The Campaign Is Leaving Abuja — And Entering The Polling Booth

For months, Nigeria’s 2027 election has largely been a contest of political declarations. Defections. Coalitions.
Endorsements. Campaign launches.

Claims about who controls which state. But something important is beginning to change.

We are starting to get evidence.
Last weekend, voters went to the polls in five legislative bye-elections across Gombe, Kano, Bauchi and Delta.
This week, a new voter-sentiment survey offered another snapshot of the national mood.

Political structures continued to shift.

The Supreme Court intervened decisively in the rules governing party primaries.

And rising petrol prices again pushed the cost of living towards the centre of the political conversation.

The 2027 campaign is entering a different phase.

The politicians are still talking.

But increasingly, there are numbers against which we can test what they are saying.
That is this Friday’s Political Signal.

REAL VOTERS. REAL BALLOTS

The September 19 bye-elections deserve attention.
These were not opinion polls.

They were not rallies.
And they were not local-government elections administered by state electoral commissions.
They were INEC-run elections.

Five legislative seats were contested across four states. The APC won four. The Allied Peoples Movement won one.

The APC prevailed in the Gombe/Kwami/Funakaye Federal Constituency; Dawakin Kudu State Constituency in Kano; Disina State Constituency in Bauchi; and Udu State Constituency in Delta.

The APM won Sakwa State Constituency in Bauchi.

We should resist the temptation to turn five constituency elections into a national forecast.

Local candidates matter. Turnout matters. The circumstances of individual constituencies matter. And a presidential election involving the entire country is an entirely different contest.

There are also questions emerging from some polling-unit result sheets that deserve scrutiny.

A report published today identified apparent discrepancies between accreditation figures and votes recorded on a number of result sheets.

Those claims require examination rather than assumption. But even with those qualifications, the results give us useful information.

The ruling party demonstrated organisation across three geopolitical zones: the North-East, North-West and South-South. And Kano deserves particular attention.
The APC won Dawakin Kudu in a state where Rabiu Kwankwaso and the Kwankwasiyya movement remain important to the wider 2027 calculation.

But neither the NDC nor ADC contested that election.

So it would be particularly unwise to interpret Dawakin Kudu as a direct test of the presidential contest.

What it does tell us is simpler: Kano should not be treated as politically settled territory.

These elections are data points.

We should collect them.
We should not exaggerate them.

NIGERIA 2027 ELECTION WATCH

Beginning this week, Political Signals will regularly examine the elections, political movements, alliances, economic pressures and voter behaviour that could shape 2027.

Our principle will be straightforward: Follow the evidence rather than the noise.
And this week’s evidence presents an intriguing picture.

APC: ORGANISATION VERSUS THE ECONOMY

The bye-election results reinforce something we have been observing.
The APC has considerable political infrastructure.
Incumbency provides visibility and organisational advantages, while recent election results give us some evidence of mobilisation capacity across different regions.

But organisation is only one side of the equation.
The other is the economy.

Petrol prices have risen sharply again as global oil-market pressures feed through to Nigerian consumers, intensifying an already difficult cost-of-living environment only months before the election.

That creates an important political tension.
The ruling party can point to its organisation, incumbency and policy programme.

Voters will also judge the lived consequences of government policy.
Between now and January, the relationship between those two forces deserves close attention.

NDC: FROM ENTHUSIASM TO ORGANISATION

Peter Obi and Rabiu Kwankwaso are moving towards a formal national campaign structure. The NDC has authorised Obi, its presidential candidate, and Kwankwaso, his running mate, to nominate several principal officers of its Presidential Campaign Council, including the Director-General, Deputy Director-General for the North, campaign spokespeople and senior finance and new-media officials. The challenge now is conversion.

Can political enthusiasm become party machinery? Can national popularity become ward-level organisation? Can campaign crowds become polling-unit agents? And can different political networks operate as one disciplined election machine? Those questions become more important with every passing week.

ADC: BUILDING IN ONDO

Atiku Abubakar and ADC National Secretary Rauf Aregbesola were in Akure this week to receive former PDP governorship candidate Eyitayo Jegede and his supporters into the ADC. Jegede did not arrive alone. Among those reported to have moved with him were former officeholders and PDP officials at local-government level.

At almost the same time, Sola Ebiseni, Labour’s South-West presidential campaign coordinator in 2023, moved in the opposite direction, joining the APC and declaring support for President Tinubu’s re-election. That is almost a miniature portrait of the 2027 campaign.

Political structures are moving. Old party loyalties are weakening. Networks are being redistributed. But there is a principle we should remember throughout this campaign: Defections are not votes. The real test is whether politicians who change parties can bring significant numbers of voters with them. Ondo therefore goes onto our watch list.

PDP AND LABOUR: WHAT REMAINS?

INEC has now published its final presidential list.
There are 18 candidates. Among the principal tickets are Bola Tinubu of the APC, Atiku Abubakar of the ADC, Peter Obi of the NDC, Seyi Makinde of the APM, Sandy Onor of the PDP and Sunday Okereke of Labour.
That tells us something important about the opposition landscape.

The political forces that challenged the APC in 2023 have been substantially rearranged. For the PDP and Labour, therefore, one of the questions we should now follow is not simply what their presidential candidates say. It is: How much of their previous electoral structure remains? And how much has followed prominent politicians elsewhere? Their performances in subsequent elections may tell us more than their press conferences.

THE POLL: A WARNING AGAINST CERTAINTY

Then there is the latest SBM Intelligence Voter Sentiment Tracker.

