2027: Bloody road to elections

•Attacks, abductions, ambushes mar campaigns, as stakeholders list concerns Though election-induced violence is not entirely new in Nigeria, the recent attacks characterising the ongoing political campaigns reflect growing electoral friction ahead of the 2027 general elections. It is no longer a question of whether violence will shape this election cycle. It already is. From Lafia to Sokoto, from Katsina to Enugu, from Lagos to Rivers, rallies have been disrupted, convoys ambushed, supporters shot, and meetings invaded. What used to peak on election day now begins months before — during primaries, ward meetings, and campaign flag-offs.   Radda   The recent attack on the convoys of the presidential candidate of the NDC and his running mate, Peter Obi and Rabiu Kwankwaso, shocked the nation, but it was not an aberration. It was a symptom. It was the latest chapter in a pattern that has been building for months, documented by parties but ignored by the state. The national pattern It will be the most dangerous lie in Nigerian politics to dismiss each incident as an isolated clash. When viewed together, the incidents form a national map of intimidation. Take Lafia, Nasarawa, on November 4, 2026. A presidential rally of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), attended by Vice President Kashim Shettima, descended into chaos. Over 40 people were injured, several went missing. The cause was not opposition attack. It was an intra-party war. Youths in APC regalia began chanting for the Social Democratic Party governorship candidate, a former Inspector-General of Police, Adamu Abubakar, sparking a clash with supporters of the APC governorship candidate, Aliyu Wadada. Tear gas filled the air, dignitaries fled, the rally was aborted.   Obi   On the same day in Sokoto, two supporters of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) were allegedly shot by the Sokoto State Community Guards along the Sokoto-Wurno Road while travelling to a rally for Atiku Abubakar. The Guards had barricaded the road. This was not a clash between rival youths. This was the alleged use of a state-created security outfit against opposition supporters. A few days earlier in Katsina, the APC convoy heading to the Tinubu-Dikko flag-off in Funtua was attacked on the Yashi-Funtua road in Malumfashi. Stones rained on vehicles. Fourteen suspects were arrested. Days later, in Yankara, Faskari, another APC convoy heading to Governor Dikko Radda’s rally was ambushed. A campaign vehicle was set ablaze, two supporters allegedly died.   Sowore   In Enugu, the National Democratic Congress has been under siege. On September 12, its rally in Ndiuno-Obuoffia, Nkanu West, was attacked. Eight members sustained gunshot injuries, canopies were destroyed. On October 10, its governorship flag-off was disrupted twice — first at Akanu Ibiam Airport, then at its secretariat. Gunshots sent supporters fleeing. One person was shot. Police confirmed disruption. No one has been prosecuted. In Lagos, the violence has been both intra-party and inter-party. On May 21, the APC House of Assembly primary at Ikosi Senior High School, Kosofe, was disrupted by armed hoodlums. Several people were injured. Later, hoodlums stormed the Labour Party secretariat at Idimu, Alimosho, during a defection ceremony to the ADC, destroying furniture and party flags. When attendees moved to Eco Centre Hall in Egbeda, the venue came under attack again. In Rivers State, the ADC documented the killing of a member, Kamadioye, in Emilaghan community, Abua/Odual Local Government Area, while he was preparing for a political meeting. In Edo State, the ADC secretariat in Benin City was attacked in February, with gunshots also reported at the residence of former Governor John Odigie-Oyegun. Police confirmed the attack and promised investigation. Nothing followed. The list goes on. In Adamawa, supporters of President Bola Tinubu clashed with the “Tinubu Must Go” movement in Jimeta, Yola. In Cross River, gunmen attacked two PDP consultation venues, leaving three injured. In Bauchi, PDP vehicles were vandalised at a governorship affirmation event. In Ebonyi, a PDP rally in Ezza South was attacked, ten injured. In Osun, an APC governorship walk in Ile-Ife degenerated into violence in Sabo, three injured. In Ekiti, AAC presidential aspirant Omoyele Sowore and his team were allegedly assaulted in Ado-Ekiti. On September 22, the ADC at a press conference in Abuja said it had documented attacks and intimidation in at least nine states between July 2025 and September 2026: Kaduna, Kebbi, Ekiti, Cross River, Rivers, Edo, Osun, Kogi and Enugu. This is not a series of coincidences. This is a system. Why violence has become a strategy One uncomfortable question stakeholders are asking is: Why does political violence persist, despite over 25 years of democracy? The answer is simple and cynical. According to analysts, it is largely because it works, and because it is free. First, there is an alleged culture of impunity. Parties document attacks. Police