The Politics Of The Gun

The 2027 general elections are still few weeks away, yet the language of some of the country’s leading politicians already smells of gunpowder. In Edo State, the chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Jarrett Tenebe, told party supporters in Benin City that anyone who stood in the way of the party’s target of 2.5 million votes for President Bola Tinubu would face “AK-47 fire”. In Delta State, the senatorial candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and former Deputy Senate President, Ovie Omo-Agege, warned that whoever rigs the election would be killed, and dared those who did not value their lives to try it. Both are seasoned public men who know the weight of their words.

Tenebe did not stop at firearms. He also warned the presidential hopefuls, Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar, that they must notify Governor Monday Okpebholo and obtain his permission before entering Edo State, or be denied entry. We find this astonishing.

Section 41 of the 1999 Constitution guarantees every Nigerian citizen the right to move freely throughout the federation and to reside in any part of it. No governor issues visas for passage between Benin and Asaba, and no party chairman has the authority to declare a state closed to political opponents. That a ruling party official can say this openly, and remain in office without so much as a rebuke, tells us how low the bar of political conduct has fallen.

The rot is not confined to one party or one state. During the build-up to the Osun governorship election, the senator representing Osun East, Francis Fadahunsi, drew heavy criticism after reportedly urging his supporters to confront and physically resist rival parties. And at an African Democratic Congress (ADC) town hall meeting in Benin, the vice presidential candidate of the party, Rotimi Amaechi, told voters that only thieves and madmen would vote for President Tinubu, and that Edo people would be mad if they did so. An insult is not a death threat, and we draw that distinction carefully. But to brand millions of voters as thieves and lunatics for their choice of candidate is the kind of base language that heats up a combustible polity.

The law on all of this is not in doubt. The Electoral Act 2026, which repealed the 2022 Act in February, prohibits abusive, intemperate or inflammatory campaign language capable of provoking violent reactions under Section 96. Section 97 goes further and makes it an offence for any party, candidate or group of persons to threaten anyone, directly or indirectly, with force or violence during a political campaign. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) itself warned in September that offenders risk heavy fines and imprisonment. Beyond the Electoral Act, an open threat to kill falls squarely within the criminal law on threats to life and incitement to public disturbance, which carry far stiffer penalties than any electoral fine.

The trouble, as we have said on this page before, has never been the absence of law. It is the absence of enforcement. Cycle after cycle, politicians issue threats on camera, the clips go viral, civil society groups issue statements, and then nothing happens. The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has already called on the Department of State Services to investigate Tenebe. We have yet to hear that the police, the DSS or the Attorney-General of the Federation have taken the matter up. When the people who make the laws, and those who run the parties that make them, can threaten bloodshed and walk away untouched, the statute book becomes a decoration.

We also reject the reasoning, implied in Omo-Agege’s outburst, that the threat of violence is excusable when it is aimed at riggers. Electoral fraud is a grave crime, and Nigerians have every reason to be angry about it, given the record of past elections. But the remedy for rigging lies with INEC, the security agencies and the courts, not with self-appointed executioners at polling units. A society that permits politicians to announce in advance that they will kill those they suspect of fraud has handed every thug on election day a licence to decide who is guilty. That is jungle justice.

It is worth asking who will pull the triggers that these men speak of so casually. It will not be the party chairmen or the senatorial candidates. It will be unemployed young men, armed and paid for a day, and the voters, polling officials and youth corps members caught in the crossfire. Edo and Delta both carry the scars of violent elections, and the country has buried too many people whose only offence was turning up to vote. Every threat of this kind also keeps peaceful citizens at home, which may well be the intention. Voter apathy is already a crisis, and intimidation only deepens it.

The political parties cannot hide behind silence. The national leadership of the APC should state plainly whether “AK-47 fire” reflects its campaign strategy, since Tenebe spoke in the name of the President’s re-election. The NDC owes Nigerians a similar account of its Delta candidate, and the ADC should call its leaders to a higher standard of speech. President Tinubu, in particular, has the most to gain from disowning violence carried out in his name. A party that will not discipline its own officials for threatening to shoot opponents should not be surprised when voters conclude that the threat is party policy.

We therefore call on INEC to formally refer these statements to the police for investigation, and on the Inspector-General of Police and the Attorney-General of the Federation to act on them without regard to party or rank.

Prosecution of even one prominent offender would do more to calm the 2027 campaign than a hundred peace accords signed before television cameras. Civil society, the media and voters must keep a public record of every such threat and every response to it. Elections are won with ballots. Whoever reaches for the gun should meet the courts long before he meets the polling unit.