2027 GENERAL ELECTIONS AND THE FATE OF THE WORKING PEOPLE
Only Mass Struggle and the Building of a Working people’s Political Alternative Anchored on Socialist Policies Can Truly Change Nigeria
As preparations for the next general elections commence, many would genuinely wonder if there is any point going out on election day next year to vote when previous electoral cycles have only brought to power different segments of the same capitalist political parties with the same ruinous anti-poor economic model. Indeed, the story of Nigeria’s civil rule since 1999 up till now is akin to the cyclical movement of the old swivel barber’s chair. Because it moves on rotation, its occupant can feel a sense of motion but one without actual movement or change of position.
By H.T. Soweto
This rotational motion came full circle on May 29 2023, when Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a member and financier of the bourgeois democratic coalition that fought military rule in the mid-1990s, was sworn-in as President. If civil rule had failed up to that point to discharge any true dividends, many expected something different with one of the acclaimed pro-democracy advocates now in power. Interestingly but not surprisingly, since Tinubu’s ascension to power, not only has Nigeria’s socio-economic situation gone from bad to worse, but Nigeria’s human rights record has also taken a nosedive with civil liberties, once the vaunted hallmark of democracy, under severe and sustained assault by the state.
TINUBU’S FIRST TERM OF FAILURE
On the economic front, the devastating effect of Tinubu regime’s removal of fuel subsidies, devaluation of the national currency (Naira), increase in electricity tariff and cut in social spending continue to linger three years later. Hunger and poverty are still the defining reality for millions of households as the inflationary rise in cost of fuel, transportation, groceries, housing, goods and services have failed to come down. External factors like the US and Israel war with Iran have ensured that the price of Nigeria’s major export, crude oil, have remained high on the world market over the past two years shattering the regime’s promise of a quick reduction of local pump price of fuel after the initial price shock following subsidy removal on May 29, 2023. This has created an inflationary trap that neither palliatives nor a new national minimum wage of N70, 000 won by the trade unions in July, 2024, has been able to solve. In effect, the Nigerian working class continue to face one of the worst erosions of their purchasing power in decades.
At the same time, the regime has continued to rack up borrowing with total public debt standing at N159.28 trillion as at December 31st, last year. To get a sense of the scale of the disaster, as recent as March 31st 2023, Nigeria’s total public debt stood at N49.85 trillion. Even this figure was already an atrocious increase due to frenetic borrowings by the previous Buhari administration. The Buhari administration had met total public debt at N24.847 trillion ($81.275 billion) as at March 31st 2019. Under Tinubu, just the external component of the public debt now stands at N75 trillion ($51.9 billion). What this means in essence is that it has taken the capitalist ruling elite exactly two decades to amass more than twice the size of Nigeria’s external debt profile of $36 billion in 2005 which made the then Obasanjo administration to pay a whopping $12.4 billion to Paris Club creditors to write off a substantial part of the country’s debt.
BLEAK FUTURE
This is a massive fiscal liability that the next generation will have to shoulder. Meanwhile, hardly is there any visible infrastructural development that corresponds to this huge accretion. Although the regime has embarked on ambitious new road projects like the Lagos-Calabar coastal highway, existing roads and vital highways linking different cities and important socio-economic hubs have become unmotorable due to years of neglect. Every now and then, pictures and videos showing federal roads that connect the country’s vital economic nerve centers in a state of disrepair surface on the internet. But instead of repairing them, the Tinubu administration is more fixated on prestige projects to portray a false sense of progress.
The same goes for other social infrastructures including electricity generation and distribution which continue to lag behind the energy needs of households and businesses while pipe borne water is inexistent in most part of the country and where it exists, it runs inconsistently. A majority of Nigeria’s population now rely on digging their own boreholes to be able to access drinking water. And this is not just the reality in the countryside, but even more so in big cities like Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt.
Although assault on civil liberties predates the Tinubu administration, they have become more frequent under him. Several activists, bloggers, content creators and ordinary Facebook users face constant threat of attack by security operatives and street thugs affiliated to the ruling APC for making any public comment critical of the regime and its policies. Many have been harassed, arrested and detained by security forces. In August 2024, Adaramoye Michael Lenin (a leading member of the DSM) and several other #Endbadgovernance protesters were arrested and charged to court for treason for simply participating in a protest calling for an end to hunger. Right now, Omoyele Sowore (the publisher of Sahara Reporters and AAC Presidential candidate) is being prosecuted for calling Tinubu a criminal. The politically-motivated trial has become a symbol of the Tinubu regime’s growing intolerance for the very freedoms that a true democracy ought to embody.
Perhaps, the most visible sign of Tinubu government’s failure is in the state of security. Despite securing the realease of all but two of the 46 school children and teachers abducted at Ahoro-Esiele and Yawota communities of Oriire Local Government Area in Oyo State after 56 days in captivity, the state of insecurity remains bleak with thousands of Nigerians still in the den of kidnappers, bandits, jihadists and other criminal gangs across the country. This includes 42 Borno school children who were abducted by suspected Boko Haram militants on the same date, May 15, as the Oyo school abduction. So widespread is the state of insecurity with several parts of the North east, North east and some rural towns in the South West facing all kinds of active security threats that it is quite plausible to expect the regime to use this as an excuse to postpone the 2027 poll as former President Jonathan did in 2015. Of course, should this happen, it could lead to a storm of protest especially in the North where popular resentment has been building up against the regime for some time now. In this sense, there can be no certainty yet about the 2027 elections holding as scheduled.
