A public affairs analyst and Convener of Reset Lagos Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Dr Adetokunbo Pearse has said that 2027 elections will witness a huge voters turnout, unlike the 2023 presidential election where only about 26 per cent of registered voters voted.

According to him, the reason for the projected massive turnout is because Nigerians are eagerly waiting to vote out the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) party because of its misrule in the last three years.

Pearse, in an interview with VINCENT KALU, also spoke about issues in the polity, opposition politics, controversies about the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof Joash Amupitan, consistent loans taken by the government, and others.

The 2027 election Is the major topic in public conversations across the country. What are your expectations?

The problem we had with Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) before was that we didn’t know whether we were going to field candidates under our great party, but after the Supreme Court judgment of April 30, we feel very confident.

In fact, since the Board of Trustees has taken over the workings, and the administration of the party; the PDP has now set up an interim national working committee. That interim national working committee will take us through the election, will submit our nomination, and will publish the list.

The party has published their schedule and the list of candidates and how they’re going to make payments and so on. So, we are ready to go.

Not just about your party, PDP, but your general overview of 2027 election?

All of us can see that there appears to be a concerted effort by the APC, the government in power, to prevent any other party from running against Bola Ahmed Tinubu for president.

Since the PDP has succeeded in getting its party together, and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) is also now making waves, in spite of all the effort to prevent a multi-party system in Nigeria, we are going to have the PDP and NDC, at least those two, it appears, to run against the APC. So, if that happens, I foresee a rather robust election.

You know, the turnout for the presidency in 2023 was about 26 per cent.

About 90 million people registered to vote, but about 24 million people voted.

In this election, because of the misrule of the APC in the last three years, people will come out to vote if there’s an alternative platform, such as the PDP and the NDC.

The lack of security in the country and the poverty in the country, the whole question of disunity and distrust among the ethnic groups in this country today, has made this APC government so unpopular that people are going to come out en masse, to vote against it.

But we are all afraid that the president, in his usual mafia style, has infiltrated the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), infiltrated the judiciary, and, of course, has control of the state’s security.

So, we are afraid that the election may not be credible; it may not be fair. Just as Yakubu did in 2023, the INEC chairman will announce the result in favour of the president.

Which faction of PDP are you talking about? The Wike faction is laying claims to the leadership of the party and occupying the party secretariat, and issuing statements?

The Supreme Court judgment of 30th of April, has given the party back to the original PDP, which was registered in 1998, which is the Turaki-led PDP; the one with Turaki, Makinde, and Arapaja is the PDP. Wike does not have any locus. He has no jurisdiction. It’s all a pretence because he is not a registered party with INEC. Keep that in mind. So, he can say anything he wants. His faction doesn’t really exist.

Now, there’s also the March 9th, 2026, Abuja high court judgment that affirmed the suspension of Anyanwu, Baturi, and co, which means that anything they did after the 1st of November 2025, is not tenable; it’s null and void.

Anything Wike wants to say is a waste of time; talking about Wike claiming this and claiming that is a waste of time because he’s just talking.

The Supreme Court judgment has totally nullified anything that came out of that Anyanwu-Wike structure, and given the party back to the original PDP, the one with Turaki, Makinde, and Arapaja.

Now, the Supreme Court judgment of 30th of April has given the party back to the original PDP, which means that anything they did after the 1st of November 2025 is not tenable; it has totally nullified anything that came out of that Anyanwu-Wike structure.

If you’re under suspension from a political party; even an expulsion, what right do you have to conduct a convention? What right do you have to set up a board of trustees for the party that you have been expelled from? It is null and void. He’s saying everything in his own favour but it’s just a waste of time; he’s just posturing. He knows that he’s not going anywhere. By today or tomorrow latest, the certified true copy of Thursday’s Supreme Court judgment would come out, and it will go to INEC, and the electoral umpire would take action to reinstate the original PDP; the one that was registered in 1988, and was in government for 16 years in Nigeria, and not the one that was conjured about three or four months ago.