promise investigations. The Inspector-General is petitioned. No arrests. No prosecutions. No convictions. When a thug knows he will not be punished, violence becomes a low-risk, high-reward career. Political godfathers have created a whole economy around it — young men hired per rally, per roadblock, per disruption. They are paid in cash, in drugs, in promises of jobs. They are the foot soldiers of a broken system. That culture of impunity is what security analyst Jackson Olalekan-Ojo says Nigerians are now living with daily. “Nigerians are battling with the highest level of insecurity in the history of Nigeria. We haven’t gone anywhere in our effort to end it. And now that an election is coming, another one wants to rear its ugly head,” he said. “The ruling party has taken it upon itself to terrorise the opposition in this country. Some time ago, the presidential candidate of the NDC, Peter Obi, was attacked in Edo State. Nothing came out of it. Recently, Omoyele Sowore was attacked in Ekiti State. Nothing came out of it. A couple of days ago, the ADC gubernatorial candidate of Sokoto State was attacked at the airport. He escaped by the whisker. Up till now, nothing has been done by the federal government.” Second, there is an allegation of the use of state power as a weapon. The Sokoto case is instructive. When a state government creates a Community Guard and that guard is accused of shooting opposition supporters, the line between state security and party militia disappears. The same applies to denial of venues, refusal of permits, and the selective deployment of police to protect one party and harass another. Violence is no longer just by rival supporters. It is by incumbents using the apparatus of state. Third, the latest trend shows there is intra-party desperation. The most dangerous fights in 2026 are not between APC and PDP. They are within the APC itself, within the PDP itself. Primaries for governorship, Senate, and House of Assembly are do-or-die because political office in Nigeria is not just service — it is access to contracts, to security, to immunity. When the stakes are that high, losing a primary is treated as a matter of life and death. The Lafia clash was APC versus APC. The Kosofe primary disruption was APC versus APC. Fourth, there is the ethno-religious trigger. A local clash over a rally is quickly reframed online as an attack by one ethnic group against another, one region against another. This turns a manageable dispute into a national narrative of revenge. It is how violence metastasises. The real rigging is fear The most important data point in this election cycle is not a poll. It is a fear index. Yiaga Africa’s National Voting Intentions Survey found that 84 per cent of Nigerians are keen to vote in 2027, but 61 per cent are concerned about their safety because of election-related violence. Six out of ten Nigerians want to vote but are afraid to do so. This is the real rigging. You do not need to steal ballot boxes if you can scare voters from polling units. You do not need to falsify results if you can ensure that opposition strongholds are too violent to vote in. Violence does not need to kill everyone. It only needs to scare enough people to stay home. That, according to the Secretary of the Ijaw Elders Forum, Efiye Bribena, is precisely the motive behind the wave of violence. “The motive behind the wave of violence we have witnessed is to create voter apathy. It is to drive people away and make them not to vote because if people turn out in large numbers to vote for a particular candidate, it will make it difficult for them to manipulate the results. So they would rather create chaos to make people keep away on the day of the election so that they can manipulate the results,” he said. Olalekan-Ojo agrees, warning that the consequence could go beyond apathy. “This takes Nigerians to be worried because we have a lot of insecurity on our hands. At the end of the day, voter apathy will be there. If that happens, there may be people’s revolt. There is no power in the world that can suppress people’s revolution. We should work against it happening. We should call the government to order. If the country is not peaceful, we don’t have a country,” he said. In 2023, Kimpact Development Initiative recorded 339 incidents of election violence and 165 deaths in the election period alone. The South-West led with 99 incidents, the South-East with 77. Those numbers were not accidents. They were the product of a deliberate strategy to suppress turnout in competitive areas. And the history is even darker. In 2011, post-election violence after Goodluck Jonathan defeated Muhammadu Buhari claimed an estimated 800 lives and displaced 65,000 people. Hundreds died in 2015 and 2019. Each cycle, stakeholders promise “never again.” Each cycle, they repeat. What has changed in 2027 is the timing. Violence used to peak on election day. Now it starts months before, during campaigns, during primaries, during ward meetings. The campaign itself has become the battlefield. For