ADC and NDC are a mockery of opposition politics in Nigeria. Imagine, Governor Adeleke left the PDP, wanted to join the APC, was almost in until he was turned down locally. Yet, he left the PDP, saw ADC, NDC, SDP etc, ignored them all and chose Accord.Won election, and thanked President Tinubu, repeating his prior endorsement. Yet, the unthinking opposition is still eyeing him; calling that politics, Nigerians.

This, in case they don’t know, is the very definition of inferiority complex, low self-esteem and hopelessness in one’s own future” – Quoted, mutatis mutandis, from a trending WhatsApp post.

Going by INEC’s calendar, campaigns for the 2027 presidential election started 19 August, 2026 but in the Nigerian reality, especially in the case of Atiku Abubakar, they began the day after the 2023 results were announced.

There is, however, a significant difference.

This is the first Presidential election after Tinubu’s “revolutionary reforms”, especially, the stoppage of fuel subsidy and unification of a myriad of multiple exchange rates.

These came with the not unexpected initial teething problems even after FAAC allocations had tripled; food prices and cost of living in general, rose astronomically. Jobs became scarce just as trust in the government waned, no matter the gargantuan progress being made in the macro-economic sector of the economy.

The singsong of the opposition parties since then has been to deliberately turn a blind eye to all the progress being made by government and, pretending to be speaking on behalf of the masses lie, obfuscate and exaggerate the pains people are going through. Let me cite just two examples of their lies.

In the run up to the 2023 Presidential election, all the candidates of the three major political parties – the ruling APC, PDP and Labour, promised to stop fuel subsidy immediately, with the Labour Party Presidential party candidate, Peter Obi going a notch further when he famously described the “fuel subsidy as an “organized crime” and a “bloated scam,” in which official daily fuel consumption figures had been heavily inflated to drain public funds”. In like manner, Rufai Oseni , a TV anchor with Arise TV, and closet Peter Obi supporter, who had in 2023 superfluously praised whichever of the Presidential candidates would stop fuel subsidy, dubbing him the greatest lover of the Nigerian masses, suddenly turned coat, and became one of, if not the staunchest, critic of President Tinubu, particularly, for removing the selfsame fuel subsidy.

That is exactly how the Nigerian opposition have chosen to see the myriad problems confronting Nigeria choosing, instead, personal attacks of the President over, and above, telling Nigerians what they would do differently to change the country’s economic trajectory.

So the question now is not who is running, as we already know their names as well as their pedigree, Pandora papers, inclusive.

Rather, the relevant question now is: What do Nigerians realistically expect to hear from the candidates on the 2027 Presidential election campaigns which have now effectively began? They are certainly not the recycled lies of yesteryears or some wooly promises that may sound fascinating on a rally stage but, in essence, mean nothing.

This time around, Nigerians want commitments – promises that are not only credible, believable and measurable – on all of which Nigerians will hold each of them accountable. These are the only premised majority of the people will select the candidate, and party, to vote for.

Nigerians must have their unalterable words on issues like the following.

Food prices and the high cost of living, in general, has been the number one issue in most Nigerian households in 2026 as prices of rice, beans, yam and other staple food items have gone through the roofs, given the prohibitive transportation costs.

Nigerians are used to hearing politicians talk glibly about food security and developing Agriculture but now they expect specifics: things like:

“my government will bring a minimum of 1 million hectares of land under irrigation within a given timeline, beginning from so and so states and such will be spread over the entire country. Regarding the development of Agriculture, my government will subsidize fertilizer and lease tractors to a minimum of so many small holder farmers, using their BVN and NIN, and not through any middleman, no matter how big or influential”. Continuing, “we shall ban hoarding and build, at least, 6 zonal food reserves, one in each zone, before the next rains”.

Nobody will vote you on the basis of vague promises like we will mechanise agriculture.

Nigerians must be told, in plain terms, how soon to expect substantial reductions in the prices of staple foods. They must equally tell us what their specific plans are for the country in their first 100 days?

Granted they are not God but they should be able to do these things via certain parameters which their preparations should have confirmed because our collective mandate, this time around, must be won through hard work and trust.

On Jobs, They must

Itemise how exactly they intend to create jobs for our bulging youth population, amongst them, millions of University graduates who are currently jobless.

Since nobody expects all of them to go into public service, a serious candidate must tell Nigerians how he intends to encourage, and develop the private sector. Nigerian youths are increasingly been drawn into the digital ecosystem.

