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14.2 Percent: The Electoral Arithmetic That Exposes the Fundamental Fragility of Peter Obi’s 2027 Northern Strategy

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2 months ago

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By Aliyu Mohammed Idris, PhD,

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There is a particular kind of political optimism that refuses to be corrected by evidence. It is the optimism that survives a catastrophic electoral performance, reinterprets the catastrophe as a near-miss, constructs an elaborate narrative of stolen victory to explain away the margin of defeat, and then proceeds to the next electoral cycle with essentially the same strategic assumptions, the same candidate, and the same fundamental misreading of the political landscape that produced the catastrophe in the first place. It is the optimism currently driving Peter Obi’s 2027 presidential campaign under the banner of the Nigeria Democratic Congress, and it is an optimism that the verified electoral arithmetic of the 2023 presidential election exposes, with the cold and irrefutable precision of numbers, as a strategy built on a foundation that the facts of Nigerian political geography simply do not support.
The numbers are not in dispute. They are drawn from the official records of the Independent National Electoral Commission, verified by multiple fact-checking organisations, and confirmed by the Africa Report’s real-time election coverage. Peter Obi secured 43.0 percent of votes from the South in the 2023 presidential election and only 14.2 percent from the North. That 14.2 percent figure is not merely a disappointing performance or a correctable underachievement. It is a structural indictment of a campaign that presented itself as a genuinely national movement while failing to build anything resembling a genuinely national electoral coalition. In Gombe State, he polled 26,160 votes against Atiku’s 319,123. In Sokoto, he managed 6,568 votes. In state after state across the North-West and North-East, his performance was so marginal as to be politically irrelevant in the context of a contest governed by the constitutional requirement that a winning presidential candidate must secure not merely the most votes nationally but at least 25 percent of votes cast in no fewer than 24 of Nigeria’s 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory.
The constitutional arithmetic is the most devastating dimension of this electoral reality. Nigeria’s presidential election is not won by national popular vote alone. It is won by a combination of national plurality and geographic distribution, a system specifically designed to ensure that the president of a federation as diverse as Nigeria cannot be elected on the strength of a single region’s enthusiasm, however overwhelming that enthusiasm may be. In 2023, Peter Obi won the South-East with majorities that were, in several states, greater than 90 percent of votes cast. In Anambra, his home state, he polled 584,621 votes. In Enugu, he secured 91.42 percent of total votes cast. These were extraordinary performances. But they were extraordinary performances in a geographically concentrated region that, however impressive its margins, could not on its own satisfy the constitutional distribution requirement that makes a presidential victory mathematically possible. The 25 percent threshold in 24 states is not a formality. It is the architectural expression of Nigeria’s federal character, and Peter Obi’s 2023 campaign failed to meet it not because of electoral malpractice alone, as his supporters persistently claim, but because the underlying electoral coalition he had built was geographically insufficient to satisfy a constitutional standard that any serious presidential campaign must plan from the outset to meet.