2027 POLL: A CHARADE IN THE MAKING
However, if the polls hold as scheduled with presidential and National Assembly vote expected to take place on Saturday 16 January 2027 while governorship and State Assembly elections are fixed for Saturday 6 February 2027, there is every possibility that it would enjoy limited enthusiastic participation. The last general elections had the lowest voters’ participation in Nigeria’s democratic history. Out of a total registered voter population of 93.4 million, only 24.9 million valid votes (that is 26.71%) were cast. Tinubu was elected with the lowest vote of any Nigerian president since the 1979 poll. There is every possibility of a repeat of this sort of mass voters’ apathy on a grander scale in 2027. This of course is because many Nigerians would not see, despite bribes, any reason to waste their time going out to spend hours queuing up to vote for any of the leading Presidential candidates, from Tinubu to Atiku and even Obi.
While Obi, a capitalist politician, enjoyed some elements of mass support especially from the youth during the 2023 poll, the illusion in him has quietly exploded over the past three years. After the poll in which he showed some surprising outcome in a few places including Lagos which he won, the momentum around him began to subside soon after the poll as consciousness shifted from elections to mass struggle to resist Tinubu’s anti-poor policies. Obi’s support base, the Obidients, is now severely eroded with many of the young people who initially supported him are now frustrated.
Although we cannot be certain, but the failure of Obi, borne out of his own ideological commitment to neoliberalism, in articulating a coherent alternative to the horror of Tinubu’s neo-liberal economic program must have had an effect. Ultimately, politics is about alternatives and where none exist, momentum even when galvanized cannot last. But whatever is the case, Obi’s departure, due to internal crisis, from the Labour Party (LP) – a party originally formed by the trade unions – which he had used to contest the 2023 poll marked a certain diminution in his electoral appeal. The eventual announcement of his candidature on the platform of the newly registered National Democratic Congress (NDC) has not produced any enthusiastic response close to anything he had in 2023.
In this sense, the 2027 poll is beginning to look like a walkover for the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC). Especially with the recent amendment to the Electoral Act where the manual transmission of results was paired on an equal footing with the electronic transmission mode, many rightly believe that this gives the ruling party ample opportunity to rig the forthcoming poll. The latest frantic effort to pass a state police bill which would allow sub-national governments to form their own police force means that the 2027 poll will most likely be enmeshed in state-certified violence, electoral manipulation using state power and voters suppression.
A RADICAL ELECTORAL ALTERNATIVE
None of the above however means that a vigorous challenge cannot be mounted by radicals, the left and change-seeking Nigerians to challenge the capitalist parties at the poll next year. Hence, despite the absence of a decidedly mass workers’ political party, there is an urgent need for the Nigerian left and the labour movement to democratically discuss and draw up a programme of joint intervention in the 2027 poll.
Such an intervention should start from identifying parties and candidates whose programmes can provide a basis for putting forward a radical electoral alternative in the 2027 poll. At the moment, only the candidature of Omoyele Sowore of the African Action Congress (AAC) offers such an opportunity at the national level while in some states where the Labour Party is fielding candidates, an opportunity can exist to rally round radical candidates to challenge the status quo using the 2027 polls. The left and the labour movement need to discuss how to intervene in these campaigns and what manifesto and core programmes should be argued for.
Even if they do not win, such electoral intervention will have enormous educational value for radical and change-seeking people who still look towards elections for change. The intervention can also prepare the masses for what comes next and, if not discontinued once the polls are over, it can serve as a lever for the formation and building of a new united party of the working class and youth anchored on a socialist program.
MASS STRUGGLE AND SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE
Whatever happens during the 2027 poll, what is obvious at this stage is that only a minority of the voting population will participate. Millions more will ignore the polls for good reasons. What this implies is the certainty of mass resistance breaking out regardless of who wins the 2027 poll.
But if there is any lesson that the past three years has taught, it is that one, isolated actions hardly move the dial and only a united mass resistance democratically coordinated and built from below can win real concessions. Secondly, without the working class playing a leading role, mass struggles can break out as often as possible and can, all things being equal, win concrete concessions and even force a change of government as was seen in the 2011 Arab Spring, but they may not be strong enough to end capitalism which is the real root of the social and economic crises. If the NLC and TUC had backed the mass struggle that broke out nationwide in August 2024 dubbed #Endbadgovernance protest with a general strike, most likely the struggle could have led to an entirely different outcome for Nigeria. But that was not the case, thereby showing the need to mobilise the power of Nigeria’s organized working class and why its independent role in class struggle is crucial, especially in mobilizing the poor and oppressed in joint action.
Therefore, in preparation for mass struggle post-2027, there is a need to begin right away to build a rank-and-file opposition within the trade unions that can challenge the pro-capitalist labour bureaucrats for authority and leadership of the movement. This should be done ahead of February 2027 when the next Delegate Conference of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) would be holding to elect a new leadership. Nigeria’s powerful working class needs to break out of the control of the trade union calcified bureaucracy to play an independent and leading role in the struggles that can unfold in the next period. In those struggles, the working class and the radical youth will encounter new opportunities to bring an end to the rule of the corrupt looters and smash capitalism once and for all. The work of preparation we do now can make a difference when that hour comes.