many observers, however, physical violence is only one half of the crisis. The other half is institutional — and potentially more dangerous. Bishop demands credible elections, jobs, relief from hardship2027 elections: Insecurity as an albatross2027: Elections can’t resolve Nigeria’s crisis, hold referendum -IPOB Bribena argues that the biggest threat is not on the streets, but inside INEC itself. “For me, the most critical issue is the mess the INEC has made of the voters register. That is more threatening than any other thing. How can you have AI-generated information in the voters register? They said they know the people who did it. What are they doing about it? How many people have they interrogated or prosecuted for gross violation of electoral laws?” he queried. “This is the biggest threat to our democracy because it means that INEC itself is involved in the attempt to create a flawed voters register with AI-generated information. It means we are not prepared for this election in January. If we cannot trust the electoral umpire to give a credible election, then democracy is under threat.” He links the two crises directly: violence to keep real voters away, and a compromised register to fill the vacuum. “If people that are supposed to vote cannot come out, they will use AI-generated voter register to fill the vacuum. You can imagine my two daughters who just came back to the country and wanted to register in this registration exercise but they could not register. Throughout the period, they made several efforts to register they couldn’t. Yet, we have AI-generated register. “They have just gone too far. They are pushing the country to the extent where the military might be forced to intervene. That is the greatest threat to democracy,” he said. It is a warning echoed, in even starker terms, by elder statesman Chief Chekwas Okorie. On March 12, Okorie said he released an open letter to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, urging him to stop what he described as brewing anarchy. “I did that recognising him as the President and Commander-in-Chief of Nigerian Armed Forces. The signs I saw at the time pointed to the polity that would be characterised by violence. And I cited instances of extreme hate speeches made by both state and non-state actors, but the government agencies turned a blind eye to all of these provocations. “Eighty to 90 per cent of these things came from the agents of the ruling party, indicating some kind of panic, that in spite of all the advantages of incumbency, that the APC government was afraid that it could not survive a free, fair and credible election. Therefore, the act of threats, bullying, intimidation is the way to remain in power,” he stated. Okorie said he later issued another statement urging South East governors not to allow the South East to become another theatre of war, knowing that the North East and North West were already sectors of fratricidal war. “I stated then that another war sector from the South East that had already experienced a 30-month fratricidal war would be too much for the country. Now nobody seems to pay any kind of attention to these early warnings, and things are beginning to degenerate,” he added. For Okorie, the most alarming development is not just the violence, but the use of the courts to remove opponents from the ballot. “The worst that has happened is the judgment that disqualified the national leadership of ADC and their presidential candidate from participating in the election. Although they have the right of appeal, but the period for appeal up to Supreme Court is not in their favour, knowing that the election will be in January. This is another invitation to anarchy, and judiciary is being used to promote this impending anarchy,” he said. Bribena shares that concern: “I don’t know how to quantify the recent judgment of the High Court on the ADC crisis. What they are telling Nigerians and the world is that they can use the court to achieve whatever purpose they want.” Okorie warned that if the core people of the North, who see Atiku as a cult figure, believe they are being targeted for exclusion, they may react violently — and Nigeria would be the worse for it. “If a critical section of the country, the section of the country that had depended almost in all their lives on political relevance to survive, believes that the ADC candidate is being deliberately excluded from participation, it could trigger violent protest. “We have never seen anything like this in the past. I can predict that it will bring down Nigeria and it will never be the same again. Bear in mind that no country has survived two civil wars. And now somebody wants to trigger this particular one that has to do with the desire to capture power and not to win power. That will be the end of Nigeria. But may God forbid it,” he declared. His appeal is direct: “I want to seize this opportunity to call on the President, President Bola Tinubu, to take immediate steps to allow a free and fair election, to allow for a level playing ground. He can