2027: Nigerians Urged To Take Interest In Candidates’ Emergence

A group, Peering Advocacy and Advancement Centre in Africa (PAACA) has admonished Nigerians to pay attention to the activities of politicians and political parties as preparations for the 2027 general election intensify.

The executive director of PAACA, Ezenwa Nwagwu, in a statement in Abuja, said that while Nigerians are fixated on the Election Management Body (EMB), there is a need to focus on internal democracy of the political parties and how their candidates emerge from the primary elections

“Nigerians underestimate the role political parties play in the outcome of secondary elections. If the primary elections are bad, the outcome will reflect in the main elections. Ninety per cent of the challenges we have in our elections are due to a lack of internal democracy – imposition of candidates, absence of genuine contest and lack of competition within parties,” Nwagwu said.

He spoke against the backdrop of the expected resumption of the National Assembly’s deliberations on electoral reforms and possible amendments to the Electoral Act.

The PAACA director called on citizens and stakeholders to closely monitor the wave of defections across political parties and their impact on the parties’ internal crises.

He said, “Stakeholders must pay keen attention to what the political parties are doing. We cannot be described as meddlesome interlopers in the affairs of people who recruit leaders for us. The leader’s selection process is a sacred assignment that the political parties are involved in. They are the ones who present candidates. INEC does not present candidates. Sometimes they even present unqualified candidates, and the matter ends up in court.”

He stressed that reforms must go beyond passing new laws every election season, arguing that politicians must embrace a change in their attitudes towards elections and democracy.

“We may have all the good laws, but at the end of the day, it comes down to the attitude of politicians,” Nwagwu said.

“So, as we go for 2027, the reforms are not just going to be legalistic reforms. We must examine how much we have shifted from our subversive attitude to the laws that already exist. Because even when you make new laws, the politicians who make the laws go back to study how to subvert them,” Nwagwu stated further.

Nwagwu faulted what he described as the over-concentration on INEC, noting that election administrators often become scapegoats for crises orchestrated by political actors.

“The challenge is that all of us are fixated on the election administrator whose job is simply to conduct elections. But politicians sometimes go behind the administrator’s back to compromise the administrator and subvert the rules. About 60 per cent of electoral crises are orchestrated by political actors themselves,” he said.

He warned that as the 2027 elections approach, the citizens must remain vigilant and resist attempts by politicians to dominate and divert public discourse.

“We will begin to see the heating up of the polity from February. Politicians have mastered the art of diverting attention from the real issues, and citizens must not allow them to control the narrative,” he cautioned.

Nwagwu predicted that in 2026 Nigerians would see an increase in politicians’ self-promotion.

He criticised lawmakers who, according to him, return home during holidays to distribute food items without engaging constituents meaningfully.

“Many lawmakers went home to share rice, but none held town hall meetings to explain how they have been representing their people in Abuja,” he said.

On reforms, the PAACA boss identified result management as a key area requiring urgent attention.

“The real challenge is collation. What we need is a system that allows electronic collation of results from polling units to local governments. IReV is not collation,” he clarified.