THE 2027 campaign has officially kicked off, and I dare say this is shaping up to be one of the most interesting political seasons this country has witnessed in a while. But before the trumpets get too loud, there is one thing I want to see change from the last cycle: the era of blanket promises without a roadmap. Like we say in local parlance, “you have to show working.” Nigerians are tired of politicians who show up with slogans and disappear the moment you ask for the arithmetic.
That is why, for once, I am genuinely pleased with the fuel subsidy argument currently playing out between the presidency and the presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Atiku Abubakar. Recall that ahead of the 2023 election, virtually every major candidate promised to remove the fuel subsidy. Bola Tinubu said it. Atiku said it. Peter Obi said it. Basically, the country’s three leading candidates ran on the same economic script, dressed in different party colours. So for the first time in a while, we are actually seeing a genuine divergence of positions, and that is healthy for democracy, whichever side of the fence you sit on.
No doubt, both positions have merit and both have holes you could drive a fuel tanker through. Atiku says he will bring back some form of subsidy intervention.Fine. But the question I want answered is simple: how? How does he intend to fund major infrastructure while also subsidising petrol? How do states, many of which are still owing salaries, generate enough revenue to survive without going cap in hand for fresh loans? We need the breakdown, not the applause line.
Let us also be honest about Atiku’s history here. This is a man who has been in and around power for over two decades, first as Vice President for eight years, then as a serial presidential aspirant since forever . Subsidy removal was never his signature tune until it became politically expedient to distinguish himself from the current administration. That does not automatically make his new position wrong, politicians are allowed to evolve, but it does mean the burden of proof sits squarely on his shoulders to show us the working, not just the slogan.
The presidency, for its part, has hit back hard. In a statement issued on Wednesday, the Presidency described Atiku’s position on subsidy as “confused and incoherent,” accusing him of playing politics with the economic hardship of ordinary Nigerians. According to the statement, the confusion started when Atiku’s spokesman, Paul Ibe, said the former Vice President would restore the subsidy if elected, only to phase it out later, a position Ibe framed as a temporary cushion to give households and businesses room to recover.
The Presidency says that explanation has since mutated into at least three different versions within a single week. If that is true, and I suspect it largely is, then Atiku’s camp needs to get its story straight before the campaign proper begins. Nigerians have long memories when it comes to broken promises, mind you.
Peter Obi, on his part, running now under the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), has taken a slightly different route. He says he too will remove the subsidy, but his real quarrel is with how the freed-up funds are spent, not with the removal itself. It is a more coherent position on paper, though I still want to see his numbers, because “trust me, I will spend it better” is not a policy, it is a vibe.
This subsidy argument, however genuine, is only one leg of a three-legged stool. The other two, insecurity and power, deserve just as much scrutiny, and this is where I get worried that the campaign will slide back into the usual grandstanding.
On insecurity, it is simply not enough for any candidate to stand at a rally and declare “I will tackle insecurity” to thunderous applause. What is the plan? Funding has never really been the problem. Both the Buhari and Tinubu administrations have poured significant resources into the military, and President Tinubu has gone further to raise the salaries and allowances of military personnel. Yet almost every week we still wake up to fresh reports of abductions, ambushes and communities sacked by armed men.
Something in the strategy, not just the budget, is clearly not working, and any candidate who cannot articulate what he would do differently, structurally, operationally, in terms of intelligence gathering and inter-agency coordination, is simply offering us more of the same dressed in a new manifesto.
There is also the question of state policing, an old argument on this page that refuses to die because the federal police structure keeps failing to answer it. I have said it before and I will say it again: a single centralised police force cannot secure a country of over 200 million people spread across 36 states and the FCT. Maybe this current administration will start the police police before the elections.
The human and financial cost of this insecurity has been staggering. We have lost hundreds of thousands of citizens to banditry, kidnapping and insurgency since the crisis began, and millions more live with trauma that no campaign speech can undo. That is the backdrop against which every candidate’s security promise must be measured, not against how loudly they can condemn insecurity on a podium in Lagos or Abuja.
On power, I will give credit where it is due. Peter Obi recently said something that, for once, sounded like an honest politician rather than a campaign robot: he admitted he cannot guarantee 24-hour power supply within four years. That is the hard truth, and I respect him for saying it out loud. No government, no matter how brilliant its economic team, is fixing Nigeria’s power sector in a single term.
The grid is too old, the transmission infrastructure too fragile, and the distribution companies too dysfunctional for anyone to promise a miracle by 2031. Candidates who promise stable power in one term either do not understand the sector or think we are still gullible enough to believe them. Neither is a good look.
There is a related question nobody in this campaign has bothered to answer yet: what happens to the 36 states in whatever new economic arrangement emerges from this subsidy fight? Most state governments in this country still cannot pay salaries without leaning on federal allocation, and several governors have quietly admitted their states are not economically viable on their own.
If Atiku restores subsidy even temporarily, where does that money come from, and does it come at the expense of the federation account states depend on? If Obi removes it outright and redirects funds federally, do states get a fair share, or does Abuja simply hoard the windfall the way previous administrations have done? These are not abstract questions. They determine whether workers in Sokoto or Ebonyi get paid at the end of the month.
So here is my simple prescription as the campaign train gathers steam. Every candidate serious about 2027 must attach a “how” to every “what.” On subsidy: show the revenue model, show the borrowing ceiling, show which states survive and which ones collapse under the new arrangement. On insecurity: show the operational changes, not just the budget line, and name the specific reforms to intelligence-sharing and state policing. On power: give us an honest, staged timeline, not a fantasy number pulled out of thin air to win applause.
But knowing this country as I do, I fear the campaign may still be hijacked by tribal, religious and regional sentiment long before the debate on substance ever gets a fair hearing. It happened in 2023, and it happened in nearly every election before that. Politicians who cannot defend their record on competence will always find it easier to retreat to the safety of ethnic arithmetic and religious balancing. I hope I am wrong this time, but history has not been kind to my optimism on this particular point.
Still, credit must go where it belongs. The fact that we now have three major candidates disagreeing on subsidy policy, rather than reciting an identical script, is itself a small sign of democratic maturity. It means Nigerians going into 2027 will, for the first time in a while, actually have competing economic philosophies to weigh rather than a uniform chorus. That is progress, however modest.
What Nigerians need from here on is discipline from the media and civil society to keep asking the follow-up question every time a candidate makes a promise. Not “what will you do,” but “how exactly will you do it, with what money, in what timeframe, and what happens if it fails.” Any candidate who cannot answer that in plain language does not deserve our votes, regardless of their tribe, their party or their godfather.These are the issues.
- Nda-Isaiah is a political analyst based in Abuja and can be reached on jonesdryx@gmail.com. His syndicated column appears on News Point Nigeria newspaper on Saturday.