Earlier than the Impartial Nationwide Electoral Fee introduced that it was but to launch the 207 Normal Elections Timetable, the often undisciplined Nigerian political class had already commenced electioneering campaigns in lots of guises.
On January 2, 2025, INEC ‘clearly’ “refuted the stories circulating in some social media quarters claiming that it had launched the timetable and schedule of actions for the 2027 common election” for elective places of work of each federal and state governments.
“AMERICA’S PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP ONCE FAMOUSLY SAID IN A BOOK THAT “BAD PUBLICITY IS SOMETIMES BETTER THAN NO PUBLICITY AT ALL.”IN THIS DEPARTMENT OF HUGGING MEDIA HEADLINES, GOOD OR BAD, NIGERIAN POLITICIANS ARE NOT DOING TOO BADLY.”
However two days in the past, INEC introduced that the election processes will start with Steady Voter Registrations ranging from April 2026 and ending in January 2027; occasion primaries starting from July 1 to September 30, 2026; and the submission of candidates’ lists to INEC in October 2026.
The presidential and Nationwide Meeting campaigns will kick off from November 18, 2026 and finish February 19, 2027, whereas elections into these places of work needs to be held February 20, 2027.
Different actions will happen after that, though INEC is contemplating shifting the final elections to November 2026, if the Electoral Act might be amended.
The primary unlawful electioneering strikes have been the serial unprincipled defections from one political occasion to a different.
It began as an ebb that ultimately grew to become a tidal wave.
Some, nonetheless, argue that the storm that began quickly after the swearing in of Governor Siminilaye Fubara of Rivers State was the set off.
They are saying that the acrimony between political godson, Fubara, and his political godfather, Nyesom Wike, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, and erstwhile Governor of Rivers State, commenced the political posturing of the 2027 common election.
President Bola Tinubu, Wike and Fubara squeezed political publicity out of the “gbon’misi, omi o to,” or unsettled political scores, although it led to the six-month suspension of Governor Fubara, his deputy, Prof. Ngozi Odu, and members of Rivers State Home of Meeting.
Ultimately, all those that have been suspended underneath the State of Emergency provisions of the Nigerian Structure have been reinstated, and a few members of the Home of Meeting defected to the ruling All Progressives Congress political occasion, earlier than Fubara and his deputy joined them.
Although everybody thought that was the tip of the hostilities, it was to not be.
Quickly after the defections, Wike, who had vowed by no means to defect from the most important opposition occasion, Individuals’s Democratic Social gathering, to the APC, started a “pseudo” political rally, which he and his staff tagged as a “Thanks tour”.
No sooner had he concluded the tour than members of Rivers State Home of Meeting resumed their notorious bid to invoke Part 188 of the Nigerian Structure, with its elastic Sub-section 2b, to question Fubara and his deputy, Odu.
The 4 members of the Home who hitherto rejected the impeachment concept circled to hitch their colleagues to endorse the transfer to question them.
Clearly, the “Thank You Tour” of rabblerouser Wike awoke the ghost of his political construction, the human storm that blindly carries out his bidding, to rattle Fubara out of the sense of safety that he assumed after becoming a member of the APC.
Earlier than the impeachment doc bought to the Chief Decide of Rivers State, Justice Simeon Amadi, a Rivers State Excessive Court docket, sitting in Oyibo Native Authorities Space, had issued an interim order restraining him from receiving, forwarding, contemplating or performing on the request, decision, or articles of impeachment from Rivers State Home of Meeting.
However the Chairman of the Rivers State Committee on Petitions, Data and Complaints, Dr Enemi George, instantly introduced that the Chief Decide had miraculously been served and will quickly arrange the seven-man committee to probe allegations of gross misconduct levelled towards Governor Fubara and his deputy.
By the best way, an interim injunction is a short-term court docket order often lasting between seven and 14 days, after which the court docket decides if the injunction needs to be prolonged or develop into interlocutory, which preserves the established order to forestall irreparable harm till the ultimate judgment is made.
This digression to the problems that plague the politics of Rivers State solely goes to indicate the harmful extent to which Nigerian politicians may go, simply to curry the eye of the media that may, in flip, assure the eye of the voters, the victims who’re really bystanders within the electoral course of.
After receiving the demeaning polythene bag of rice and money, which may solely purchase insignificant thrills from the politicians, the one contribution that the voters is predicted to make is the meek acceptance of the contrived figures which can be assigned to essentially the most “related” politicians on the vote collation centres.
Each Nigerian who’s sufficiently old is aware of that votes do probably not quantity to something in Nigeria.
Different alternatives that Nigerian politicians discover to stay within the consciousness of Nigerian residents are to attend weddings, funerals, birthdays, the launching of books that often include horse manure at greatest, and any alternative for a photo-op.
These occasions are deftly timed and introduced with the best fanfare to tell their political rivals and the voters that they’re out there to contest elective positions, and failing that, they will settle for political crumps, the same old appointments as ministers, commissioners, board members and ambassadors.
America’s President Donald Trump as soon as famously stated in a e-book that “Unhealthy publicity is typically higher than no publicity in any respect.”
On this division of hugging media headlines, good or unhealthy, Nigerian politicians aren’t doing too badly.
That’s most likely why some observers argue that Nigerian politicians may even commit crimes whereas in public workplace, in order that they will appeal to the eye of the media via {Economic} and {Financial} Crimes Fee and the Impartial Corrupt Practices Fee arrests.
This permits them to acquire free publicity on the quilt pages of main nationwide newspapers, in addition to prime-time information bulletins, dialogue programmes, and mentions on nationwide and worldwide tv and radio stations.
Additionally, the web, or social media, that by no means sleeps and by no means forgets, showcases them, warts and all, repeatedly for greater than “25 hours out of eight days of each week”.
Those that argue that there’s an data explosion on Nigeria’s social media are appropriate.
Nigerian politicians perennially stage state seize nearly with out the intention to ship the anticipated dividends of democracy to the residents, who wait in useless for nearly their lifetimes for electoral guarantees which can be said in lofty manifestos nearly by no means manifest.
Maybe this era of Fourth Republic politicians must be reminded that Nigerians do probably not want greater than meals, clothes, shelter, transportation, leisure and a bit luxurious that may make them comfortable and never lose their psychological well being.
And that, what the politicians need to do to attain these little considerations doesn’t transcend offering primary enablers, like safety, applicable macroeconomic, financial and financial insurance policies, infrastructure, like roads, railways, air and sea ports, electrical energy, petroleum refineries, and social companies, like instructional and healthcare supply programs.
This memo is for the politicians who shall be searching for elective places of work as president, vp, governor, deputy governor and legislators on the federal and state ranges and those that shall be appointed to the vital ministerial portfolios of finance, finances, nationwide planning, trade, petroleum, electrical energy and transportation.
And, of a fact, these deliverables are inside the sources of the nation.