The Executive Director of Alliance for Inclusive Development, AidAfrica, James Ugochukwu, has questioned the state of Nigeria’s multi-party democracy following the All Progressives Congress (APC)’s victory in all 21 chairmanship positions and 239 councillorship seats in the October 17 Kogi State local government elections.
His comments come after the APC swept all 21 chairmanship positions and 239 councillorship seats in the Kogi State local government elections held on Saturday, October 17, 2026, with the results announced by KOSIEC Chairman, Mamman Nda-Eri, on Sunday, October 18.
“If you look at all the local government elections that have been conducted in the previous months or this year, most of the political parties—the ruling parties—win or sweep everything. That is the language that is being used now, ‘sweep everything.’
“It calls to question if we are still practicing multi-party democracy, in the sense that it doesn’t make sense that in a contested election where you have other political parties, what you are having is one single party sweeping everything as if the other ones did not participate at all.
“Relating that to Kogi now, you see that the results were announced—or the pronouncements rather—because no figures were given, or maybe there is a different clip where figures were read out, but all we had is that a particular political party won all the 239 wards and 21 local governments.
“So it poses the question: in the Nigerian system this time, are we still having opposition parties at the grassroots level, or what we have is just the ruling party operating at all levels and sweeping all the posts? Another question is whether the opposition political parties are doing anything at all in terms of putting in a contest.”
Ugochukwu welcomed the peaceful conduct of the Kogi election but stressed that the absence of violence alone was insufficient to establish its credibility, adding that other aspects of the electoral process needed to be thoroughly scrutinised.
“Kogi has come and gone, and I am particularly happy that it was peaceful. We all know how Kogi can be very violent during elections, so we cannot confirm or deny whether this is as a result of what is at stake, or if people just decided to turn out and start conducting themselves peacefully than they used to do before.
“The bigger question now is that a peaceful election cannot be used to determine the outcome of an election; credibility too is very, very important. We are yet to see how credible the exercise was because when you say an election is not credible, it doesn’t necessarily imply that there was violence. Other issues in terms of the conduct need to be scrutinized properly.”
Speaking on the Kogi State local government elections, Ugochukwu said the opposition parties’ performance could not be properly assessed without detailed results showing the votes they secured, urging further scrutiny of whether they had a level playing field and were allowed to participate freely.
“What we need to be critiquing is if the opposition were given a level playing ground to participate. We need to dig further to see if they were given the opportunity to campaign and if they met all the requirements, because at times maybe they didn’t meet requirements to be part of the process and were left out. That is why we are still asking for the figures behind the process—what was their score, what did they get? That is what will now be used to determine.”
He added that the election demonstrated the APC’s strong grassroots structure, warning opposition parties to strengthen their presence at the election demonstrated the APC’s strong grassroots structure, warning opposition parties to strengthen their presence at the local government level rather than concentrate their efforts in Abuja ahead of the 2027 general elections.
Ugochukwu also urged them to assess their electoral preparations, mobilise voters and build grassroots support to improve their chances of competing effectively in future elections.
“The indication from this is that APC has demonstrated that they have a very strong grassroots coverage. Whichever way you look at it, whether there is turnout or not, what it shows is that APC has a very strong grassroots structure that can give them results.
“The second point is that this is a serious warning to the opposition parties that they have to go back and start working on their grassroots reach. It is not enough to stay in Abuja and be preparing for a general election. You should be looking at how strong you are at the grassroots level. So these are the main takeaways from this particular Kogi election.
“And of course, the issue of how peaceful or not peaceful it is, is something that the opposition parties need to also critique again, because we are going into the 2027 election. What is the level of their preparation to ensure that they have this grassroots support and prepare people to be part of the election to vote for them in their various local government structures? These are the things that they should be looking at ahead of the 2027 election.”
