By Kunle Oshobi
There comes a time in the life of every nation when the people must decide whether they will be governed or whether they will govern. For Nigeria, that time is now. With President Bola Tinubu and a compliant National Assembly having conspired to water down the Electoral Act 2026, deliberately stripping out provisions that would have made real-time electronic transmission of results mandatory, the message from Aso Rock to the Nigerian electorate is clear: we do not intend to let your votes count.
This is not paranoia. This is pattern recognition.
The same administration that benefited from a compromised 2023 electoral process has now, with surgical precision, ensured that the legal framework for 2027 retains exactly the loopholes that make manipulation possible. The “dual transmission” system, which permits manual collation as a fallback whenever “network failure” is cited, is not an infrastructure concession. It is a trapdoor, built into law by people who know exactly how to use it. A government confident in its popularity does not fear transparency. Only a government that knows it cannot win a free and fair election works this hard to ensure elections are neither free nor fair.
The polling data confirms what ordinary Nigerians already feel in their bones. Fuel subsidy removal has pushed millions deeper into poverty. The naira has lost catastrophic value. Electricity remains a fantasy for most households. Food inflation has made hunger a daily reality for families who were merely struggling two years ago. Tinubu’s approval ratings have collapsed across every geopolitical zone. A man with those numbers does not win re-election on merit. He wins it on manipulation, and he has just handed himself the legal tools to do exactly that.
This is why the opposition cannot afford, not for a single moment, the luxury of division.
The “Obi or Nothing” Trap
To the Obidients, the passionate, energetic, largely young movement that rallied behind Peter Obi in 2023, this message must be delivered with love but without ambiguity: you are being played.
The “Obi or nothing” narrative that circulates relentlessly on social media, that dismisses any coalition or alliance not centred exclusively on Peter Obi, did not emerge organically from the grassroots.
It is being actively promoted, amplified and sustained by APC operatives and their proxies, who understand one simple truth: a divided opposition is a defeated opposition. Every time an Obidient declares that they would rather stay home than vote for any candidate other than Obi, they cast a vote for Tinubu. Every time the Labour Party faithful refuse to engage in coalition conversations, they hand the APC another four years.
Peter Obi himself is a credible, intelligent and capable Nigerian. This is not about diminishing him. This is about understanding how power actually works. In a contest where the incumbent controls INEC, has the loyalty of a compromised judiciary and has now enshrined electoral ambiguity in law, the opposition needs the largest, broadest, most unified front it can possibly assemble. No single party, no single candidate, no single tribe or region can deliver that alone.
The question Obidients must ask themselves is devastatingly simple: what do you want more, Peter Obi as the face of the opposition, or Tinubu out of power? If the answer is truly the latter, then coalition politics is not betrayal. It is strategy.
INEC and the Judiciary Have Failed Us
Nigerians must also disabuse themselves of any remaining faith in institutional rescue. INEC promised electronic transmission in 2023 and broke that promise on election day itself. Rather than face accountability, it was shielded by a judiciary that has consistently found creative legal reasoning to validate flawed presidential elections. The Presidential Election Petition Tribunal and the Supreme Court have, through their judgments, sent a message to electoral manipulators across the country: the courts will not stop you. That means the people must stop them.
What Must Be Done
Civil society organisations, trade unions, student bodies, market associations, religious groups, and community leaders must begin immediate voter education and mobilisation. Accreditation must be taken seriously. Every Nigerian who is eligible must register and must vote. Polling unit-level result verification, citizens photographing and uploading results from EC8A forms, must become a mass movement, so that any manipulation between the polling unit and the collation centre is immediately exposed.
The opposition parties, ADC, PDP, Labour Party, NNPP, and others, must enter serious, honest, ego-free coalition negotiations now, not six months before the election. The candidate that emerges must be agreed upon through a process that every stakeholder can defend, and once agreed, every organ of the opposition must campaign for that candidate as if democracy itself depends on it. Because it does.
Nigerians must also be mentally and physically prepared to defend their mandate. Not with violence, that road leads only to ruin, but with presence, persistence, and noise. The West African experience, from Senegal to Ghana, teaches us that organised, peaceful, determined citizens can defeat even rigged systems when they show up in numbers too large to ignore and refuse to go home until their will is respected.
2027 must not be business as usual. The cost of another stolen election is not merely political. It is generational. It is the poverty, the brain drain, the insecurity, and the hopelessness that follows when a people surrender their power to those who were never meant to hold it.
Nigeria belongs to Nigerians. It is time to take it back.
Kunle Oshobi is the Head of Strategy and Planning of The Narrative Force
