Nigeria is inching toward the 2027 general election with a heavy cloud of distrust hanging over the process. It is not distrust born in a vacuum. It is distrust shaped by lived experience, official statements, and a growing perception that this government has perfected a single governing reflex: shift the blame.
From poverty to insecurity, from corruption allegations to electoral reform, the pattern looks familiar. When outcomes are bad, responsibility is relocated. When policies fail, explanations multiply. When institutions wobble, Nigerians are asked to look elsewhere.
Since assuming office on May 29, 2023, President Bola Tinubu has promised “renewed hope.” Nearly three years on, hope has become conditional—often deferred to governors, past administrations, global forces, or unnamed saboteurs.
Take poverty. In November 2025, Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics reported that 133 million Nigerians were living in multidimensional poverty. In February 2026, presidential adviser Bayo Onanuga publicly argued that Nigerians should hold state governors and local governments accountable, insisting they control the levers that affect daily life. The argument sounded tidy, but Nigerians were unconvinced. Fuel subsidy removal, exchange-rate unification, inflation, and interest rates are federal policies. Their consequences are national. Yet accountability was redirected downward.
The same logic has been deployed on insecurity. APC officials and aligned commentators repeatedly remind Nigerians that governors are “chief security officers” of their states and receive increased allocations. What they rarely mention is that the police, military, intelligence services, and border control remain firmly under federal command. Banditry in the North-West, mass kidnappings in the North-Central, terrorism in the North-East, and violent crime across major highways are not localised phenomena. Still, the public is told to look to Government Houses, not Abuja.
This steady outsourcing of responsibility now intersects with the most sensitive issue of all: elections.
The 2023 general election remains a wound that has not healed. Promises of real-time electronic transmission of results from polling units collapsed on election day. The Independent National Electoral Commission blamed technical glitches. Nigerians blamed the system. Court cases followed. Confidence evaporated.
Against that backdrop, many Nigerians expected the National Assembly to strengthen the Electoral Act ahead of 2027. Instead, the Senate—dominated by the All Progressives Congress—refused to make real-time electronic transmission of results mandatory, leaving it once again to the discretion of Independent National Electoral Commission.
To supporters of the government, this is procedural caution. To critics, it is a deliberate reopening of the same loopholes that defined 2023. The suspicion is simple and widespread: why resist transparency if you have nothing to hide?
That suspicion is reinforced by a string of controversies that, taken together, paint a troubling picture.
There are persistent allegations of budget padding, particularly around the 2024 and 2025 budgets, where figures reportedly ballooned between executive submission and legislative passage. Lawmakers traded accusations. Civil society groups demanded explanations. No comprehensive public audit followed.
There was the ambassadorial list controversy, where an individual initially listed for posting to Turkey was abruptly withdrawn after public scrutiny, with the Presidency describing it as an “error.” In a country accustomed to political lists being quietly adjusted, the episode deepened cynicism about process integrity.
Then there is the controversy over tax reform bills, with opposition figures alleging that sections of legislation signed into law differed from what the National Assembly passed—through insertions, replacements, or deletions. The government denied wrongdoing. But the damage to trust was already done.
Corruption allegations have been even more corrosive. In 2024, reports emerged around a ₦17.5 trillion defence-related expenditure linked to the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, raising questions about procurement transparency, oversight, and value for money. The government pushed back. Investigations, if any, were quiet. Prosecutions did not follow.
This came amid lingering questions around fuel subsidy-era payments, crude oil swap arrangements, and opaque transactions involving Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited—a company repeatedly described by past governments as “reformed,” yet perpetually surrounded by controversy.
Add to this the absence of decisive action on other high-profile allegations inherited or emerging under this administration, and a pattern becomes hard to ignore: noise without consequences.
None of these issues, taken alone, proves electoral manipulation. But elections do not occur in isolation. They are the product of political culture, institutional habits, and public trust. When citizens see accountability consistently redirected, transparency resisted, and allegations unanswered, they draw their own conclusions.
That is why the question heading into 2027 is not merely who will win, but who will be blamed if the process fails.
If poverty worsens, governors are blamed.
If insecurity spreads, governors are blamed.
If policies hurt, global forces are blamed.
If elections are disputed, will Nigerians be told to blame the opposition, INEC officials, or “foreign interference”?
Democracy cannot survive on deflection. A government confident of its legitimacy strengthens institutions. It welcomes scrutiny. It closes loopholes. It insists on transparency—not because it is pressured, but because it understands that trust is the currency of governance.
Nigeria is watching. Not just what this government says, but what it refuses to do. History will not judge explanations. It will judge outcomes—and who took responsibility when it mattered most.
Mohammed Bello Doka can be reached via [email protected]
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Opinion