On the 2027 general elections, Ugochukwu cautioned against assuming that Nigeria’s expanded voter register would translate into higher turnout, citing uncollected Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs), insecurity, poor electoral logistics, broken political promises, weak opposition campaigns and vote-buying as factors that could influence voters’ willingness to participate.
“I think we shouldn’t be fooled by that big figure, in the sense that the 103 million we are having is an addition to the 90-something million we had previously. Out of this now, we are looking at people that have left the country, people that are deceased, and people that have moved from one location to another.
“Speaking of the added ones now, we are still going to see a lot of PVCs that are not going to be collected. Even after collecting all these PVCs, you are still going to have a lot of people that may have reason to turn out to vote or otherwise. It depends on the atmosphere that the political parties will be giving us.
“Nigerians are beginning to see that they shouldn’t be dying for the political ambition of other people. If the political parties decide to heat up the polity to the boiling point, having pain of violence and all that, a lot of people are going to stay away from the polling units. We’ve already seen that play out in most of our governorship elections.
“That of Kogi is peaceful in the sense that this is a local government election. But when the stakes are high, when we start having opposition parties contesting for Senate positions, House of Reps, State Houses of Assembly and all that, that’s where the violence comes into the ballot system. At that point, a lot of people will stay away from the polling units.
“And again, the INEC logistics. The new INEC Chairman, this is his first general election he is going to conduct. So far, the off-cycle elections they conducted, they performed creditably well in terms of deployment of men and materials, and opening the polls on time. But this is a general election.
“The logistics and preparation, and early deployment of men and materials, will determine the level of voters that are going to cast their vote. In past elections, logistics was a very big challenge, and during the election, a lot of people went back home when they couldn’t vote by 12:00 PM, 3:00 PM, or even 7:00 PM in places like Abuja here.
“These are the factors that we should be looking at. We cannot say that that figure is going to result in high turnout of voters. Of course, the way the politicians will be giving us their campaign in the coming months will determine the level of confidence people are going to have in the system. When you have a series of broken promises and all that, people will question the point of going to vote.
“And of course, the attitude of the opposition. If the opposition is not very serious in terms of coming out to do proper campaigns, a lot of people may decide, for those who want to vote opposition anyway, that there’s no point going to vote for people that are not serious.
“Largely, the vote-buying culture that we’ve created in this country, which anti-graft agencies are not taking seriously, will play a very critical role as well, whether for or against turnout.”
Urging political parties to strengthen their grassroots structures ahead of the 2027 general elections, Ugochukwu warned the APC against assuming its Kogi victory would be replicated nationwide, while calling on opposition parties to prioritise local government politics rather than focus solely on winning the presidency.
“Like I said earlier, the political parties, especially the ruling party, should not just use Kogi as a test case to assume that that is how everything is going to be for them in all the states, even though they control the majority of the states. They still need to do their work very well to ensure that they strengthen their grassroots structure.
“For the opposition, the message has been clear now that they don’t exist in the grassroots system, and they need to start working towards ensuring that they organize their grassroots structure. They need to start querying those at the grassroots, from the wards to the local government level: “What are you guys doing? Why did you perform dismally poor like this?”
“Another question we should look at again is that most of these opposition parties don’t even exist in the local government system. Most of them are just targeting the presidency, which is actually very wrong in my own assessment, because democracy starts from the grassroots. So at times, it may not necessarily be targeting the presidency.”
On the President’s directive to security chiefs to ensure that every vote counts in the 2027 elections, Ugochukwu stressed that its success would depend on the neutrality and non-partisanship of security agencies, urging them to obey the Electoral Act and discharge their duties without favouring any political party.
“When it comes to the security agencies, we need to reflect back to the activities of some of them. We should be looking at the body language of all these security agencies. What we should be looking at is why the presidency is asking them to ensure that all votes count.
“We should be looking at their level of non-partisanship. They should be able to do this by not being biased or supporting a particular political party. They should rely on themselves to follow the rule book, follow the Electoral Act, and ensure that they are neutral in whatever they are doing.”
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