ON Tuesday, presidential candidates trooped to the National Peace Committee and signed yet another peace accord ahead of the 2027 general election. Pen to paper, cameras flashing, the usual solemn faces. If you didn’t know better, you would think we were witnessing something historic.
We are not. We have seen this movie before, and like most Nollywood sequels, the plot doesn’t change, only the actors get older.
The 19th of this month was the official date the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) fixed for campaigns to begin. Official, mind you, because unofficially, campaigns for 2027 started long before Bola Tinubu was sworn in for his current term. I have said it previously on this page and I will say it again: INEC lacks the balls to sanction any political party or candidate for jumping the gun on campaign timelines. The rules exist on paper. Enforcement exists nowhere.
So here we are, with the same three gladiators from 2023 lining up again for round two. Bola Tinubu, Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi. The only difference this time is that Atiku and Obi have swapped jerseys, moving from their old political homes to new ones in search of a formula that finally works. Tinubu remains the lone survivor still standing in the same party that produced him in 2023. Whether new colours on old politicians changes the substance of what they offer Nigerians is a different conversation entirely, and I suspect the answer is no.
Let’s not pretend this is a coincidence of scheduling. Atiku, at 80, is chasing what will almost certainly be his final shot at the presidency after five previous attempts stretching back to 1993. Obi, having polled a formidable third-place finish in 2023 on the back of the Obidient movement, clearly believes a new platform gives him a cleaner shot at consolidating that base without the internal sabotage that trailed him in his old party. Tinubu, meanwhile, enters as the incumbent with all the advantages, and disadvantages, that come with a record now open to scrutiny rather than promises. Three men, three different calculations, one shared appetite for power that has not diminished with age, defeat or, in Tinubu’s case, the burden of governance.What concerns me today is not who signed the accord. It is what the accord is actually worth.
Let’s be honest about what happened in 2023. That election was, by wide consensus, the most toxic in the history of our democracy. Hate speech flourished on social media. Ethnic and religious profiling of candidates and their supporters became a full-time occupation for keyboard warriors. Bigotry was repackaged as political analysis. Cyberbullying of anyone who dared support a different candidate became sport. I don’t expect 2027 to be any different. If anything, I expect the toxicity to arrive on steroids, sharper algorithms, more bots, more manufactured outrage, same old wounded egos doing the manufacturing.
Peace accords have become a ritual, not a restraint. Every election cycle since 2015, candidates gather, sign the document, smile for the cameras, and then go back to their war rooms to plot the next line of attack. Nobody expects the accord to hold, least of all the people who sign it.
Need proof? Go back to the Osun State governorship election. Candidates signed a peace accord before that election too, solemn handshakes, pledges of non-violence, the whole choreography. Yet more than 50 people reportedly lost their lives to election-related violence in that single state contest. Fifty lives. Not fifty insults traded on Twitter, not fifty broken campaign posters. Fifty human beings who will not be coming home.
If a peace accord cannot prevent that kind of carnage in one state election, what exactly are we expecting it to achieve in a national contest involving 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory?
Civil society groups that monitored that election described the violence as some of the worst witnessed in a governorship contest in recent memory, with thugs armed with dangerous weapons operating in broad daylight while security operatives looked the other way. That is not a footnote. That is a warning we chose to ignore.
This is where I ask the question nobody in the National Peace Committee seems interested in answering. What are the consequences for a candidate whose supporters kill, maim or cyberbully opposing supporters during the campaign season? Show me the sanction. Show me the disqualification. Show me the arrest and prosecution of a single high-profile thug who mobilised violence on behalf of a principal. I’ll wait.
Until there is a real cost attached to breaching the accord, signing it is nothing more than a photo opportunity. Politicians know this. That’s precisely why they sign so easily. It costs them nothing and demands nothing of them beyond a few minutes of their schedule and a firm handshake for the cameras.
Mind you, I am not against the idea of a peace accord in principle. In a country where election seasons have historically doubled as security emergencies, some framework for de-escalation matters.
My problem is with a framework that has no teeth. A peace accord without enforcement is like a traffic light without a traffic officer nearby, everyone slows down for the cameras, then speeds right through the moment they think nobody is watching.
Compare this to how election violence is handled in other democracies. In the United Kingdom, campaign conduct is governed by strict electoral law with genuine criminal consequences for intimidation and incitement. In the United States, despite its own deep political toxicity, direct incitement to violence carries real legal exposure that has ended political careers. In Nigeria, we treat electoral violence as an unfortunate but expected feature of the process, like potholes on the expressway. We complain about it, we tweet about it, and then we move on until the next cycle when it happens again, usually worse.
INEC, the police and the Department of State Services all have a role here, and frankly, all three have historically underperformed. The police in particular have a troubling pattern of standing down during politically sensitive moments, only to become suddenly efficient when it’s time to disperse protesters who have no political godfather. That imbalance is part of why violence keeps recurring. When the state apparatus responds selectively, it sends a signal to thugs and their sponsors that certain kinds of violence carry no real risk.
There is also the matter of the digital battlefield, which the 2023 election exposed in painful detail. Bots, coordinated disinformation networks and paid influencers turned social media into a warzone of manufactured hate. The National Broadcasting Commission and the National Information Technology Development Agency have talking points about regulating this space, but talking points don’t stop a viral lie from reaching three million timelines before breakfast. If the peace accord is serious about reducing toxicity, it must include explicit commitments from party structures to police their own online army, not just their physical thugs.
To be sure, some will argue I am being unnecessarily cynical, that the accord at least sets a moral tone even if it lacks legal force. That’s a fair point, and I won’t pretend otherwise. Symbolic gestures do occasionally shift public expectations. But symbolism without accountability has a shelf life, and Nigerians have watched that shelf life expire election after election since 1999.
What would a peace accord with actual teeth look like? First, INEC should be empowered, alongside the security agencies, to disqualify candidates whose campaigns are directly linked to documented incidents of violence, not after a lengthy tribunal process years later, but through an expedited mechanism during the campaign season itself. Second, the police and DSS should establish a joint rapid-response unit specifically tasked with prosecuting political thuggery, separate from the sluggish machinery of ordinary criminal justice. Third, social media platforms operating in Nigeria should be compelled, through proper legislation and not authoritarian overreach, to cooperate with election monitors on flagging coordinated disinformation networks tied to political campaigns.
None of this requires reinventing democracy. It requires political will, something Nigeria’s leadership class has historically found in short supply whenever the cost falls on their own house.
As the campaign officially kicks off, expect the usual chorus of condemnation whenever violence erupts, followed by the usual amnesia once the election is over and the winner is sworn in. Expect candidates to invoke the peace accord only when it is convenient, and to forget it exists the moment their supporters are the ones throwing the first punch.
I hope I am wrong about 2027. I hope this cycle proves different, that the accord signed on Tuesday means something beyond ink and photographs. But hope is not a strategy, and Nigerians deserve more than a ceremonial handshake standing between them and another season of bloodshed.
Until consequences replace ceremony, the peace accord will remain what it has always been: a beautifully choreographed lie that everyone agrees to tell each other every four years.
- 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.