The first part of this article concluded with the observation that while all politics may indeed be local, the economic hardship confronting Nigerians today is anything but local. But before examining how these conditions may shape the 2027 elections, the Osun experience invites us to confront an even more fundamental question: what exactly do our political parties represent? Governor Ademola Adeleke’s victory illustrates the extraordinary portability of political personalities from one platform to another. Accord was hardly the dominant political institution in Osun before he moved into it, yet he appears to have carried a substantial part of his established constituency with him. This raises an uncomfortable question: are Nigerian political parties enduring democratic institutions, or merely temporary platforms animated by powerful individuals?

The question applies particularly to the APC and ADC. What does the APC fundamentally represent today? What does the ADC represent? Whose interests do they aggregate? For what purposes do they exist? Beyond presenting candidates, accommodating defectors and providing platforms for political ambition, what practical relevance do they have to ordinary Nigerians? These are not merely rhetorical questions. They go to the foundations of representative democracy. A political party should represent identifiable values and interests, articulate a coherent philosophy of government, mobilise society around clear objectives and translate citizens’ aspirations into programmes for national development. Above all, it should tell us what kind of country it wants to build.

The APC today is understandably dominated by the authority and personality of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR. A presidential system naturally confers great political weight upon the incumbent, but there is a difference between presidential leadership and the gradual absorption of the party into the personality and machinery of the executive. A ruling party should be larger than the government it produces. It should possess its own institutional personality, intellectual foundations and organisational vitality. It should remain sufficiently connected to society to transmit public anxieties to government, interrogate policies causing distress and remind elected officials of the commitments upon which the party sought power. Its National Working Committee should be an important centre of political thought, mobilisation, consultation and policy formulation, not merely the administrative custodian of a structure overshadowed by office holders.

The ADC confronts a different version of the same problem. Its growing prominence has resulted substantially from the personalities now associated with it. Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, GCON, and other experienced politicians bring networks, resources, visibility and political followings. But if the party becomes merely the sum of these individuals without developing an identity, ideology and purpose independent of them, it will reproduce precisely the institutional weakness from which Nigerian party politics already suffers.

The problem is therefore larger than either party. Individuals increasingly dominate political structures while the parties themselves lose relevance, visibility and popular connection between elections. Their secretariats spring vigorously to life during conventions, nominations, defections and campaigns, yet appear strangely peripheral when Nigeria debates the great questions of governance and national survival.

Their National Working Committees frequently seem buried beneath the political weight of presidents, governors, ministers, senators and other powerful office holders. Party functionaries who should help shape national political and policy directions become marginal actors while power gravitates towards executive and legislative establishments. This is unhealthy for democracy.

Political parties should be permanent national institutions. Their chairmen, secretaries, policy departments, media and research organs should engage continuously with society, commission studies, convene experts, consult professional organisations, explain policies, produce alternatives and participate actively in the national conversation.

When Nigerians struggle with food prices, what is the ruling party itself saying beyond explanations from ministries and presidential spokesmen? When farmers cannot reach their farms because of insecurity or afford fertiliser, what policy conversation is taking place within the party controlling the federal government? When industries struggle with electricity, access to credit and foreign competition, where is its engagement with manufacturers? When education and healthcare deteriorate and unemployment expands, what ideas are emerging from the political organisations seeking to govern more than two hundred million people?

The opposition must face the same scrutiny. It is insufficient for the ADC merely to catalogue the deficiencies of President Tinubu’s administration or his alleged failings. Opposition for its own sake is not a programme of government. Nigerians are entitled to know what precisely an ADC government would do differently.

Would it restructure the economy and drastically reduce the phenomenal cost of governance? Would it reform the public service and seriously confront corruption and wastage? What would be its programme for industrialisation, employment, agriculture, electricity, transportation, education, healthcare and security? How would it reduce dependence on imports, strengthen productive capacity and redefine Nigeria’s foreign policy?

The APC must equally explain what fundamentally different results another mandate would produce beyond 2027. Having governed Nigeria since 2015, it cannot indefinitely define itself through criticism of preceding administrations. What new vision does it offer? How would another APC government make Nigeria safer, more productive, less expensive to govern, less corrupt, less nepotistic and more capable of creating opportunities? The difficulty is that neither the APC nor ADC presently offers a programme so radically different from the other that Nigerians can readily understand what fundamental change a transfer of power would produce. Ideological distinctions have virtually disappeared.

Politicians move effortlessly from one party to another without any apparent crisis of conviction. A politician can defend the APC today, cross to the ADC tomorrow and immediately denounce policies previously championed. Another can travel in the opposite direction and suddenly discover virtues in an administration he had spent years condemning. Such migration is possible because there are few ideological borders to cross. Were our parties anchored in genuinely different philosophies, defections would require serious explanation. One might advocate a smaller state and greater market freedom; another stronger social protection and state intervention; another devolution and restructuring; another agricultural transformation and industrialisation.