So our prospective president should tell Nigerians how many kilometres of fiber optic cable he would have lain, country- wide, by the end of his second year in office as well as let us know how he will make cost of data affordable by all, while not forgetting startups. These sure-footed promises will trend for weeks among our youth and may guarantee his victory.

What Nigerians will expect to hear, therefore, is the candidate’s plans for increasing private-sector jobs, and not platitudes like “I will create 2 million jobs”, which will never see the light of day.

Nigerians would also like to know the minimum kilometres of federal roads he hopes to have completed, half way through his 4- year first term, all things being equal.

Equally important will be how each candidate intends to, once and for all, fix the perennial endemic power problem plaguing the country, so as to be able to facilitate industrialisation by creating zonal industrial hubs all over the federation because Nigeria should not be this rich with Nigerians living like paupers or like the biblical wretched of the earth. We should be interested to hear their plans for ease of doing business in Nigeria so that we can aggressively attract Foreign Direct Investments to the country.

For candidates of opposition parties, it will be important to tell Nigerians, in detail, how they intend to improve on the Tinubu Tax regime which they have never stopped criticising, with one of them, forever quoting, ad nauseam, what operates in Bangladesh, Korea etc, while not regaling us with stories about how many courses he has attended at the Havard Business School as if that is the issue here. They must, willy nilly, explain how they intend to grow the tax base without killing the hen that lay the golden eggs. Tremendous work was done by the sitting government in arriving at the current tax regime with the opposition deep set on making President Tinubu look like an enemy of the North througho their misrepresentions.

And as for APC , Nigerians would expect the Tinubu government to own up the reforms, wats and all.

It’s candidate must accept both the advantages as well as the debilitating pains it caused everybody, especially, the Nigerian ‘hoi polloi’ just as he must tell Nigerians to what use his Government put the massive excess funds generated through the cancellation of subsidy, one of them being, for example that states now earn monthly, a minimum of three or four times what they used to get from the federation account in the past.

He should then explain why these advantages have not trickled down to the lowest rungs of society, a factor which has seriously aggravated the pains at that level as well as how he intends to fix all these, if re- elected, in order to bring succour to the people. He should let the electorate know, for instance, how many CNG vehicles it would provide each state of the federation within its first year, to ease transport costs for both humans as well as farm produce.

And now to the elephant in the room – Security.

Insecurity in Nigeria has made life in the country not only unpredictable, but short and brutish. This malaise is pan Nigeria, though far worse in some areas than others.

Farmers can no longer go to their farms, transporters of farm produce can no longer move goods without fidgetting just as. Students are afraid of going to, and returning from school, especially in the case of students of higher institutions who are far from their home base. Travelling in general has become extremely hazardous. Not even churches or mosques are any longer safe.

For the 2027 election, Nigerians will no longer take platitudes like: “we will crush bandits” or “everything is under control”, from any candidate when one knows that he/she can only leave one’s abode at his or her own peril

We must be told how many additional community police each candidate will recruit, with fixed timelines, to which he will be held accountable on the pain of removal from office.

Ditto with bolstering all the other arms of the country’s security apparati.

Communication would have to be maximally boosted to ferret out, and checkmate bandits and terrorists wherever they may be.

There should be solid promise of massive deployment of technology in the armed forces so as to help them track down these criminals before they can wreak any havoc in any part of the country. They must promise that Forest rangers will predominate all our huge forests which are presently the hideouts of these criminals in many states. They must promise to set up special agro-ranger courts in the various states of the federation to dispense quick judgment.

If all these are done, incidences of kidnapping, even in the first one year, should reduce significantly in the country, otherwise heads should roll within the leadership of our security.

Each candidate must, on the campaigns, address Nigerians, concretely,

On his planned means for cutting the present prohibitive cost of governance.

For instance there must be substantial reduction in the bloated number of government agencies. And in this respect, each candidate must give his word regarding the implementation of the Oronsaye report on the bloated number of federal government agencies.

It Is a sine qua non that we hear them explicitly on their plans for Education, Health, Housing and Human Capital Development.

This essay is not, in any way, exhaustive, but it should form a template for what we should hear from the candidates to enable us make judicious decisions as to which of the parties, and candidates, to vote for, come January, 2027.

As I wrote earlier, o ur mandate must be truly earned. Nigerians. Must now have a solid Plan, complete

With a price tag and time lines. We must hear specifics about the next 4 years on how each candidate intends to make food cheaper, jobs real, government smaller and security assured. (The Nation)

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