HAGHER
In this powerful political reflection, Prof. Iyorwuese Hagher, OON, examines the dangerous rise of demagogues ahead of Nigeria’s 2027 elections. He warns against the capture of party structures by governors, the death of internal democracy, and the reduction of citizens to spectators in their own republic. The article makes a compelling case for the North-Central, especially Benue or Plateau, to produce Nigeria’s next Vice President as a matter of justice, balance, loyalty, and national stability. It is a timely call for democratic vigilance, party reform, and leadership rooted in competence, morality, and national conscience.
By PROF IYORWUESE HAGHER, OON
Nigeria is again approaching an election season with the familiar fever of rumours, factional betrayals, hired applause, regional bargaining, and dangerous simplifications. The drums are sounding before the dancers have arrived. The merchants of power are already at work, selling certainty where there is confusion and selling noise where the country demands thought. By 2027, Nigeria will not merely be choosing leaders; it will be deciding whether democracy remains a serious instrument of national renewal or becomes finally reduced to a marketplace of demagogues.
A demagogue is not simply a loud politician. He is more dangerous than noise. He studies the wounds of the people, not to heal them, but to exploit them. He takes hunger and turns it into anger. He takes anger and turns it into hatred. He takes hatred and converts it into votes. He does not educate the citizens; he excites the crowd. He does not build institutions; he builds mobs. He does not offer a programme; he offers an enemy.
This is the danger before Nigeria.
The recent political primaries across political parties have thrown up anti-democratic tendencies in the country and a strange season of civic confusion. A form of cultic civilian dictatorship has begun to parade itself as party discipline. Party organs are weakened. Citizens are pushed aside. Consequences have been laid bare before the nation: the people are no longer the centre of politics; they are now treated as spectators invited to clap after decisions have been taken elsewhere.
Across many states, governors have become local emperors, small republics unto themselves, political demigods before whom party structures tremble. They command state resources, influence party executives, intimidate dissenting voices, and turn primaries into coronation ceremonies. In too many states, the governorship seat has become a throne, and the governor has become the chief priest of ambition.
This is one of the great betrayals of Nigerian democracy. Party primaries, which should be the first school of democratic choice, have been reduced to private announcements. Delegates gather, but decisions have already been made. Aspirants print posters, but the governor has already chosen his friend, relation or acolyte. Party members queue under the sun, but the ticket has already been written in the bedroom of power. The people are invited to witness a process they were never allowed to shape.
When governors conduct primaries only to announce their loyalists, relatives, financiers, friends, and political errand boys, democracy dies before the general election begins. The citizen is deceived twice: first by the party, then by the ballot. What appears before the voter on election day is often not the people’s choice but the governor’s choice disguised as the party’s will.
This is why Nigeria’s democratic crisis is deeper than election-day violence or vote buying. The corruption begins earlier. It begins in the capture of party structures. It begins when internal democracy is murdered quietly and the corpse is decorated with party flags. It begins when competence is sacrificed for loyalty, when courage is punished as rebellion, when independent minds are treated as threats, and when the governor’s preference becomes the people’s destiny.
A republic cannot flourish where parties are private estates. A nation cannot produce statesmen when its political recruitment system rewards servitude. If the road to public office is controlled by demigods, then the country should not be surprised when the public square is filled with praise singers instead of leaders.
The 2027 election must therefore be more than a contest of personalities. It must be a referendum on the moral direction of the Nigerian state. Who speaks truthfully about insecurity? Who understands the economy beyond slogans? Who has a serious plan for production, jobs, education, energy, food security, federalism, and national cohesion? Who respects the courts, the legislature, the press, and the independence of electoral institutions? Who can hold Nigeria together without frightening one part of the country into silence?
THE VICE-PRESIDENT QUESTION
It is within this national question that the North-Central must be mentioned with courage. The North-Central is the beautiful bride of the 2027 elections. But the beautiful bride must be courted with charm, respect, and sincerity. It must not be treated as a mere electoral warehouse from which votes are extracted and forgotten. It must be invited to the presidential ticket with honour, not remembered only after victory has been secured.
The next Vice President of Nigeria should come from the North-Central, with serious consideration given to Benue or Plateau State. This is not a plea for charity. It is not a sentimental demand. It is a national argument rooted in justice, balance, loyalty, sacrifice, and strategic necessity. Nigeria elected President Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999 to pay tribute to justice, equity and morality, this is the time to compensate Benue State and the North-Central region.
Benue and Plateau stand at the painful crossroads of Nigeria’s contradictions: land, faith, ethnicity, agriculture, insecurity, federal neglect, and national survival. Benue is called the Food Basket of the Nation, yet its farmers have too often harvested grief. The Plateau is one of Nigeria’s most beautiful symbols of diversity, yet its hills have too often echoed with conflict and mourning. These states do not represent weakness. They represent Nigeria’s unfinished national question.
A Vice President from Benue or Plateau would symbolize something larger than geography. It would say that Nigeria is finally ready to listen to the Middle Belt, not merely use it. It would say that the communities that have buried their dead, protected food systems, defended coexistence, and remained loyal to the federation are not invisible in the architecture of national power. It would say that the centre of Nigeria is not only a map location; it is a moral location.
Since 1999, the North-East and North-West have enjoyed a fairer share of presidential and vice-presidential power. The North-East has had 12 years in the vice-presidential office, including the Atiku Abubakar years and the present Vice Presidency of Kashim Shettima. The North-West had the presidency for eight years under President Muhammadu Buhari and 2 years under President Musa Yar’ Adua. But the North-Central has remained largely outside the commanding heights of presidential power. It is time for that imbalance to be corrected.