One Senator Sandy Ono, has purchased the PDP expression of interest and the nomination form to contest the presidential election?

Which PDP? Is it from the original Turaki PDP or from Wike’s PDP? This is a valid question because only one of them is going to be acknowledged and recognised by INEC.

If somebody is buying from the so-called Wike’s PDP, that’s his business. It’s a waste of time because INEC will not recognise that PDP. And if INEC doesn’t recognise it, as the Supreme Court has nullified it, then it’s a waste of time.

But people are purchasing forms from us. Don’t forget that Wike has said that even if they run for president, they would all step down for Tinubu because the president is the one that they’re supporting.

So, it’s a damn shame that they have reduced us to this nonsense in Nigerian politics.

The opposition is terribly decimated. Do you think that they can gather themselves to stand up against Tinubu for this 2027 election?

I have just told you that the PDP that you know for 18 years is alive and well structured and ready to go. I said it before that even if INEC gives us 24 hours to assemble our candidates, we are ready. The party is In every nook and cranny of Nigeria; our ward meetings are going on everywhere; there are only two parties in Nigeria today, PDP and APC. The NDC is coming up. You may not have something to say about ADC. I’m sure that I told you at a time that ADC was not going to survive, not only because the APC is making sure that they dislocate it but, the ADC itself because of the kind of thing that they did by going into the party without proper checks. The same thing now is going on with NDC – big names, Obi, Kwankwaso and others, we don’t know what’s going to happen to them, but they may survive; if they do, let them bring their candidates for governorship, president and all the positions, and let’s see how it goes.

So, there’s opposition; the PDP has provided viable opposition, a platform that people who do not want to support this APC terrible government can vote.

There was a lot of confusion even when we had the Ibadan declaration a few weeks ago, the plan was different from what is emerging now. What is emerging now is that the PDP has been cleared to run and our schedule is in place; we are ready to go, and the opposition is there.

ADC seems to have been buried, the LP is also buried. So, opposition doesn’t have to be 20 or 50 parties, once you have an alternative to the ruling party that’s good enough and PDP is there.

So, don’t talk about confusion in the opposition parties. No. There’s confusion in ADC, there’s confusion in LP; there’s confusion in many other parties, but the PDP, the main opposition party is willing and ready to go.

What do you make of the controversies that have trailed the appointment of the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof Joash Amupitan?

The truth of the matter is that Amupitan has shown himself to be a discreditable human being, he is not fit to be an umpire in the coming election because his prejudice is too clear; that is why he has been instrumental in deregulating every political party, trying to disrupt their system so that there will be only Tinubu’s party running.

So, I do agree with any suggestion or any recommendation that he should go.

But I don’t see him going because the constitution allows the president to appoint an INEC chairman, and until we change that constitution, we are not likely to have a real credible election in Nigeria.

However, this is our own plan in the PDP. We know that Amupitan is compromised, and we know that he will not do the right, and would announce Tinubu, whether he wins or not. So, we are ready for him.

We are ready to take both Tinubu and Amupitan to the International Criminal Court (ICC). If he doesn’t resign and then compromises the results. The International Criminal Court is there.

I have always said to Tinubu and his friends and Amupitan that they shouldn’t forget what happened to Maduro. We will get him the Maduro treatment; he would be picked up one day from Aso Rock, and he’s gone; the next thing you hear is that he is in jail.

We are not going to allow this man to steal the election; he would have silenced the wishes of the people of Nigeria; whoever the people voted for must be announced as the president.

On the issue of the INEC boss having sympathy for APC, the commission set up an investigative committee which cleared him of wrongdoing…

Well, evidently, like other people asking for his resignation, it’s clear. Amupitan is a prejudiced individual in favour of the APC, he is not qualified to be the umpire in this election.

Who set up the investigative committee? Do you set up a committee to probe yourself? Of course, they will find you not guilty. That committee doesn’t speak for the truth, so it doesn’t stand for the truth, and we do not accept its outcome.