Its September survey questioned 1,103 eligible voters across 12 states and the FCT, covering all six geopolitical zones. It recorded NDC support at 42.2 per cent and APC at 25.5 per cent.

But the movement since May is perhaps more interesting than the headline.
In SBM’s May survey, NDC stood at 57.4 per cent while APC was around 11 per cent.

In other words, the gap in this particular survey narrowed substantially in four months.

That does not tell us what will happen on January 16. No single survey can.

The sample is limited and should not be confused with the electorate as a whole. But it tells us something worth remembering: Political sentiment moves.

Today’s political advantage is not necessarily January’s.

There is another dimension we should follow closely.
SBM’s findings point towards differences between urban and rural political sentiment.

That could become one of the important geographical questions of 2027.

Nigeria does not vote only in Lagos, Abuja, Kano and Port Harcourt.

The election will also be decided in thousands of smaller towns and communities where political organisation, local networks and turnout may produce a very different picture.

THE YOUTH METER
And now to a constituency everybody talks about, but nobody should take for granted. Young Nigerians.
Nigeria has an enormous youth population.

But demographics do not vote. People do. And registration alone does not elect a president. Turnout does.

There is already evidence that younger Nigerians have shown strong interest in the registration process.

During an earlier phase of the current Continuous Voter Registration exercise, INEC reported that people aged 18–34 accounted for roughly 68 per cent of online pre-registrations and nearly 74 per cent of completed registrations in the period it reported.

Those numbers are striking.

But they are not yet votes.

That distinction is fundamental.

The questions we should be asking are: Are young Nigerians registered? Will they actually turn out? What issues are moving them? Where are they geographically? And will their political preferences consolidate or fragment?

The 2023 election demonstrated the capacity of younger and urban voters to disrupt established political assumptions.

It also demonstrated something else: Political enthusiasm and electoral conversion are not the same thing.

Social-media engagement is not turnout.

A rally is not a polling unit.

A movement is not yet an election-day organisation.

So from this week, Political Signals introduces a permanent feature within our Election Watch:

THE YOUTH METER
We will track registration. Engagement. The issues motivating younger voters. Geographical distribution. And, ultimately, turnout.
Because millions of motivated younger voters distributed across several geopolitical zones could have a different electoral effect from the same number concentrated overwhelmingly in a few metropolitan areas.
The youth vote may matter enormously in 2027.
But first, the youth must vote.

MINNA: THE STORY HAS NOT ENDED

Last Friday, we examined the deaths of detainees in custody in Minna.

The story has not gone away.
Survivors subsequently gave disturbing accounts of what they said happened inside the detention facility.

The authorities have promised an investigation, while the circumstances and cause of the deaths remain matters requiring authoritative determination.

That is precisely why the distinction we made last week remains important.

Allegation is not proof.

But investigation without transparent findings will not resolve public concern either.

The questions now are straightforward.
What happened? What caused the deaths? Will the investigation establish responsibility, if any? Will its findings be made public? And if wrongdoing is established, will accountability follow?

This is larger than partisan politics. It concerns confidence in the institutions of the Nigerian state.

And confidence in institutions eventually has political consequences.

THE SUPREME COURT CHANGES THE RULES

There was another consequential development this week.
The Supreme Court restored provisions of the Electoral Act 2026 that had previously been struck down by the Court of Appeal.
The provisions – Sections 77(5), 77(6), 77(7) and 84(2), deal with party membership registers and procedures for nominating candidates. Section 84(2), in particular, provides for candidate nomination through direct primaries or consensus. This may sound technical.
It isn’t. Nigeria’s elections are frequently contested twice: First politically. Then legally.

The Supreme Court decision gives parties greater clarity about the rules against which nomination processes may be judged. And wherever internal party disputes remain unresolved, those provisions could become important.
So while politicians campaign in the streets, lawyers will be watching the paperwork.

Perhaps the most useful line this week is not something said at a campaign rally. It is the lesson emerging from the evidence:
Defections are not votes. Polls are not results. Rallies are not turnout.
January will tell us which political organisations successfully converted all three into ballots.

The Economy.
If petrol prices remain elevated, watch whether the cost of living becomes an even more dominant campaign issue.

Kano and the North-West.
The APC’s Dawakin Kudu victory gives us one data point. The ability of the Obi-Kwankwaso ticket to mobilise Kwankwasiyya networks provides another test altogether.

Ondo and the South-West.
Jegede to ADC. Ebiseni to APC. Two political networks moving in opposite directions. Now we watch the voters.

The Campaign Organisations. The point at which presidential campaigns develop credible structures across states, wards and polling units may tell us more than another round of elite endorsements.

The Youth – Not social-media noise.
Registration.
Organisation.
Turnout.

And the Courts.
Following the Supreme Court judgment, nomination disputes and compliance with party membership rules deserve close attention.

The 2027 election is beginning to move from speculation towards evidence.
We have ballots.
We have polling.
We have campaign organisations taking shape.
We have politicians changing camps.
We have economic pressures that voters can feel directly.
And we have a Supreme Court judgment clarifying important electoral rules.
None of these tells us what Nigerians will decide on January 16, 2027, the date on INEC’s official calendar for the presidential election.
Nor should they.
The choice belongs to the voters.
But together, these signals tell us something important.
The campaign is leaving the conference rooms and entering the country.
From here, the most reliable political signals will increasingly come not from what politicians say about their strength but from what voters actually do.

That is this Friday’s Political Signal.

Political Signals is an independent political analysis. It examines political developments, personalities, institutions and electoral trends without endorsement of any political party or candidate. Assessments are based on publicly available evidence and may change as events and evidence develop.

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