As Nigeria approaches the 2027 elections, the contest over who should govern is consuming political attention that ought to be directed towards what government must accomplish. Opposition leaders are debating whether Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi or another aspirant should lead a common ticket, yet agreement on a candidate is not the same as agreement on how to govern. Unless political parties can explain what they would change, how they would finance those changes and how citizens could judge their performance, a new electoral victory may deliver little more than a change of personnel.
This is not an argument against personalities. Leadership, integrity and competence matter, and elections are indispensable to democratic government. The problem is that Nigeria’s politics increasingly treats the acquisition of office as the principal measure of success, while the obligations that accompany it remain loosely defined. Ethnicity, religion, educational pedigree, political alliances and personal reputation often dominate debate without establishing whether a candidate can build institutions, improve public services or protect citizens’ rights. Democracy becomes impoverished when the question of who governs displaces the purpose for which government exists.
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Nigeria’s experience offers a warning. Muhammadu Buhari’s victory in 2015 rested partly on expectations that his reputation for discipline and opposition to corruption would produce a decisive break with the failures of previous administrations. His eight years in office did not resolve the country’s persistent problems of insecurity, patronage and weak public services. This is not to suggest that leadership makes no difference or that every policy outcome of his administration was identical to those of its predecessors. It demonstrates that personal reputation cannot, by itself, transform the institutions through which power is exercised. The promise of change must be translated into policies, administrative capacity and accountability.
The same question now confronts the opposition. A coalition assembled primarily to defeat the incumbent could reproduce the weaknesses it condemns if its members have no binding agreement on priorities, funding or implementation. Political unity has value when it creates a credible alternative, not merely when it combines electoral followings. Before deciding who should lead, opposition parties should agree on a national programme that identifies their priorities, explains the trade-offs and commits a future administration to measurable outcomes. The governing party should face the same test: its record must be compared with its promises, and its proposals for another term must explain what will improve and how.
This requires a different standard for campaign manifestos. Parties should publish costed programmes before the election, setting out the baseline, target, timetable, responsible institution and funding source for major commitments. Independent fiscal and policy experts should assess whether the assumptions are credible. A promise to improve electricity supply, for example, should specify the intended gains in reliability, the reforms required across generation and distribution, the expected costs and the timetable. A pledge to create jobs should distinguish temporary programme placements from sustained employment and explain how investment, skills and business conditions will support it.
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Security demands comparable precision. Candidates should explain how they intend to improve intelligence coordination, prevent attacks, investigate crimes and protect displaced communities. Progress should be measured through verified incidents, response times, case resolution and the safe return of displaced households where conditions permit. No single indicator can capture the complexity of insecurity, but transparent reporting would make it harder to substitute announcements and deployments for demonstrable results.
These commitments matter because Nigeria’s challenges are not simply failures of individual leadership. Uneven state capacity, patronage networks and disputes over citizenship shape how public authority is exercised and how its benefits are distributed. Equal citizenship, for instance, remains an incomplete promise wherever ethnicity, religion or indigenous status influences access to opportunity and public resources. Parties should commit to enforcing constitutional protections, making public recruitment more transparent and establishing accessible complaint mechanisms. They should publish data on complaints received, resolved and outstanding, subject to safeguards for personal information. National cohesion cannot rest on balancing identities among political appointees while leaving discriminatory practices untouched.
Accountability must also continue after election day. Parties should publish annual reports comparing their commitments with actual results and explain substantial deviations, including changes caused by economic shocks or emergencies. Legislatures should hold public hearings on major failures, while independent media, universities and civic organisations assess the evidence. A non-partisan manifesto scorecard, developed through transparent methods, could make performance easier for voters to compare. Its purpose should not be to declare every missed target proof of bad faith but to distinguish external setbacks from poor execution, unrealistic promises and avoidable failures.
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The media has a responsibility to make this scrutiny central to election coverage. Rallies, defections and rivalries are newsworthy, but they should not crowd out questions about costs, feasibility and results. Candidates should face comparable questions, and their answers should be checked against budgets, records and independent evidence. Citizens, in turn, should be able to assess political claims without being asked to abandon legitimate concerns about representation or identity. Trust matters in politics, but it should be informed by evidence rather than demanded on the strength of personality alone.
Nigeria does not need to eliminate the contest for leadership. It needs to make that contest serve a clearer public purpose. The test of 2027 should not be merely which candidate wins, which party assembles the largest coalition or whether the incumbent survives. It should be whether voters can compare credible alternatives and hold the eventual winner to commitments that can be examined throughout the term. Elections confer authority; they do not certify performance in advance. Until political parties are required to explain not only why they deserve power but also what they will deliver with it, Nigeria will continue to mistake electoral victories for democratic progress.
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