APC members say their campaign message for the 2027 election would be the reforms that president Tinubu has put in place, and which would transform Nigeria into a great country. What is your take on this?

What are the reforms? If you put reforms on paper and in reality, they are affecting the populace negatively, then those reforms are bad and should go. If you change from one position to a worse position, that change is null and void. What are the reforms that Tinubu brought? Firstly, the removal of field subsidy. When he removed fuel subsidy, what happened? Unemployment increased, cost of living increased, cost of fuel increased, life became more difficult for everybody. And you know why that happened? I was one of the first people on television, invited to speak shortly after he got into office the first day, and announced removal of subsidy. International monetary organisations advised him to remove subsidy, they didn’t advise him to remove subsidy in isolation. There were two other things he had to do before you remove subsidy. One, you have to diversify your economy so that your revenue generation will increase, he didn’t do that; we are still dependent on sale of oil. He hasn’t done anything on agriculture. Secondly, you also have to tackle seriously the corruption and the waste; the theft in the oil industry. You have to do these three things simultaneously like a matured government official.

You cannot remove subsidy by fiat without any consideration; without taking measures to check the negative effect of its removal. Look at where we are now, which is the outcome of one of his so-called reforms.

What is his other reform? He devaluated the naira, which became a problem for us, as the national currency has no value now. One dollar was going for about N450 officially, and N770 in the black market.

He deregularised the two, in the bank, N1,400 is about one dollar. This man has failed us.

What you have done in order to cushion the negative result of the of the devaluation of the naira? You have to increase your exports. In other words, revenue has to increase. You cannot just devalue the naira without the naira finding other ways to be strong; and the way your currency can be strong is if your economy is strong. How strong is your economy? You have to have various ways of raising revenue. We have uranium, we have copper, we have gold, we have lithium, we have phosphates and other minerals. We are blessed, but we have a president who has not even begun to do what needs to be done. All he has done since he got into offices was to play politics. The following week after he was sworn in, he started talking about 2027 in 2023. I remember clearly when the trade unions were challenging him and so he said they should go and wait for 2027, to run against him.

The man didn’t come to work; he didn’t come to improve the quality of life. What has he done with security? He appoints people who are themselves alleged to be sympathetic to Boko Haram terrorists. There are serious allegations against some of the people he appointed.

This president has failed Nigeria and his level of insensitivity is callous, and he doesn’t care about anybody.

He is borrowing, borrowing and borrowing money with huge interests.

You must do the best you can with what you have instead of borrowing and borrowing, and he has borrowed Nigeria into a hole. These are his reforms they would use to campaign.

Government said the loans are being used to tackle some critical infrastructure like the Lagos -Calabar Coastal Road, Badagry- Sokoto Road; the AKK gas master plan and so on…

First and foremost, if you talk about the Lagos – Calabar Coastal Highway, and all the loans that he has been getting, he has been giving contracts to himself; he has been using our money to fatten his own purse because Chagouri has taken hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of contracts without any form of bidding.

How do we know? His son is a director in Chagouri’s company; therefore, Chagouri’s businesses is Tinubu’s business. He is borrowing money on behalf of Nigeria for himself and his companies. That Is what is going on. That is why you cannot see the benefit of all these so-called contracts, because they are not contracts to benefit people.

We are not seeing the impact of the borrowing on the economy, because if you are going to talk about long-term impact, there should also be short-term impact so that people don’t die of hunger before you eventually start making money.

As we are now, there is no light at the end of the tunnel, only darkness. That is what we have seen in Nigeria. Every policy the man brings up, go and check it out, there is something wrong. They talk about student loan. This student loan is not accessible to the average student; the thing is burdensome.

Even when they are giving out palliatives, the only people who get the palliative, even if it is rice and beans, are members of his party. Before you do anything, or you get anything, you have to show that you are registered in APC.

APC and Tinubu have come to give Nigeria punishment. May God save Nigerians from this administration. (The Sun)