2017: Northern Candidate Can Defeat Tinubu, Says Kenneth Okonkwo

Former spokesman of the Peter Obi Presidential Campaign Organisation, Kenneth Okonkwo, has warned that unseating President Bola Tinubu in 2027 would be extremely difficult without significant electoral reforms, unless the opposition fields a strong candidate from the North.

Speaking in an interview on Arise TV on Monday, Okonkwo criticised the credibility of Nigeria’s current electoral process and expressed doubt that future elections would be free and fair.

“I do not believe that we are going to have a free, credible election in 2027,” he said, citing the continued reliance on manual collation of results as a loophole for widespread electoral fraud.

He argued that running against an incumbent president with access to state resources requires more than popularity, noting that unlike 2023 when there was no sitting president on the ballot, Tinubu in 2027 will have the full weight of power behind him.

“In 2023, you didn’t have an incumbent. The power was in the North. Now in 2027, there is an incumbent who has publicly elicited that he knows how to take power by force, grab it, snatch it, and run away with it,” he explained.

Okonkwo dismissed the idea of presenting a new candidate from the South-East, saying such a move would be tactically flawed. He questioned why anyone would expect the North to support a candidate with no institutional backing, warning that it would be a repeat of past strategic missteps.

“Why would you want to take somebody from the Southeast who does not have an army, who does not have the Navy, who does not have the Air Force to go and confront somebody from the Southwest, and you think the North will now back you — a fresh candidate — that they do not even believe may keep to the terms of the agreement?” he asked.

He went ahead to draw a parallel with the 2015 election, when Tinubu supported Muhammadu Buhari, a northern candidate with a consistent voter base.

“In 2015, he went and brought Mohamed Buhari, knowing that against a southern candidate, Buhari would have 12 million votes already. So, he just needed little votes from the South to push him in,” Okonkwo said.

2017: Northern Candidate Can Defeat Tinubu, Says Kenneth Okonkwo is first published on The Whistler Newspaper