The voting data strengthens the argument. In the 2023 presidential election, the North-Central gave Bola Tinubu and the APC 1,760,993 votes, representing 38.58% of valid votes in the zone. Benue gave the APC 310,468 votes, and Plateau gave 307,195 votes. Together, Benue and Plateau alone gave the APC more than 617,000 votes, even though both states carried deep wounds of insecurity, grief, and political anxiety. (Wikipedia)
No serious political party should treat such a region as disposable. A zone that gives its votes must also receive honour. A region that carries the weight of the federation must not be rewarded with tokenism. The North-Central cannot continue to be remembered only as a bridge and forgotten as a destination.
But let this be clear: the North-Central must not present Nigeria with another demagogue merely wearing the garment of regional justice. The case for a North-Central Vice Presidency must be built on competence, vision, moral authority, national temperament, and democratic seriousness.
MAPPING THE 2027 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
For the APC, the strategic map is clear. The party must focus on the South-West and North-Central as core must-win zones. The South-West remains the President’s natural political base, but the North-Central is the balancing region that can give the ticket national depth, moral legitimacy, and electoral stability. The APC cannot afford to treat Benue as a minor quarrel or Plateau as a lost opportunity. It must pay particular attention to divided APC structures in Benue. It must not listen only to spin from the state Governors nor reports or the flattering voices of traditional-political middlemen. It must look at the real state of the party on the ground, and that deep look at a unifying leader in the person of Distinguished Senator George Akume Dajoh will loom. He will unite the party and bring in the votes the APC needs to win.
In Benue, the party must reconcile its wounds. It must not allow cliques, bitterness, personal pride, or gubernatorial arrogance to destroy its electoral inheritance. The unity of APC in Benue, the harvesting of goodwill in Plateau, the consolidation of Nasarawa, the strengthening of Kwara, and the careful management of Niger and Kogi will determine whether the North-Central remains a bridge to victory or becomes a warning ignored too late.
The opposition must also learn wisdom. The PDP cannot win any election clearly if it is determined to remain a battlefield of exhausted ambitions. In too many states where APC is divided, PDP assumes that APC’s quarrel is enough to guarantee victory. This is a lazy strategy. The divided house of one party does not automatically become the mansion of another. PDP may win a few governorship seats where APC is divided, and may harvest some senatorial and House of Assembly seats, but that is not the same as being ready to reclaim national power.
The emerging NDC/ADC-type opposition alignment must also be examined carefully. The current opposition coalition under the African Democratic Congress has been presented as a possible united front against APC, with figures such as Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi, and other opposition leaders like Kwankwaso linked to the arrangement.
The NDC idea also carries historical meaning. In Nigerian political history, the Niger Delta Congress was linked to minority rights advocacy and figures such as Harold Dappa-Biriye, who used politics to argue for the protection of minority regions and the political relevance of the Niger Delta. (Penglobal Inc.) That history matters because it reminds us that minority politics in Nigeria has always been about recognition, dignity, resources, and federal balance. But if any new NDC-style politics is to matter in 2027, it must not become merely a shelter for displaced ambition. It must become a principled platform with structure, ideology, discipline, and national seriousness.
The SDP faces a different burden. It carries a name associated with democratic memory, but memory alone cannot win a modern election. If the SDP is serious, it must not remain a boutique party for moral speeches and elite disappointment. It must organise ward by ward, state by state, community by community. It must offer Nigerians a serious ideological alternative: social justice, production, security, constitutional reform, and disciplined governance. Without structure, even the noblest manifesto becomes a sermon without a congregation.
Atiku Abubakar remains a major political factor because he is an old political war horse with national recognition, resources, and a deep understanding of Nigeria’s electoral terrain. If he contests again, he will naturally look to the North-East as his home base. But the APC must not assume that the present Vice President’s North-East identity alone will deliver sufficient votes. Politics is not inherited mechanically. Votes must be courted. Grievances must be managed. Alliances must be renewed.
The South-South also deserves strategic attention. It should worry the APC that parts of the South-South may become divided between Tinubu’s base of incumbency, Peter Obi’s continuing appeal, and whatever opposition arrangements emerge from the Niger Delta political imagination. The South-East remains a region of emotional opposition to APC, but political reality is never fixed. Where governors have worked, where interests have shifted, and where opposition unity weakens, new electoral openings can emerge.
But above all, Nigeria must beware of the coming festival of demagogues. Reject those who weaponize tribes. Reject those who preach religion only when they need votes. Reject those who distribute money but cannot distribute justice. Reject those who insult questions because they fear answers. Reject those who promise paradise while travelling with the architects of hell.
The presidency and vice presidency of Nigeria are too serious to be handed to entertainers of resentment. They are not chieftaincy titles. They are not trophies for ethnic pride. They are not compensation for personal ambition. They are constitutional trusts in a wounded republic. Whoever seeks them must come with clean seriousness, tested intellect, national temperament, institutional respect, and the courage to tell Nigerians not only what they want to hear, but what they must understand.
The 2027 election will test whether Nigerians have learned anything from pain. It will test whether suffering has made us wiser or merely angrier. It will test whether we still possess the democratic courage to distinguish between leadership and performance, between conviction and propaganda, between a statesman and a demagogue.
A country that repeatedly rewards deception should not be surprised when truth disappears from public life. A people who clap for demagogues should not weep when demagogues become rulers. The hour is approaching when Nigeria must choose: the difficult road of democratic maturity or the seductive road of political self-destruction.
History will not pity us if we continue to advance the career of demagogues whose ascendancy is the beginning of the end for our democracy. This is the danger we face.