The question for 2027 is whether the Obi-Kwankwaso ticket has credibly addressed this structural deficiency. The honest answer, when examined against the current political landscape of Northern Nigeria, is that it has not, and that the specific political assets that Kwankwaso was expected to bring to the ticket have been substantially eroded by the events of the past two years in ways that the NDC’s campaign strategists appear to be either unaware of or unwilling to acknowledge. Kwankwaso’s political capital in the North was always most concentrated in Kano State, where the Kwankwasiyya movement had built a formidable grassroots organisation over more than a decade of investment in community mobilisation, welfare distribution, and political education. That organisation delivered Kano State for the NNPP in the 2023 governorship election, producing the administration of Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf, the man who was supposed to be the institutional expression of Kwankwaso’s continued relevance as a northern political force.
But Governor Yusuf is no longer Kwankwaso’s man. He decamped to the APC earlier in 2026, taking with him the 36 members of the Kano State House of Assembly and all 44 local government chairmen, in one of the most consequential political defections in Kano’s recent history. The Kwankwasiyya movement, which was already showing signs of internal stress before the defection, has been structurally fractured by the departure of the governor it helped elect. The political organisation that Kwankwaso was counting on to deliver Kano’s substantial electoral weight to the Obi-Kwankwaso ticket in 2027 is now a significantly diminished force operating in a state whose government, whose legislative machinery, and whose local government structures are all aligned with the APC and the federal administration of President Tinubu. Beyond Kano, Kwankwaso’s influence across the wider North-West and North-East was always more aspirational than organisational, more a function of his national profile than of the kind of ward-level mobilisation infrastructure that actually moves voters on election day.
The one-term promise that Obi has repeatedly deployed as a tool for managing northern political anxieties about southern presidential dominance adds a further layer of analytical complexity to the electoral arithmetic question, because it highlights the extent to which the NDC’s northern strategy is built on political arrangements rather than genuine political support. A presidential candidate who needs to offer a constitutionally unenforceable promise to serve only a single term in order to persuade northern stakeholders to consider supporting him is a candidate who is acknowledging, in the most direct possible terms, that the northern support he is seeking is contingent rather than organic, transactional rather than ideological, and dependent on political calculations that could shift dramatically between now and the February 2027 polling date. Political opinion across Northern Nigeria, as Vanguard’s reporting confirmed, remains sharply divided over the one-term promise, with many stakeholders describing it as politically strategic but lacking enforceable guarantees. That assessment is correct. And a northern electoral strategy built on a promise that cannot be legally enforced, delivered by a candidate whose history of party-switching has demonstrated a consistent willingness to abandon commitments when political conditions become inconvenient, is a strategy whose foundations deserve the most rigorous scrutiny.
The electoral mathematics of 2027 are not fundamentally different from those of 2023. The constitutional threshold is the same. The geographic distribution requirement is the same. The northern political landscape, far from having been transformed in Obi’s favour by the Kwankwaso alliance, has in critical respects shifted against him, with Kano State, the single most important northern electoral prize, now firmly within the APC’s political architecture following Governor Yusuf’s defection. The 14.2 percent that Obi secured from the North in 2023 was not a floor from which he will inevitably rise with the right running mate and the right messaging. It was a ceiling built by a combination of the IPOB credibility deficit, the geographic concentration of the Obidient Movement’s energy, the constitutional distribution requirement’s structural demands, and the deep cultural and political instincts of northern voters whose relationship with presidential candidates is governed by a set of expectations and requirements that Peter Obi’s campaign, in 2023 and so far in 2027, has not demonstrated the capacity or the willingness to genuinely meet. The numbers said it clearly in 2023. They are saying it still. The question is whether anyone in the NDC’s campaign structure is listening

