. Atiku and Obi pile up votes in landslides where they have already won, while Tinubu harvests a consistent 30 to 38 percent everywhere, making his votes far more efficient. This validates Donald Horowitz’s theory of ethnic voting in divided societies, where a candidate with cross-regional acceptability, even without regional dominance, can outperform regional champions. The constitutional requirement makes this even more fatal.
To be declared winner, a candidate needs the highest number of votes and at least 25 percent in two-thirds of the 36 states, that is 24 states. In our hypothetical projection, Tinubu scores 30 to 38 percent in all 37 entities, easily clearing 24 states, while Atiku fails to get 25 percent in the South-East and South-South and Obi fails to get 25 percent in most of the far North. Under this exact Okonkwo projection, Tinubu can still be returned as President despite winning zero states outright on first count, precisely because his defeat is narrow everywhere.
History offers us a more generous mirror for Atiku than even Okonkwo imagined, and that mirror is Muhammadu Buhari in 2011. This is critical because the structural conditions are identical, a point scholars of comparative party systems like Kenneth Greene would appreciate.
In 2011, Buhari had no sitting governor, had just formed a new platform, the CPC, much like the ADC today, and was extremely popular in the North, arguably more than any politician in modern Nigerian history. Yet what happened?
2011 remains Buhari’s best performance before his 2015 victory. Goodluck Jonathan of the PDP polled 22,495,187 votes representing 58.87 percent and won 23 states plus the FCT, while Buhari polled 12,214,853 votes representing 31.97 percent and won 12 states, and Nuhu Ribadu of the ACN polled 2,079,151 votes representing 5.44 percent and won only Osun State, out of 73.5 million registered voters with 53.68 percent turnout. That 31.97 percent was far better than his 2003 and 2007 performances of about 6.6 million votes each.
But the geographical distribution of those 12 states reveals the trap that awaits any Northern-centric candidacy, a trap Richard Joseph described in his prebendal politics framework as the limits of sectional hegemony. All 12 states Buhari won were in the North and he won zero in the South.
He won total dominance in the North-West, taking all seven states of Kano, Kaduna, Katsina, Zamfara, Sokoto, Kebbi and Jigawa, often with 60 to 80 percent, he won four of six in the North-East, namely Borno, Yobe, Bauchi and Gombe while losing Adamawa and Taraba to Jonathan, and he won only one state in the North-Central, Niger State, losing Kwara, Kogi, Benue, Plateau, Nasarawa and the FCT. In the South-West he lost all six, with less than five percent in most states, in the South-South he polled between 0.3 and 3 percent, for instance 0.31 percent in Bayelsa where Jonathan got 98.96 percent, and in the South-East he polled between 0.5 and 2 percent, less than one percent in Imo and Anambra. Why did he lose despite 12 states? Because he secured 25 percent in only 16 states, failing in 21 states including all 17 Southern states, while Jonathan secured 25 percent in 32 states.
Research by INEC and election observers like the Centre for Democracy and Development has consistently shown that in Nigeria, spread beats concentration.
In 2015 Buhari corrected this exact flaw by keeping his 12 Northern states and adding all six South-West states through his alliance with Tinubu and the ACN, which gave him both majority and spread. The lesson for Atiku’s ADC project is therefore fascinating and sobering at once.
Even if we gift him the most generous outcome ever imagined, a clean sweep of 19 Northern states plus three South-West states, if his margins in the North are modest and he suffers heavy second-place losses in the South, a candidate who is second everywhere can still emerge with the highest national vote and the most constitutionally compliant spread. That candidate, in our current reality, is Bola Tinubu. Okonkwo’s projection may win the map, but Nigerian presidency is not won by map, it is won by arithmetic.
*Bagudu Mohammed* is the founder of Alternative Perspectives, a widely read commentary platform on social media, and writes a weekly newspaper column published every Monday on the back page of People’s Daily.Web: https://alternativeperspective.onrender.com
Email: bagudumohammed15197@gmail.com | Phone: 0703 494 3575
