AN OBLONG MEDIA GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE ANALYSIS.
There is something deeply fascinating happening within Nigeria’s political space ahead of 2027, and many people are either too emotional, too partisan or too distracted to notice it clearly.
Politics, especially Nigerian politics, is not always about ideology. Sometimes it is about identity. Sometimes it is about validation. Sometimes it is about belonging. And very often, the loudest political actors are not necessarily the strongest believers in a cause; they are merely the ones struggling hardest to be accepted within the political camps they desperately seek to belong to.
During the 2023 elections, one thing became obvious across Lagos, Abuja, Nasarawa, Plateau, Benue, Edo and several other parts of Nigeria outside the South East. Support for Peter Obi was not restricted to Igbo voters alone. The movement drew energy from Nigerians across ethnic and religious lines who believed they were participating in a larger national conversation about governance, competence and political change.
Many people conveniently forget this reality today.
Several campaign town halls abroad, mobilization meetings and grassroots events were funded and organized not just by South Easterners but by Nigerians from different regions, especially South Western supporters who identified strongly with the “New Nigeria” narrative. In Lagos particularly, many Yoruba supporters openly led campaign marches and mobilization drives without turning political disagreement into a campaign of insults against President Bola Ahmed Tinubu or former Vice President Atiku Abubakar.
The focus, at least among many organized groups, was message driven. The emphasis was on persuasion, not abuse. The campaign revolved around presenting an alternative political vision rather than reducing politics into bitterness and hostility.
The same atmosphere was visible in places like Nasarawa where local coordinators and organizers included Northerners, Yorubas and individuals from multiple ethnic backgrounds who genuinely believed in the movement. The events were energetic but largely issue focused. Even where occasional verbal attacks emerged from overzealous supporters, they did not define the official tone of the movement.
Yet since the elections ended, another curious pattern has steadily emerged, especially within sections of the South East political establishment.
Many vocal supporters of Tinubu from the South East increasingly appear unable to promote the President politically without simultaneously attacking Peter Obi and the Obidient movement. It is as though hostility itself has become their primary political language.
This is where the deeper psychology of Nigerian politics quietly reveals itself.
In political environments where individuals feel ideologically isolated or socially distrusted within the larger structures they belong to, they often compensate through exaggerated displays of loyalty. Political scientists and psychologists have studied this behaviour repeatedly across societies. The louder the performance, the deeper the insecurity beneath it.
And this is precisely what appears to be unfolding.
Rather than focus energy on explaining Tinubu’s economic reforms, defending policy choices, organizing town halls, presenting development scorecards or convincing undecided South Eastern voters why the APC deserves another mandate, many supporters seem trapped in endless online warfare against Obi himself.
Their politics has become performative.
To prove loyalty, they attack. To gain acceptance, they insult. To separate themselves from perceived ethnic stereotypes, they overcompensate publicly.
The irony, however, is that ordinary voters rarely reward noise for long.
Citizens battling inflation, rising transport costs, food prices, insecurity and shrinking purchasing power are usually more interested in practical persuasion than emotional aggression. A struggling trader in Onitsha or a civil servant in Owerri is unlikely to abandon economic concerns simply because somebody on social media coined mocking labels against political opponents.
Noise is not strategy.
Ridicule is not persuasion.
And abuse is not governance.
What makes the situation even more interesting is that many of the same actors attacking Obi daily rarely spend equal energy selling Tinubu’s achievements directly to the South East. Instead, much of their political activity appears designed primarily to signal loyalty to wider APC power circles outside the region.
This creates a peculiar contradiction.
Their campaign becomes inward before it becomes outward. They are no longer simply trying to win voters. They are trying to prove themselves politically acceptable within the structures they belong to.
But while this psychological struggle continues, something much larger may already be forming quietly beneath Nigeria’s political surface.
The possibility of a major opposition realignment involving Peter Obi and Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso has become one of the most discussed scenarios ahead of 2027. Whether it eventually materializes fully or partially, the political logic behind such an alliance is difficult to ignore.
The 2023 elections exposed complementary strengths between both men.
Obi demonstrated enormous appeal among urban youths, sections of the middle class, South East voters and parts of the North Central and South South. Kwankwaso, on the other hand, retained a formidable grassroots political machine across Kano and sections of the North West through the Kwankwasiyya movement.
Separately, both weakened each other’s ability to consolidate anti establishment votes nationally. Together, however, many analysts believe they could dramatically reshape the electoral equation.
At the same time, the PDP continues struggling with fragmentation, internal distrust and unresolved leadership crises. Several influential figures now operate within competing camps and shifting alliances. Smaller opposition parties remain organizationally weak and nationally inconsistent.
This is gradually pushing Nigerian politics toward coalition-driven realignment rather than traditional party loyalty.
Increasingly, elections are becoming less about party structures alone and more about: regional balancing, religious arithmetic, grassroots mobilization, digital influence, coalition building, and perceived credibility.
The APC itself may also face a more difficult electoral environment in 2027 than it did in 2023. Economic hardship, subsidy removal pains, inflation and currency instability have altered public mood considerably. Whether fairly or unfairly, incumbent governments almost always carry the burden of public frustration during difficult economic transitions.
That reality means future elections may depend less on propaganda wars and more on which political coalition successfully convinces Nigerians that it possesses: competence, stability, national balance, economic direction, and political maturity.
Religion and regional balance will also remain central to electoral calculations. Nigeria’s political system still revolves heavily around balancing North and South, Christian and Muslim populations, urban and rural voting blocs.
This partly explains why the Obi-Kwankwaso arrangement continues generating national attention. The ticket would potentially attempt to bridge both regional and religious anxieties simultaneously.
Yet beneath all the calculations, alliances and political maneuvering lies a more uncomfortable question.
Has Nigerian politics become excessively consumed by emotional tribal signaling at the expense of serious political persuasion?
Because ultimately, elections are not permanently won through insults, mockery and online aggression. They are won through organization, coalition building, credibility, message discipline and the ability to inspire confidence beyond one’s immediate ethnic or regional comfort zone.
The politicians and movements that understand this reality earliest may ultimately shape the direction of Nigeria far more decisively than those trapped endlessly inside performative political warfare.
And as 2027 gradually approaches, that distinction may become impossible to ignore.
By Hon. Chima Nnadi-Oforgu
Duruebube Uzii na Abosi
For Oblong Media Global Intelligence
OBLONG MEDIA GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE 
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