Politics is less predictable than rulers imagine. Regimes often appear strongest shortly before rupture because fear silences dissent publicly while anger accumulates privately. The danger for overconfident political establishments is that they begin mistaking silence for acceptance.
When manipulation, imposition, propaganda, and open impunity become normalized, politics stops being democratic competition and becomes grotesque theatre. regimes which appear invincible often collapse suddenly because rulers mistake fear for loyalty and control for legitimacy.
History teaches that political systems often decay linguistically before they collapse institutionally. It is metaphorically rich, I think, my saying that the Election Highway in Nigeria is mined. In Today’s Nigeria, words have lost their meanings. Manipulation has become “strategy,” imposition has become “consensus,” Intimidation has become “party discipline” and Electoral theft has become “competitive primaries.” Political absurdities have become so normalized that citizens have stopped reacting to them with outrage and have adapted to them as though they are natural features of governance.
In Nigerian politics, some developments are absurd, others ridiculous, and others utterly ludicrous. Distinctions may exist between those descriptions, but they all ultimately translate to the same reality: grotesque politics.
The APC Primaries for elective offices across Nigeria revealed that grotesquery in its rawest form. Despite widespread reports of manipulation, candidate imposition, procedural irregularities, and protests across several states, the Party Chairman boldly described the exercises as “the most competitive primaries” in the party’s history yet as he was lieing bold facedly, videos were circulating widely showing angry delegates, chaotic scenes, accusations of rigging, and protests against so-called “consensus candidates” who, in many cases, emerged not through consensus but through political coronation.
Everything has a cost but dignity shouldn’t be for sale. That’s simple enough to comprehend but in Nigeria, Poverty and desperation have normalized transactional politics and that explains why political language has become deceptive, democratic institutions are merely performative and ruling elites are overconfident precisely because legitimacy has eroded beneath them.
History teaches that societies do not explode merely because they are poor. Societies unravel or explode when deprivation collides with hopelessness, when people become convinced that the system is irredeemably rigged against them and that peaceful democratic participation is meaningless. That is the dangerous psychological territory Nigeria appears to be drifting toward as the 2027 Presidential election approaches.
Many Nigerians have now been conditioned into believing that nothing good can come from government, that politicians are fundamentally indistinguishable in greed and deception, and that elections are no longer genuine reflections of the people’s will but carefully choreographed impositions by entrenched political interests. In such an atmosphere, the sanctity of the vote inevitably collapses. Citizens now rationalize electoral corruption because they no longer believe their votes truly count. To many struggling Nigerians, rejecting money from politicians now appears foolish, while accepting the highest possible inducement is seen not as moral compromise but as practical survival.
That tragic moral collapse was vividly displayed during the recently concluded APC Primaries or what many critics described less as primaries and more as a coronation exercise. Watching footage and hearing testimonies on ARISE News was profoundly unsettling. One woman standing in a queue under the scorching sun lamented bitterly that after hours of waiting, she was merely handed ₦1,000. Her outrage was not directed at the obscenity of voter inducement itself, nor at the degradation of democracy into a transactional marketplace but at the inadequacy of the amount offered. She didn’t reject the money, she took it but was complaining that her transportation costs to the Theatre, the venue of the show of shame alone exceeded the money given. She lamented that she was hungry, pregnant, responsible for three children, and that a party as wealthy as the APC backed, in her words, by politicians with immense resources ought to pay far more.
That statement was more than an angry complaint, it was an indictment of the political culture that Nigeria has descended into. The tragedy is not just that politicians are buying political participation with rice and cash handouts; the deeper tragedy is that many ordinary Nigerians now regard such transactions as normal and even expected. What should provoke outrage (and by that i mean the commodification of democratic rights) instead provokes haggling over price. Beneath this normalization of corruption lies something even more combustible: accumulated resentment.
The 2023 Presidential election left behind deep suspicions and unresolved bitterness among millions of Nigerians who believed that the electoral process was manipulated through institutional manoeuvres, primed technological failures, and political interference.
The controversy surrounding the INEC server “glitch,” alongside widespread allegations of irregularities, created a perception fair or unfair, that the electoral process could be bent to serve predetermined outcomes. What made 2023 particularly significant was that many Nigerians appeared genuinely unprepared for the scale and sophistication of the political shenanigans. People were caught off guard. My sense is that the same will not be the case in 2027.
Many Nigerians now approach future elections with hardened cynicism and heightened suspicion. There is growing public perception that institutions meant to guarantee electoral credibility are have been positioned to facilitate a predetermined outcome. Critics point to what they view as unhealthy collaboration between powerful political actors, elements within INEC, and a pliant Senate environment that could create the foundation for another fiercely disputed declaration of victory. Whether these suspicions are justified or exaggerated is almost secondary to the danger posed by the fact that millions believe them. Perception, in politics, can become reality. Compounding this tension is the severe economic hardship currently crushing ordinary Nigerians. Hunger, inflation, unemployment, insecurity, and declining living standards have created a reservoir of anger unprecedented in recent Nigerian history.
