BY ABADOM LAWRENCE AMECHI
THE IDEA that HE President Ahmed Bola Tinubu, a democrat, political strategist and self-acclaimed progressive, would not be comfortable with losing a free and fair election in 2027 is laughable. I strongly believe that those pushing such a narrative are only trying to tarnish the democratic credentials of the Lagos political strongman and diminish the many struggles he has undertaken for the restoration of democracy in Nigeria.
The President may have been called many names in the past, but nobody has ever seriously described him as a bloodthirsty person. It would therefore be unfair and unnecessary to project him as someone who would not accept the outcome of a free and fair election.
The presidency is neither a family inheritance nor a tribal stool. It is not native to any particular tribe, region or family. Any Nigerian who is constitutionally qualified and enjoys the mandate of the people has the right to occupy it.
Although zoning and rotation are not constitutional requirements, they have become important political arrangements for promoting balance, unity and a sense of belonging among Nigeria’s diverse communities. If the presidency is zoned to the South, every qualified Southerner should have the right to contest. When the political arrangement shifts to the North, qualified Northerners should equally have the right to contest.
We may disagree with a candidate’s decision to contest based on the prevailing political understanding of rotation, but no Northerner who chooses to contest when the political arrangement favours the South is breaking any law. The same principle must apply to every Nigerian, regardless of ethnicity or region.
It is also misleading to suggest that the presidency is automatically the exclusive turn of the Yoruba people. In the Fourth Republic, the Yoruba have produced a president for eight years, a vice president for eight years, and currently have a president who, by May 2027, would have completed almost four years in office. Put together, that amounts to about 12 years with a Yoruba president and eight years with a Yoruba vice president.
If an ethnic group with this level of representation in the presidency and vice presidency is now being portrayed as entitled to another uninterrupted eight years—and if anyone is preparing for a confrontation simply because it may lose a free and fair election—then we need to ask serious questions about tribal ethics, morality, justice and the meaning of Omoluabi.
Those pushing the lazy narrative that President Tinubu must be allowed to complete eight years simply because it is supposedly “the turn of the Yorubas” are, in my view, a tiny group of mischievous elements pursuing their own interests. They do not represent the generality of the Yoruba people, nor can they convincingly claim that the position they are canvassing has the approval of President Tinubu himself.
President Tinubu was fortunate to emerge victorious in the 2023 presidential election, although there remain people who believe that the election was marred by significant irregularities, particularly the controversy surrounding the technical problems with the IReV system and the expectations created by the assurances of the then INEC Chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu.
But whatever one’s position on the 2023 election, the outcome was ultimately upheld by the relevant constitutional institutions, including the highest court in the land.
Now that everything appears to be failing for the proponents of the “4+4” agenda, the agents of that campaign seem to have resorted to blackmail, psychological intimidation and the weaponisation of fear as strategies for winning an election. Those strategies should not determine the choice of Nigerian voters.
No ethnic group should be frightened into supporting a government it believes has not performed well. Nigerians who say they will not vote for President Tinubu again should not automatically be accused of tribal hatred. They have the right to make that decision based on their assessment of his administration’s performance.
In the 2023 presidential election, HE Peter Obi and his supporters believed that the Labour Party candidate won the election. However, when INEC declared the result and the highest court in the land ultimately upheld the outcome, the country moved on in the interest of national peace and stability.
That same principle must apply in 2027: let every qualified Nigerian contest, let every Nigerian vote freely, and let every vote count. Whoever emerges through a genuinely free and fair process should be accepted by all, regardless of tribe, region or political affiliation.
President Goodluck Jonathan lost the 2015 presidential election, but he did not incite his supporters to cause trouble or plunge the country into crisis. Even before the election, he had declared to the world that his ambition was not worth the blood of any Nigerian. His conduct demonstrated an important principle: no political ambition, regardless of how deeply cherished, should be placed above the lives and security of citizens.
Nigeria’s democratic system provides legitimate mechanisms for addressing perceived electoral errors, irregularities and disagreements. Those mechanisms may not always produce outcomes that everyone considers satisfactory, but they remain preferable to violence, vigilantism or the mobilisation of citizens against one another.
I therefore want to believe that President Tinubu has heard the hypothesis being promoted by people such as Dr. Akin Fapohunda, who has argued that the failure of President Tinubu to secure the 2027 presidential ticket or win the election could deepen tensions between the Igbo and Yoruba and potentially create circumstances reminiscent of the Rwandan tragedy.
Such a narrative is dangerous and deserves to be addressed openly. The President, by virtue of his office and influence, has a responsibility to discourage anyone who attempts to frame Nigeria’s electoral contests as an inevitable ethnic confrontation. Elections should be contests of ideas, records, policies and leadership—not battles between ethnic groups.
If the 2027 election is perceived by Nigerians as neither free nor fair, and if President Tinubu is believed to have been unfairly deprived of victory, and the Yoruba decide to peacefully challenge the outcome and seek the actualisation of the mandate, the entire nation should be prepared to support the principle of electoral justice.
It would, however, be a profound contradiction for a people who once fought against electoral injustice to turn around and suggest that electoral injustice becomes acceptable simply because it affects someone else or because the political circumstances are different.
The principle must remain the same: electoral injustice is wrong regardless of who suffers it, who benefits from it, or which ethnic group is involved.
The struggle for June 12 was not supposed to be a struggle for the Yoruba alone. It became a defining struggle for democracy because it represented the broader principle that the will of the people expressed through the ballot must be respected.
We must therefore be careful about narratives that suggest that one ethnic group has a special right to challenge electoral injustice while another has no such right. If such a mindset becomes established, it would undermine the very democratic values that the June 12 struggle sought to defend and could portray the Yoruba in a deeply unpalatable light.
Nigeria does not need another ethnic contest over political power. What we need is a political culture in which every Nigerian—Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, or any other group—can demand justice, defend the sanctity of the ballot and challenge electoral injustice without being threatened with ethnic confrontation.
Democracy cannot survive when justice becomes ethnic. The standard must be the same for everyone.