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Defamation Against DSP Barau, Institutional

Published

2 weeks ago

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July 23, 2026

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By Abba Anwar

Any act of defamation of character against His Excellency the Deputy President of the Senate and First Deputy Speaker of ECOWAS Parliament, Distinguished Senator Barau I Jibrin, PhD, CFR, more of allegations of terrorism and aiding the national tragedy, is automatically a defamation against democratic institutions.

I know DSP knows glaringly clear that, the current malicious and defamatory allegation against his personality goes beyond his own self as a Distinguished Senator representing Kano North alone. To me, dropping petition against the perpetrators of such act is not only unnecessary, it is deconstruction of democratic institutions and processes.

I came across a petition from DSP’s Solicitors, West-Wig Attorneys, to the Inspector General of Police, dated 22nd July, 2026 and singed by S. Y. Gama Esq and Sani Ibrahim Esq, requesting for “… the immediate investigation, identification and prosecution of persons appearing in the viral video for the alleged, false, malicious and defamatory publication against His Excellency Senator Barau I Jibrin, Deputy President of the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and for related offences including cyberstalking.”

As the petition concurs with my understanding of the case at hand, that defamation against Senator Jibrin is defamation against institutions, it says, “The gravity of this matter is further accentuated by the constitutional office occupied by our Client as the Deputy President of the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

False allegations of terrorism directed against the holder of such a high public office possess the capacity to undermine public confidence in democratic institutions, diminish the integrity of constitutional governance and unjustifiably expose the occupant of that office to avoidable security concerns.”

The core content of the issue at hand as explained by the petition typifies that, “Our Client’s attention has been drawn to a video presently in widespread circulation across various social media platforms wherein a group of adult women are seen and heard repeatedly referring him as “terrorist” in what appears to be a coordinated public rendition.

The publication has since attracted considerable public attention and has exposed our Client to public odium, ridicule, contempt, opprobrium and immeasurable reputational injury both within and outside the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”

With Senator Jibrin’s position as a global citizen, such grave allegation against his personality sends bad signal to the world against the entire democratic process and institutions in the country. I understand that any decision he takes, if it falls below the protection of his image, which ultimately means protecting our democratic values and institutions, could be a negation of bravery, self-esteem and entrenched democratic mind and might.

I don’t give a damn to the states of origin of those who appeared in the said video or their sponsors, the fact remains, offence is offence wherever perpetrated, hatched or birthed. So discussing about the origins of those people, seen, suspected and invisible for now, is secondary. But I am confident that DSP’s political opponents perceived and real, from Kano state would not engage in this high level defamation of character.

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It is only in Kano where you see people from other places coming to the state to castigate their elders, religious, political, traditional etc and go scot-free with the full cooperation of the indigenes. I’m not a proponent of state-of-origin chauvinism, but it hurts and is highly pathetic. It is only in Kano where you see trash being treated as pure or honey. Too pathetic and unfortunate!

Some years back, I have a friend, who is also a journalist, from a popular radio station, who was transferred to Katsina state, during his first political programmes, as he started new rounds of political programmes in Katsina, he met with the serious anger of the then Governor of Katsina state. I think it was either Ibrahim Shema or Aminu Bello Masari. The Governor made it categorically clear to him that, in Katsina they would not take that trash, as obtained in Kano.

But in Kano, when some democratic liabilities, who migrated to Kano, were castigating former Governor Malam Ibrahim Shekarau, the supporters of His Excellency Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso and His Excellency Abdullahi Umar Ganduje were clapping hands. After Shekarau, the same noisemakers faced Kwankwaso calling him names, Ganduje’s supporters were clapping and smiling. After abuses on Kwankwaso reached peak and subsided, Ganduje’s turn came on board. The same illiterate nuisance who abused Shekarau and Kwankwaso, jumped down harshly on Ganduje. For God sake, what is wrong with Kano people?!

Half of what is obtained in Kano cannot, by any standard, be tolerated elsewhere. The illiterate migrants to Kano, (reader forgive my expression, it isn’t deliberate) always preserve their elders back home. Why Kano is indifferent?

I’m not an advocate of Kano Alone, or the superiority of Kano, all I’m saying is, why it is only in Kano, elders are not seen as elders? Elders from all walks of life. Not only political elders or leaders, anyway.

I know for sure Kano reached its peak, because of her hospitality and receptive atmosphere. In Kano all people are welcomed. This is a good sign of pride and trustworthiness. I will always be happy when more and more people that are non-indigenes and not citizens of Nigeria continue to troop Kano. Wisdom behind Kano’s greatness and development. Without non-indigenes Kano wouldn’t have achieved that feat of commercial hub for the North and sub-Saharan Africa.

Coming back to the main issue at hand, DSP’s Solicitors called the attention of the IGP that, “While the identities and present locations of the persons appearing in the video are presently unknown to our Client, we firmly believe that the investigative, forensic, cyber intelligence and technological capabilities of the Nigeria Police Force are more than sufficient to uncover the identities of every person appearing in the video together with every individual who conceived, sponsored, financed, coordinated, produced, published, transmitted, promoted or otherwise facilitated the dissemination of the offending publication.”

If we believe that DSP’s seek for justice and redress is elegantly needed, to better our today and reshape the integrity of our democratic values and institutions, we should encourage him to pursue this issue to its logical conclusion.