To many Nigerians, the pain of daily existence is made worse by perceptions of arrogance and insensitivity among the political elite. The extravagant optics surrounding presidential convoys, the conspicuous lifestyles associated with members of the First Family, crass nepotism have deeply alienated large segments of the population. In times of mass suffering, public displays of excess are not merely criticised; they are experienced as insults.
The resentment is not confined to opposition supporters alone. There are growing indications that internal fractures within the ruling APC may become a serious destabilising factor. Nigerian politics has always been transactional and coalition-driven. Politicians who feel discarded, humiliated, or sacrificed for “strategic alliances” rarely disappear quietly. Many who believe they have been politically traded away or thrown under the bus to strengthen the President’s position in certain regions may ultimately retaliate through sabotage, anti-party activity, or passive resistance during the election cycle.
Elite fear is an even more dangerous dimension that lies beyond partisan rivalries. There exists a powerful class of politicians, powerbrokers, and entrenched interests who may perceive a second presidential term as an existential threat to their long-term relevance and influence. Policies perceived as attempts to decentralise governmental authority or devolve powers to sub-national entities could alarm groups that benefit from the existing centralized political architecture. In Nigeria’s combustible political environment, threatened elites have historically proven willing to inflame ethnic, regional, and religious tensions in pursuit of survival and my view is that this is where the danger becomes alarming.
I fear that Northern Nigeria unrest particularly originating from politically sensitive/volatile states such as Kano could easily trigger wider national instability. In a country already traumatised by terrorism, banditry, kidnapping, insurgency, separatist agitation, and communal violence, it would take very little for political protests to metastasize into nationwide riots. The South East remains volatile because of longstanding separatist sentiments. Communities ravaged by terrorists and armed groups across other regions are similarly filled with angry, frustrated populations who feel abandoned by the state. Millions of disillusioned young Nigerians, burdened by hopelessness and economic despair, may require only a spark.
History teaches the brutal lesson that societies carrying this much anger do not always wait for organised leadership before erupting. The arrogance of power often blinds leaders to changing political realities. One of the most dangerous assumptions any incumbent can make is believing that because a controversial path to victory succeeded once, it can be repeated indefinitely without consequence. Political history is littered with leaders who mistook temporary institutional control for permanent public submission. Many believed that because they had captured critical state institutions, neutralised opponents, secured judicial protection, or consolidated elite alliances, they had become politically untouchable. Many discovered too late that public patience has invisible limits.
It is precisely for this reason that 2027 shouldn’t be approached with the complacency, impunity, or excessive confidence that often characterise Nigerian political calculations. The dynamics that shaped 2023 are not necessarily the dynamics that will shape 2027. Nigerians are angrier, poorer, more distrustful, and more psychologically prepared for electoral controversy than they were before. The population is now far more alert to the possibility of manipulation and far less likely to passively absorb outcomes they perceive as fraudulent.
None of this should be interpreted as a call for violence. On the contrary, it is a warning about the conditions under which violence becomes frighteningly possible. Nations become unstable not merely because agitators exist, but because millions of ordinary people gradually lose faith in peaceful democratic correction.
It can’t be overemphasised that regimes often appear strongest shortly before they rupture catastrophically. Ferdinand Marcos believed his grip on the Philippines was secure because he controlled the military, political institutions, and electoral machinery, until sudden popular unrest forced him into humiliating exile. Slobodan Milošević similarly mistook institutional capture for permanent legitimacy in Serbia before mass protests overwhelmed his regime. Muammar Gaddafi ruled Libya for decades believing that fear guaranteed obedience only to be violently overthrown and killed during a spontaneous uprising. Bashar al-Assad long relied on brutal state control in Syria yet discovered that societies saturated with anger can descend into uncontrollable upheaval once public fear breaks.
Tunisia under Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Egypt under Hosni Mubarak, or even Romania under Nicolae Ceaușescu are further examples of abrupt collapses after long periods of apparent invincibility.
The lesson history teaches repeatedly is that rulers often confuse silence with consent and institutional control with legitimacy. Public patience has invisible limits, and when those limits are breached, political eruptions can become sudden, chaotic, and impossible to contain. Nigerian politicians need for their own sakes, to learn lessons from history because those who don’t, are doomed to suffer what others who didn’t learn, suffered.
The real danger confronting Nigeria is not simply who wins or loses in 2027, but whether Nigerians will still believe that ballots rather than chaos remain capable of changing their national destiny…….
Obi J. Iwuchukwu Esq. May, 24, 2026.
OBLONG MEDIA GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE 
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