The electorate would then choose not merely between personalities but between alternative conceptions of Nigeria. Instead, Nigerians are frequently presented with competing groups of essentially interchangeable political elites.

This raises another uncomfortable question: whose interests do the parties actually serve? Farmers, workers, manufacturers, traders, teachers, professionals, students, pensioners, women and young people should recognise their aspirations within the programmes of parties seeking their votes. Instead, our political organisations often appear most animated by Rather than citizens organising political parties to pursue collective interests, powerful individuals increasingly capture parties to advance personal ambitions. And herein lies the question of practical relevance.

Political parties should have an active presence in debates about the economy, security, social orientation, gender policy, infrastructure and the wider shaping of national ideas. Wearing colourful attires emblazoned with party symbols may create spectacle at rallies. Branded caps, wrappers, gowns, banners and songs may produce impressive television images, but they do not confer stature, vision or credibility upon political leadership. Political relevance comes from substance, not noise and spectacle.

Where are the parties’ proposals for reducing the cost of government, industrialising Nigeria, providing reliable electricity, modernising agriculture, defeating insecurity and addressing unemployment, corruption, inflation, population pressures, climate change and deteriorating infrastructure? A brutally simple test should therefore apply: if the APC, ADC, Accord or any other political party disappeared tomorrow, apart from the careers and ambitions of its leading personalities, what idea, constituency, developmental programme or national purpose would disappear with it? If that question is difficult to answer, then something is fundamentally wrong with our democracy.

This institutional weakness becomes even more consequential because the 2027 elections will take place against severe economic and security pressures. Nigerians will enter polling booths carrying their experiences of food prices, transport costs, electricity bills, unemployment, insecurity and declining incomes.

But hardship does not automatically translate into defeat for an incumbent. Public dissatisfaction must be organised and provided with a credible alternative. Osun demonstrates precisely this point. Whatever dissatisfaction may have existed with the APC did not accrue to the ADC; it overwhelmingly favoured Adeleke and Accord. There is also the troubling relationship between hardship and the monetisation of elections. Where poverty is widespread, relatively modest sums can become powerful inducements. Citizens whose vulnerability may partly result from failures of governance can subsequently have that very vulnerability exploited for political advantage. Vote buying is therefore more than an electoral offence. It is the exploitation of deprivation and despair.

My greatest apprehension concerns northern Nigeria, where extensive poverty, insecurity, unemployment, displacement, weakened agricultural production and rising food costs leave millions perilously close to subsistence and potentially vulnerable to inducement.

But poverty does not necessarily produce obedience. Deprivation can become resentment, resentment anger, and anger political resistance. Citizens may receive inducements and nevertheless exercise their judgement in the secrecy of the polling booth. The fundamental question for 2027 may therefore be whether money overwhelms anger or anger overwhelms money.

For the ADC, Osun should be a summons not merely to organise but to define itself and purpose. Nigerians must know what it represents beyond opposition to President Tinubu and what fundamentally different Nigeria it proposes to create. For the APC, the challenge is greater. It already possesses structures, governors, legislators, resources and incumbency. What it must demonstrate is that continued control of government can tangibly improve citizens’ circumstances. Its National Working Committee must also reclaim a meaningful role in political and policy leadership instead of allowing the party to disappear beneath the machinery of government and the force of presidential personality.

For all registered political parties, however, the lesson is larger. Nigeria does not merely need alternative politicians. It needs alternative ideas and solutions. The country requires serious thinking about industrialisation, corruption, security, electricity, agriculture, education, healthcare, population, infrastructure, productivity and the phenomenal cost of government. These should form the substance of the political argument as Nigeria approaches 2027.

Ideas and ideology must return to Nigerian politics. Democracy cannot mature around powerful individuals alone. Leaders come and go, but institutions and ideas must endure. The real test before the APC, ADC and every other party is therefore not merely whether it can win the next election, but whether it deserves to govern a country desperately in need of renewal. Nigerians should not be offered personalities alone in 2027, often drawn from broadly similar political traditions and outlooks. They should be offered competing programmes, ideas and visions of national renewal. Before choosing among the personalities presented to them, Nigerians are therefore entitled to demand an answer to a far more consequential question: what exactly does each political party represent, in whose interest does it exist, and what does it propose to do with Nigeria?

The post Lessons From Osun 2026 and the road to 2027: Parties, personalities and the coming contest (2), by Usman Sarki appeared first on Vanguard News.