ARISE News analyst and public affairs commentator, Sam Amadi, has criticised Nigeria’s opposition parties for focusing too heavily on elite-driven politics while ignoring the critical groundwork needed to challenge the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) ahead of the 2027 general elections.
During an interview on ARISE NEWS on Monday, Amadi argued that although the APC government is grappling with widespread public dissatisfaction—evident in rising poverty, unemployment, and inequality—the opposition has not demonstrated the strategic coherence or grassroots engagement required to translate that discontent into electoral victory.
He said, “The opposition is focusing a lot on elite politics.”
Amadi also added, “I think that what gives hope for the opposition is that the government is struggling in many ways. And the opposition imagines that they can weaponise that frustration to take Tinubu out of government. But on the basis of their own organising and their coherence, if you are an analyst, you will not give the score to them.
“If you’re looking at the fact that the APC government seems to be scoring own goals in many ways, then we are set for perhaps a competitive election in 2027. So I agree that the opposition party is not doing well and the prospect of a coalition, which everyone wants, or at least all those in the opposition, looks somewhat difficult to get to because of the polarising nature of the actors themselves.”
Responding to a question about where the opposition’s focus should lie, Amadi emphasised on a critical area: electoral reform.
Amadi pointed to the aftermath of the 2023 elections, where both the Labour Party and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) claimed to have been rigged out, yet neither has since pursued substantive reforms. He criticised their failure to push for greater transparency and accountability from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
“If you look at 2023, at least two of the leading political opposition parties claim to have won the election. The Labour Party claimed that they won, that the BVAS failed them, that they were rigged out. PDP claimed the same thing. But since 2023, they have done nothing to push for real reform.
“For example, the issues around BVAS, how they deploy those things, issues around electoral transmission, those are not issues you leave for INEC post-election. You have to be sure that INEC decisions are made openly with consultation. So, parties are not engaging them. They’re not doing anything.”
He also flagged the judiciary as another weak link in Nigeria’s democratic process, accusing the courts of either misunderstanding electoral law or enabling misconduct by election officials.
“Look at the issue around the judiciary. We see that part of the crisis is that the courts themselves have either misconceived, sometimes, the electoral jurisprudence, or have actually aided errant INEC officials to rig the election by not inquiring or by using technical burden of proof and front-loading and allowing the victims of possible electoral manipulation to carry the burden of even inventing evidence where INEC itself refuses to turn in the subpoenaed evidence itself.”
Amadi concluded by stressing that if the opposition hopes to overcome the “federal might” in 2027, it must stop playing elite politics and instead focus on institutional reforms.
Melissa Enoch
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