If nearly 11 million people could come out to vote for President Tinubu in the Party Primary Election, how many would show up against him in the actual 2027 general election?
This is the question APC wants you sitting with.
In the presidential election in 2023, Bola Tinubu won the Nigerian presidency against 17 other candidates, in a full national election open to over 93 million registered voters across every political party in the country. He won with 8,794,726 votes. That result, as controversial as it was, came from the entire Nigerian voting public.
Three years later, in a party-internal exercise restricted only to registered APC members, he received 10,999,162 votes. That is over 2.2 million more votes than he got when all of Nigeria voted.
Hmm…interesting times ahead.
The state-by-state numbers make the picture stranger. In Adamawa, Tinubu got 104,833 votes in the 2023 general election, when all Nigerians voted. In the party primary, restricted to APC members alone, he got 644,149. In Gombe, the figure jumped from 146,977 in 2023 to 450,517 in the primary. In Abia, a state not exactly known as APC territory, he moved from fewer than 9,000 votes in the presidential election to more than 161,000 in an internal party exercise. In Bayelsa, from 42,572 to 227,000.
The only way those numbers make sense is if APC membership in those states dramatically expanded in three years, and if virtually every one of those new members came out to vote in a primary with a predetermined outcome. Possible? Technically. Plausible? You decide.
On the flip side, what the party is trying to build is a perception. If you can say 11 million APC members voted for you in a primary election, the message to the opposition is: imagine what we can do in a general election. This is a flex disguised as a result.
The problem is that the flex overshoots believability to the point where it weakens itself. When a number is so large that it raises more questions than it answers, it stops being impressive and starts being a liability. Many Nigerians did not react to 10.9 million with admiration, they reacted with the specific ‘Nigerian tiredness’ of people who have seen this playbook before.
The question 2027 will be decided on is not whether 11 million APC members voted in a primary; it is whether the average Nigerian, four years into this administration, feels better or worse than when it started.
Do you think the numbers reflect genuine party strength, or is this political theatre? Let’s hear from you in the comment section.
