2027: Nwankwo urges Nigerians to defend votes, reject ethnic considerations

The Executive Director of the Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre (PLAC), Mr Clement Nwankwo, has urged Nigerians to move beyond complaints about poor governance and actively participate in the 2027 general elections by scrutinising candidates and defending their votes.
He also called on political parties to deploy agents to all polling units to protect election results, warning that candidates could not rely on popularity on social media or claims of victory without adequate structures to safeguard their votes.
Nwankwo, who spoke at the eighth annual public lecture of the Just Friends Club of Nigeria (JFCN) in Abuja on Tuesday, said citizens must make informed choices based on candidates’ records, policies and capacity to address the country’s challenges rather than ethnic identity or party affiliation.
He said Nigerians were increasingly worried about insecurity, rising living costs, unemployment, corruption and the declining quality of public services, but stressed that expressing dissatisfaction without taking concrete action would not change the country.
“We should not go into the 2027 elections with hopeless cynicism. We should enter them with clear eyes,” he said.
Nwankwo said voters should understand the electoral process, participate actively and hold political leaders accountable, adding that the responsibility of protecting the integrity of elections rested on citizens as well as political parties.
He urged political parties to ensure that their agents were present at polling units to document results and collect evidence that could help prevent the manipulation of results.
“I do not think that any party is serious enough if you do not have agents in every polling unit,” he said.
Earlier, the chairman of the occasion, Hussaini Abdu, said Nigeria’s middle class had become less willing to engage in collective action to address governance failures.
Abdu said many middle-class Nigerians had resorted to private solutions to public problems, including alternative electricity and water supplies and private education, rather than demanding improvements in public services.
He said the development had weakened collective pressure on the government and contributed to the country’s governance challenges.
According to him, the middle class should play a more active role in mobilising citizens and demanding accountability from public officials.
Abdu also questioned whether development and humanitarian organisations were inadvertently allowing governments to abandon their responsibilities by providing services that should ordinarily be delivered by the state.
Earlier in his welcome address, the JFCN president, Amaechi C. Aloke, said the lecture was designed to encourage Nigerians to translate their concerns about the country into knowledge, participation and responsible citizenship ahead of the 2027 elections.
He said the club selected the theme to reflect the need for citizens to move beyond expressing dissatisfaction with insecurity, unemployment, corruption and poor public services to taking practical steps to influence governance.
Aloke said the club, established in 2013, had organised annual public lectures since 2014, bringing together speakers to discuss issues relating to governance, the economy, security and national development.
He added that JFCN also undertook community outreach programmes, including visits to orphanages and homes for older people, career guidance for pupils in public schools and sponsorship of eight indigent students through secondary education in Abuja.