Some of the demands of the petition request the good office of the IGP to, “Commence an immediate, comprehensive and impartial investigation into the viral video and every circumstance surrounding its production, publication and dissemination, and invite, interview and investigate all persons connected with the publication and obtain all relevant electronic and digital evidence necessary for a comprehensive investigation.”

Other requests among others are, “Determine whether the publication and dissemination of the viral videos disclose offences under the Cybercrimes (Prohibition, Prevention, etc) Act, 2015 as amended, the Criminal Code Act, the Penal Code, or any applicable law, and take every other lawful measure considered necessary to preserve, the integrity of public discourse, uphold the rule of law, Cyberstalking and malicious online publications and ensure that the allegation of terrorism are never trivialized or weaponised against any citizen without lawful justification.”

His Excellency DSP should kindly understand that, this defamation is beyond him alone, therefore shelving it aside has serious consequences on democratic institutions. Sir injury on you is injury on institutions. Putting this grave allegation under the carpet, is minus and abhorable. Many of your people, supporters and well wishers are standing by, watching your steps Sir. Is not about you alone Sir. It is also about our institutions.

Anwar writes from Kano
Thursday 23rd, July 2026

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2027: Loyalty Reloaded As Gov Yusuf Picks Deputy Garo As Running Mate

Published

3 weeks ago

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July 14, 2026

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By Abba Anwar

I chose to caption this piece “2027 Loyalty Reloaded…” bearing in mind what His Excellency Governor of Kano State, Abba Kabir Yusuf said, to show his absolute confidence in his Deputy His Excellency Murtala Sule Garo, as governance pays back for loyalty.

It was at the instance of all federal political appointees meeting with the governor at Governor’s Lodge, Asokoro, Abuja, when the Governor bluntly announced to the faces and hearing of all that, “I have no regrets for choosing Garo as my Deputy in the last few months, and he has proven to be the right choice so far. I want to confirm to you that I have every confidence in him.”

This puts a halt to all speculations before picking HE Garo as Deputy Governor that, his loyalty could be divided when appointed as the Deputy Governor after the resignation of the former Governor, His Excellency Aminu Abdussalam Gwarzo.

To zip the mouth and bad intention of some politicians and to let everyone who cares to listen that, in less than four months, Governor Yusuf believes in HE Garo’s total and absolute loyalty, he picks him again to become his running mate come 2027.

He disclosed this during the meeting as disclosed by Sunusi Bature Dawakin Tofa Director General Media and Publicity, in a press release issued, that “Kano State Governor, Alhaji Abba Kabir Yusuf, has officially announced the nomination of his Deputy, His Excellency Murtala Sule Galadima Garo, as his running mate for the 2027 governorship election.”

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The release discloses that, “He expressed satisfaction with the working relationship between them, noting that Garo had demonstrated competence, dedication, and a strong sense of responsibility in the discharge of his duties.” I now understand the main reason and wisdom behind Governor’s bold decision in sending his Deputy as his representative, in major events. Within and outside Kano.

If not because of this trust and confidence the Governor has in his Deputy he wouldn’t have sent the Deputy to stand for him, during the visit of the high-powered delegation from European Union Ambassadors, USA Independence Day held in US Embassy Abuja and the just concluded Northern Governors Security Summit, among many other equally important events. Only loyalty, from Deputy’s side and confidence from Governor’s side, give this golden opportunity.

Part of the testimony given by the Governor for his choice in HE Garo, as running mate for 2027 is for his “… outstanding loyalty, commitment, and unwavering passion for the development of Kano State since assuming office as Deputy Governor,” speaks volumes about Deputy’s place in both the heart of his principal, the Governor and the art of governance in the state. By now HE Garo understands most significantly and clearly that, loyalty pays. What pays the most, is trust in Allah’s overall decisions, as says repeatedly by the Deputy. All those close to him know what I’m saying exactly.

