by Mohammed Bello Doka
Who exactly gave Bola Tinubu two terms?
When did Nigerians sign a contract guaranteeing eight years of rule?
At what point did an election victory automatically mutate into a lifetime entitlement to power?
And who decided that questioning a president’s re-election bid is now an act of treason rather than a democratic right?
These are not idle questions. They go to the very heart of Nigeria’s fragile democracy.
Across television studios, party rallies, newspaper columns and social media spaces, a new and disturbing refrain has taken hold among supporters of the ruling All Progressives Congress and President Bola Tinubu: “Let him complete his two terms.”
It is repeated with the tone of a command. Sometimes as a warning. Often as a threat. Almost always as an entitlement.
The implication is chilling: that Nigerians have no moral, political, or constitutional right to revisit their choice in 2027; that the ballot has already been cast for a second term; that democracy has an expiration date conveniently fixed at eight years.
This mindset is not just arrogant. It is profoundly anti-democratic.
In a constitutional democracy, elections are not inheritance ceremonies. Power is not transferred by bloodline, zoning slogans, or elite consensus. Power is borrowed, conditional, and renewable only with the consent of the governed—every four years.
To argue otherwise is to argue against democracy itself.
And history exposes the hypocrisy.
In 2015, the same political forces now insisting on Tinubu’s “right” to a second term mobilised ferociously to deny then-President Goodluck Jonathan a return to office. Jonathan was a sitting president. He was from the South. He had constitutional legitimacy. He sought re-election through the ballot. Yet he was told—by Tinubu’s political camp and the coalition that later became APC—that Nigeria could not afford his continuation.
Two terms were framed as dangerous then. Today, they are presented as sacred.
What changed? Certainly not principle. Only power.
This selective morality reveals a deeper problem: APC never believed in “two terms” as a democratic norm. It believes in two terms when it is convenient, and none when it is not. Democracy, in this worldview, is not a system of choice but a tool of conquest.
The danger of this thinking cannot be overstated. Once a political class convinces itself—and tries to convince the public—that a second term is automatic, what comes next? If Nigerians are bullied into silence today in the name of “stability,” how do we know tomorrow’s argument will not be that Tinubu must stay longer for “continuity”? Or that term limits are expendable for “national interest”? Or that elections themselves are unnecessary disruptions?
This is how democracies decay: not in one dramatic collapse, but through gradual normalization of entitlement.
The irony is that APC’s confidence is built on a deeply fragile foundation.
The 2023 election was not a landslide. It was not a ringing endorsement. It was not a national consensus. It was a fragmented outcome shaped as much by opposition disunity as by APC strength. In state after state, APC scraped through narrow margins. In key urban centres, it was outright rejected.
Lagos—long considered the spiritual and political fortress of Tinubu—slipped at the presidential level. Major cities across the South, parts of the Middle Belt, and pockets of the North signalled fatigue with establishment politics. Youth turnout, urban anger, and protest voting tore holes in the old political map.
What APC calls a mandate was, in truth, a warning.
That warning took shape most clearly in the Obidient Movement.
The Obidient Movement was not just a campaign phenomenon; it was a political rebellion. Youth-driven, urban, decentralised, and ideologically restless, it rallied around the candidacy of Peter Obi not because of party machinery, but because of shared frustration with a system that appeared closed, transactional, and unresponsive.
The Obidient surge exposed APC’s greatest vulnerability: millions of Nigerians—especially young Nigerians—no longer feel bound by old loyalties, old godfathers, or old threats. They vote with their anger, their hope, and their sense of exclusion.
Yet the movement also exposed its own limitation. Passion without structure cannot conquer power. Fragmentation diluted its electoral impact in 2023. Votes were scattered across platforms. Energy was not fully translated into victory.
But movements do not die. They migrate.
That migration is now finding expression in the African Democratic Congress.
ADC has quietly emerged as a coalition-ready platform—unburdened by the factional wars of older parties, flexible enough to absorb new forces, and structured enough to contest power. For Obidients seeking a political home that does not suffocate their identity, ADC offers a bridge from protest to governance.
This is not theoretical. It is strategic. And it is exactly why APC is uneasy.
Ironically, APC should understand this better than anyone. It was itself born from a coalition of disparate forces united by one goal: to unseat an entrenched ruling party. The playbook APC used in 2015 is now being studied, refined, and potentially redeployed against it.
And the battleground is clear.
The road to 2027 does not run through all 36 states equally. It runs through a handful of decisive theatres: Lagos, Kano, Rivers, Kaduna, Oyo, Anambra, Edo. These states share common features—tight 2023 margins, large urban populations, youth-heavy electorates, and fluid political loyalties. Lose a few of them, and the arithmetic of power collapses.
This is why APC is shifting from persuasion to pressure. Instead of selling performance, it sells entitlement. Instead of asking Nigerians for another chance, it demands patience. Instead of defending its record—on inflation, currency instability, cost of living, and economic pain—it invokes zoning, fear, and inevitability.
But inevitability is not a democratic argument.
APC’s real hope for 2027 lies not in popularity, but in division. As long as the opposition remains fragmented—Obidients here, ADC there, remnants elsewhere—APC can survive even with declining goodwill. Unity, not incumbency, is its greatest threat.
This is the real meaning of 2027.
It is not Tinubu’s coronation. It is not APC’s inheritance. It is not a reward for endurance. It is a referendum—on performance, on accountability, on whether Nigerians still have the right to choose.
Nigeria is not a monarchy. The constitution does not recognise birthrights to power. No party, no president, no coalition owns the future.
And if those in power insist on behaving as though they do, 2027 may become the moment Nigerians remind them of a simple, timeless truth: sovereignty belongs to the people—and borrowed power can always be reclaimed.
Mohammed Bello Doka can be reached via [email protected]
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