President Bola Tinubu’s meeting with the 31 APC governors at the Presidential Villa in Abuja has exposed one of the ruling party’s central calculations for the 2027 presidential election. The official account of the meeting focused on the economy, cheaper transportation, Compressed Natural Gas, food security and measures to ease the pressure of rising living costs. But the political message that emerged afterwards was far more significant: the governors are prepared to “deliver” their respective states for Tinubu in 2027. That is a formidable political objective, but it is not the same as winning the votes of the people. The APC may control 31 state governments, but it does not own the electorate in those 31 states, nor can it assume that controlling the governments means controlling the votes.
This distinction matters. Governors can campaign, mobilise party structures, persuade voters and deploy their considerable political influence, but they cannot legitimately determine how millions of citizens will vote. An APC governor may be the most influential politician in his state, but the trader in a market, the civil servant at his desk, the student on a campus and the farmer in a rural community retain the right to make their own electoral choices. The ballot does not ask who controls the Government House; it asks whom the voter chooses. Therefore, the promise to “deliver” a state should be understood as a campaign commitment, not as an advance claim over the votes of the people.
The experience of Osun offers a useful warning against confusing political structures with electoral certainty. Parties can build formidable organisations, assemble alliances, control governments and make elaborate calculations about their chances, only for voters to produce an outcome that unsettles those assumptions. The lesson is not that political structures are irrelevant; they matter enormously. The lesson is that structures are not voters. Where votes are genuinely allowed to count, an electorate can reject the preferred candidate of political power. If “delivering” states means persuading Nigerians that Tinubu deserves another term, the APC has every democratic right to pursue that objective. But if it means assuming that APC-controlled states will automatically produce votes for Tinubu, then the party risks confusing political influence with popular consent.
The APC, however, has a legitimate advantage that its opponents cannot afford to underestimate. With 31 governors, an incumbent president, an extensive national structure and the machinery of a ruling party, it enters the 2027 contest with formidable political strength. Its supporters also argue that the Tinubu administration has recorded achievements that should earn it another mandate, while the opposition remains divided and incapable of presenting a sufficiently strong national alternative. That argument deserves consideration. But political strength is not electoral inevitability. A weak opposition does not automatically make a government popular, just as dissatisfaction with the government does not automatically make the opposition attractive. Nigerians are not obliged to vote according to the calculations of either camp.
More importantly, the APC’s growing dominance raises a broader question about the health of Nigeria’s multiparty democracy. With 31 governors and a steady movement of politicians from opposition parties into the ruling party, concerns about the emergence of a de facto one-party system will inevitably persist. Yet the opposition cannot blame the APC for every advantage it has acquired. If opposition parties believe the ruling party has failed Nigerians, they must do more than issue condemnations. They must organise, recruit credible candidates, return to the grassroots and explain their alternatives in language ordinary Nigerians understand. They must give voters a compelling reason to choose them. Elections are not won by complaining that an opponent is powerful; they are won by convincing the people that you deserve power.
This is ultimately the paradox confronting the APC after the Villa meeting: the party has 31 governors, but it still needs Nigerians to vote for Tinubu. Governors can promise to deliver states, but they cannot deliver individual voters. They can mobilise party structures, but they cannot manufacture genuine consent. They can campaign for victory, but they cannot cast the ballots of the people they govern. If the APC believes Tinubu’s record is strong enough, it should take that record to the electorate and seek a fresh mandate. If the opposition believes the President has failed, it should make its own case to Nigerians. In the end, the decisive political structure will not be the Government House, the party secretariat or the Presidential Villa. It will be the polling unit. And there, when Nigerians are alone with their ballots, 31 governors will have only one vote each.
*Kalu writes from Abuja