call the courts to order. He is the Commander-in-Chief. He has immense powers under the constitution.” “Nigeria is sitting on a keg of gunpowder. Nigeria is facing a lot of challenges from personal, family, community, and national levels. Nigeria has several flashpoints. It will only require a little ignition to trigger a conflagration of uncontrollable dimension,” Okorie warned. What trend portends for democracy If this pattern continues, the consequences will be profound and long-lasting. First, there could be a legitimacy crisis. If people believe elections are won by thugs, not votes, the winner — whoever he is — will start without legitimacy. A president elected in a blood-soaked process will struggle to govern a divided country. Second is the shrinking political space. When opposition parties cannot campaign freely, multi-party democracy becomes theatre. Only incumbents can move. Only the powerful can gather. Critics say, “that is not democracy. That is authoritarianism with ballot papers.” More worrisome is the normalisation of violence. Each cycle raises the threshold. What was shocking in 2011 is now “normal” in 2026. The next generation of politicians is learning a terrible lesson: that violence works, that it is cheaper than persuasion, that it is safer than debate. Beyond that, there is an alleged politicisation of security forces. When Community Guards, police, and other agencies are seen as party tools, citizens lose trust in the state itself. And when citizens lose trust in the state, they turn to ethnic militias, to vigilantes, to self-help. That is how a country unravels. More ominous is the rising risk of post-election explosion. Pre-election violence is a predictor. If campaigns are this violent in November, what will happen on January 16, when the presidential election holds, and on February 6, when governorship elections hold? The fuse is already lit. APC fights back Renowned constitutional lawyer, Dr Tunji Abayomi, dismissing the accusation of deliberate suppression of the opposition, queried: “Why is it that it is only bad things for which they always hold the APC responsible? He said: “If good things happen to them, it is not the APC. But if bad things happen to them, regardless of what caused it, it is always the APC. If today the son of an opposition candidate joins a different political party, it is the APC that caused it. It is ridiculous. “A court decided on a matter, and you are blaming the APC. Is the APC the one controlling the court? The judiciary may not be perfect, but by and large, it has to decide according to the law. Even during the military government that was intimidating, the judiciary tried as much as possible to stand up. “Look at former Vice President Atiku Abubakar. He moves from one party to another. Do you know how many times he has moved from one party to the other? And each time he moved, he imposed vhimself on an existing political order, dismissed the people managing it, and used his money to intimidate. “When you open up the chest of a political party without anaesthesia and impose your own heart because your heart is big, you must expect that you will have some problems. “Regardless of how they feel, the judiciary will never be intimidated. The only thing that can intimidate the judiciary is wrongdoing by the judiciary itself. The opposition should just wake up to piety.” Failure of institutions It may not be appropriate to say nothing is being done. INEC has activated its early-warning mechanism. It has reminded parties of Sections 92 and 93 of the Electoral Act 2022, which prohibit abusive language, physical attacks, and threats. The National Peace Committee will, as usual, gather candidates to sign a Peace Accord. But beyond the ritual, the Peace Accord is not seen as a deterrent. Candidates sign it with a smile and return to their bases to unleash thugs. The Electoral Act has become a book of suggestions, not law. There is no enforcement. Until a godfather is jailed for sponsoring thugs, until a governor is sanctioned for using state guards against opposition, until a party is deregistered for repeated violence, the cycle will continue. The police must also be reformed from a tool of incumbents into a neutral protector of all. INEC must be empowered to cancel elections in areas where violence is proven to have suppressed turnout. The judiciary must fast-track election violence cases. And, as Bribena insists, INEC must account for the AI-generated entries in the voters register — who created them, who authorised them, and who has been prosecuted. Nigeria stands at a crossroads. The 2027 election will not be judged by the world on the basis of turnout alone. It will be judged by the body count. Campaign violence has been aptly described as a direct assault on democracy itself. Democracy is not just the right to vote. It is the right to campaign without fear, to assemble without being shot, to wear a party colour without being attacked, to disagree without being killed. Tags:

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