The release reiterated that, the Governor has all the backing and goodwill support for the Deputy, indicating the nadir of the confidence of the Governor in his Deputy. As the release reads, “The Governor also passed a vote of confidence on the Deputy Governor, describing him as a dependable partner whose contributions have strengthened the administration’s drive to deliver meaningful development across Kano State.”

As a responsible leader who cares about the the unity, strength and the survival of the party beyond election periods, he urged, “… party leaders, political appointees, and supporters to remain united and committed as the administration continues to consolidate on its achievements while preparing for the 2027 general elections.”

By whatever standard and measurement, the union between Governor Yusuf and his Deputy, Garo, started on sound footing with the full support, cooperation and honest engagement of the Governor. While the Deputy is paying back with true loyalty embedded with good substance.

This features stronger administration and focused leadership. The way HE Garo responds to party demands and governance, with the consent of his principal, the Governor, it becomes clearer that, it will be a finer, healthier and merrier 2027 and beyond.

Anwar writes from Kano
Tuesday, 14th July, 2026

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How Umar Haruna Doguwa Is Uniting Kano APC for Tinubu and Governor Abba to Succeed in 2027 Elections

Published

3 weeks ago

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July 12, 2026

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By Sadiq Ali Sango

As political activities gradually gather momentum ahead of the 2027 general elections, the importance of party unity cannot be overstated. Political parties that enter elections divided often struggle to achieve their objectives, regardless of the popularity of their candidates.

In Kano State, one of Nigeria’s most politically influential states, the Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Umar Haruna Doguwa, appears to have made unity the cornerstone of his leadership.

Since assuming office as chairman of the Kano APC, Doguwa has devoted considerable energy to reconciling party members, strengthening internal structures and restoring confidence among stakeholders.

His leadership style has been characterised by consultation, inclusiveness and constant engagement with party leaders and grassroots members across the state.

One of the notable developments under his leadership has been the return of key political figures to the APC.

The decision of former Kano State Governor, Ibrahim Shekarau, and prominent politician Bello Hayatu Gwarzo to join the party has been widely interpreted by supporters as evidence of renewed confidence in the APC’s leadership and direction in Kano.

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Another important test of leadership came during the party’s primary elections. In many states, party primaries often end in prolonged disputes and defections.

In Kano, however, the APC leadership worked to minimise disagreements. Where misunderstandings arose, Doguwa reportedly prioritised dialogue and reconciliation, meeting with stakeholders and encouraging peaceful resolutions.

These efforts helped the party move forward with fewer internal divisions.

His commitment to party cohesion is perhaps most visible in his ongoing tour of Kano’s 44 local government areas. Rather than limiting his engagements to state-level meetings, he has chosen to visit local party structures, meeting with elders, women, youth groups and ward executives.

The objective is to strengthen relationships, address concerns, encourage unity and prepare the party’s grassroots machinery well ahead of the next elections.

Supporters believe this grassroots mobilisation is essential because Kano has historically played a decisive role in Nigeria’s electoral politics.

A united and well-organised party structure, they argue, will be better positioned to mobilise voters and conduct effective campaigns.

Doguwa’s political mission extends beyond managing the affairs of the APC. His ambition is to build a united platform capable of supporting President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf and all APC candidates in achieving success in the 2027 elections. This objective explains his emphasis on reconciliation, inclusion and grassroots engagement.

Doguwa believes that electoral success begins long before campaigns officially commence. It starts with building trust among party members, resolving differences early and ensuring that every stakeholder feels valued. His consultations across the state reflect that philosophy.

Politics is ultimately about organisation as much as popularity. Elections are won not only through campaign rallies but also through strong party structures, disciplined members and effective grassroots mobilisation.

As the countdown to the next general elections continues, sustaining internal cohesion may prove to be one of the APC’s greatest assets. If the current reconciliation efforts are maintained and the party continues to consolidate its support base, Kano APC could approach the 2027 elections with greater confidence and organisational strength than it has enjoyed in recent years.

Sadiq Ali Sango is an APC Youth Activist based in Kano

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