The most dangerous voter in Nigeria today may be the one who has quietly checked out. Since the last off-cycle governorship elections, the same weary refrain echoes across taxis, markets and WhatsApp groups: they will rig it, nothing will change, and 2027 is already gone. What used to be anger is hardening into a belief that the system is irredeemably fixed and that talk of reform is a waste of breath.
In a recent keynote titled “Making Our Votes Count: Action, the Antidote to Cynicism”, Dr Sam Amadi put his finger on this more profound crisis. The gravest threat to free and fair elections in 2027, he argued, is not a corrupt electoral commission or a compromised judiciary, but our growing conviction that nothing can change. That hopelessness keeps citizens at home or pushes them into empty gestures. Cynicism has stopped being a mood; it is now a political force.
It rests on a long history. For decades, Nigerians have watched elections being manipulated, results rewritten, and courtrooms turn into collation centres. Out of this has grown what many call an impregnable wall around reform: a National Assembly with little appetite for changes that cut incumbents’ advantages, a presidency that has shown no genuine interest in electoral reform and has made partisan appointments into the commission, and institutions – opposition parties, judiciary, electoral officials and civil society – that are too weak, compromised or exhausted to sustain pressure.
In that context, it is easy to see why many people conclude that 2027 has already been decided. Free and fair elections have been the exception, not the rule, and even the polls we celebrate carried serious flaws. Across much of Africa, public office remains a principal route to wealth and security, and losing power carries heavy costs. Bending the rules becomes a constant temptation, and citizens learn, painfully, not to expect too much from ballots.
“The behaviour of the current administration has deepened doubts. President Tinubu has not spoken convincingly about electoral reform, and partisan appointments to key institutions suggest he will not willingly change a system that serves him.”
Yet the question will not go away: why should a weary Nigerian in 2025 still care about free and fair elections in 2027? Despite the challenges, there is always the potential for positive change, and your participation can be part of it.
When they function at all, elections do two irreplaceable things. They remind leaders they can be removed, giving presidents, governors and legislators a reason to listen and perform. And they offer a peaceful way to fight. As Adam Przeworski argues, elections are rules for managing conflict without tearing a country apart. In a fragile, diverse federation like Nigeria, once people stop believing this, they start looking to violence or military intervention instead.
The behaviour of the current administration has deepened doubts. President Tinubu has not spoken convincingly about electoral reform, and partisan appointments to key institutions suggest he will not willingly change a system that serves him. Yet this is only one side of the story. Cynicism highlights what has not changed and hides what has. Logistically and technologically, Nigeria’s elections have improved: more timely deployment of materials, fewer arbitrary closures of polling units and electronic accreditation that makes it harder to inflate turnout. These gains are real, but they are also fragile. This fragility should remind us of the urgency of the situation and the need for continued pressure and reform.
The system, however, adapts. The 2023 presidential election exposed new methods of manipulation – allegations of tampered result sheets and failures of electronic transmission that badly damaged public trust. Technology cannot replace human integrity; it only shifts the battlefield. That is why the appointment of Prof. Joash Amupitan as INEC Chair is significant. He has a reputation for basic decency, but integrity alone is not enough in a bureaucracy where powerful politicians may plant loyalists deep inside institutions. Upcoming state elections will test not just Amupitan, but also parties, judges, civil society and voters.
If rigging is a manufactured outcome, it can be resisted by a manufactured counter-force. Amadi calls for an “election integrity defence system” in which the electoral commission enforces its rules, parties train their agents and protect mandates, civil society and the media sustain pressure, and the judiciary does not make justice impossible through procedural delays. Your engagement is crucial in this process. None of this is easy. It is simpler to stay home, trade bitter jokes and insist that nothing will change. But cynicism is a luxury we cannot afford. It gives victory to those who profit from a broken system without forcing them to fight for it.
The 2027 elections will be shaped not only on election day but also in the quiet choices Nigerians make between now and then – to join a party or remain aloof, to volunteer or stay indifferent, to demand reforms or retreat into fatalism. We can surrender to despair and watch our worst fears confirmed, or we can act as if our votes and our future still matter – and, in doing so, slowly make that belief true.
Dr Dakuku Peterside is the author of Leading in a Storm and Beneath the Surface.
