2027: Titanic clash that might forever change Nigeria, by Wale Alonge

If you thought the 2023 election was the most propagandized election in Nigerian political history, get ready because you haven’t seen anything yet. The 2027 election might end up the election that ended it all. This might sound like some crazy, unhinged, hyperbolic statement under normal circumstances. I hope that I am totally wrong because no one comes out a winner in an election marred by violence and instability. Sadly, for our country, even under normal circumstances, presidential elections are seen from the prism of ethnosupremacy zero sum, winner takes it all contest. In the 2027 election with its unusual circumstance, all bets are off.

The Nigerian political class of all coloration and pseudo-ideology have put all their chips in for a titanic encounter in which they may be willing to burn down the whole edifice in their maddening quest for raw power. I used the phrase, pseudo-ideology advisedly because there is really no clear ideological difference among the Nigerian political parties. The only unifying ideology is the rape of the poor masses and the nauseatingly prodigious spoils that come with political power and its exercise in our polity.

Let be honest with ourselves, President Tinubu has touched the radioactive third rail of Nigerian politics and people are mad as hell with him. He has removed the honey comb of the Nigerian plutocracy, the oil subsidy through which many became stupendously rich. People have forgotten that the mother of Dr Ngozi Eweala was kidnapped just because she has the temerity to suggest that she was going to remove the oil subsidy. Every president before Asiwaju Tinubu has promised and reneged on their promise to remove oil subsidy. Wonder why? It was too radioactive to touch. Yet Tinubu did it with one single sentence and on his first day just like that with no funfare. While it looked like an earthquake was going to consume Nigeria with the subsidy removed, yet the heavens did not fall and Tinubu is still standing.

Then he went after the forex exchange which since the heady days of the 1973 Middle East oil crisis when Nigeria was flushed with more petrol dollar than it had the brain to know what to do with it, Nigeria has spent hundred of billions of dollars to prop up and support an artificially inflated rate. People thought there was no way he was going to touch that after removing oil subsidy, yet he did and although the seismic wave swayed the country back and forth, yet Tinubu still stands and so has our country.

Everyone knew that forex manipulation and buying it at subsidized rate and making billions without lifting a finger was the honey comb for the connected plutocratic class especially our northern brothers who control the bureau de change.

Local government allocation has for long being the pocket money controlled by our governors to be dished out as they wished. Governors willy nilly dismissed elected LG officials, refused to organize elections or conducted sham election, in which they put their cronies in charge. Again, Tinubu using the magic of the Supreme Court, the president imposed local government autonomy against the stiff opposition of the governors.

The tax bill was described by northern governors as dead on arrival. The NEC ordered it to be withdrawn. Like a stubborn Nigerian dwarf goat who will jump over any barrier, Asiwaju Tinubu said no let the legislattive process take its course. Like the cat with seven lives, Tinubu befuddled his opposition and the tax bill will most likely sail through.

If we are going to be honest with one another, President Tinubu has made some political appointments, which have taken away what many in the north regarded as their exclusive fiefdoms, and he has placed his Yoruba people in charge. Never in the history of Nigeria has Yoruba had it so good. The same people who kept quiet when President Obasanjo shut out Yoruba from key ministries and agencies or when General Jonathan did the same and when President Buhari packed his key ministries with northerners and located several federal universities and military installation in his Katsina state and Daura received more projects that many states in the south combined, they are now screaming from the top of their lungs about federal character and nepotism. Hypocrisy on steroid and sadly and not surprisingly you have Yoruba singing from the same hymn book.

All these taken together, one can understand why the political class is scared to death of this Tinubu. Governor Sule Lamido fired the first salvo when he went to Tribune (Tribune again) to predict that Tinubu will be an unbeatable dictator and odd beater, who could not be defeated in a conventional political contest. His reasoning, if citizen Tinubu could defeat all the forces that were arrayed against his 2023 presidential aspiration, from the currency recoloration scheme, to stiff opposition from his own party, the presidency, and a faction of Afenifere, the hatefest by Igbo and their Obidient crowd who deployed all the tricks in the social media playbook, and on top of that, add the weaponization of the Muslim-Muslim ticket to turn Christians against him. If Tinubu won against these seemingly insurmountable forces as a citizen, the reasoning goes how in heaven or hell is anyone going to defeat him when as incumbent he controls all the levers of power.

So when we one sees the political opposition going into overdrive with the most outrageous allegations and fear mongering including comparing him to Hitler, the worst human being to walk the surface of this earth who has a special space exclusively reserved for him in hell, you had better be prepared for the mother of all political battle in 2027.

You haven’t heard anything yet even including the highly irresponsible fear mongering prediction about Nigeria heading for a war. We also shouldn’t be surprised that a 2023 video in which General TY Danjuma urged his people to take up arm to defend themselves has been maliciously repackaged to portray the General as repeating the same charge in April 2025. We all must gird our loin for the unprecedented onslaught of propaganda, fake news, the intensification of killing, maiming and kidnapping that will be deployed to turn the electorates against the incumbent president who they fear cannot be defeated using conventional political war tactics.

The stakes are so high for our country and for our political class. They are petrified that a second term Tinubu unconstrained by another presidential run, would leave Nigeria political landscape unrecognizable and their political aspirations in tatters. That is the reason that I predicted that the 2027 might end up being the election that ends it all.

We are in for a political contest the like of which we have never seen before. That might sound like a Trumpian hyperbole, but it is absolutely possible it might be the truth. Let me state here that while I make no bones about my support for the president’s transformative policies, I have never had any contact nor met the president or his team ever in my life. I have never sought for and never will seek any political favor from anyone. I am in fact not eligible to vote in Nigeria and have not voted in any Nigerian election since 1983. I am not a registered member of any political party in Nigeria. I just thought that I should set the record straight.