Why Is Tinubu So Afraid Of Peter Obi? -By Jeff Okoroafor

In the gilded halls of the Presidential Villa in Abuja this week, President Bola Tinubu offered the Nigerian people a curious reassurance: “Elections are not conducted on social media platforms. Nigerians conduct elections.” The statement, delivered with the confidence of a man who believes he has outsmarted his critics, was meant to dismiss the opposition’s growing digital presence as mere noise—irrelevant chatter in a political game where the rules are still written by those who control the levers of power.

With respect, Mr. President, the problem is not that elections are conducted on social media. The problem is that they are no longer conducted with integrity anywhere else.

If last week’s electoral exercises across various states demonstrated anything, it is that the ruling All Progressives Congress has mastered the art of winning without persuading, governing without delivering, and now—lecturing without credibility. The gap between the President’s rhetoric and the reality on ground has become a chasm so wide that it swallows whatever remains of public trust in Nigeria’s democratic institutions.

The Substance Behind the Screens

Let us be precise about what the President dismisses as mere “social media.” When millions of young Nigerians document vote-buying in plain sight, when citizens livestream the sudden relocation of polling units in opposition strongholds, when evidence of intimidation by ruling party thugs floods every timeline—these are not digital distractions. They are a citizen-led election observation network that functions despite the institutions designed to guarantee electoral integrity.

The President claims Nigerians conduct elections. Which Nigerians? Certainly not the ones whose votes were rendered worthless by the open display of cash at polling units. Not the ones who arrived at designated voting locations only to find them mysteriously moved to inaccessible areas. And absolutely not the ones who watched the Independent National Electoral Commission—an institution whose 2023 election performance academic research has documented as marred by “corruption, lack of adherence to its rules, and lack of independence”—look away as the rulebook was incinerated before our eyes .

The scholarly evidence is damning. A comprehensive study of the 2023 elections published in a major international journal found that INEC’s “significant constraints are corruption, lack of adherence to its rules, and lack of independence,” concluding that “the activities of INEC are still massively influenced by political interferences, thereby making it challenging for the body to conduct credible elections” . When the electoral umpire itself is compromised, the distinction between social media and “real” elections becomes a convenient fiction for those who benefit from the dysfunction.

Former INEC Chairman Mahmood Yakubu recently disclosed that the commission is prosecuting 774 alleged electoral offenders from the 2023 general election . Seven hundred and seventy-four. That is not the number of a system functioning as designed. That is the number of a system in intensive care, and the President wants us to believe the patient is simply resting.

The FCT Farce and the Wike Problem

Then there is the matter of the Federal Capital Territory Minister, Nyesom Wike—a figure whose continued presence in this administration defies every principle of accountability the President claims to champion. Wike, whose political career has been shadowed by accusations so serious they would end public service careers in any functioning democracy, remains not merely in office but apparently untouchable.

A human rights lawyer and professor recently published an open letter cataloguing allegations against the Minister: “use of criminal violence to pervert the outcome of elections in Nigeria; looting of public assets in his various political roles at the State and federal levels, including as Governor and as Minister; laundering assets from Nigeria for the acquisition of luxury real estate in Florida in the USA; non-compliance with the asset declaration laws in Nigeria in relation to his unlawfully acquired and looted assets; and chronic and criminal corruption of every level of the judicial system from the lowest to the highest courts in Nigeria” .

These are not social media rumors. These are documented allegations from a credible source, and yet the Minister remains, in the author’s words, strutting “Nigeria’s public space with both impunity and arrogance, peddling influence and abusing public office and assets habitually for his private gain” .

What message does this send to Nigerians watching their democracy hemorrhage credibility? That the President’s commitment to fighting corruption extends only to those without the right political connections. That “elections conducted by Nigerians” means elections conducted by Nigerians who have mastered the game of transactional politics.

The Fear Behind the Facade

The President’s dismissal of social media as irrelevant to electoral politics reveals something more telling than strategic blindness: it reveals fear. The opposition, particularly Peter Obi and the movement he has inspired, has done what the ruling party assumed impossible. They have built a constituency that cannot be bought, intimidated, or relocated—because its foundation is digital, its structure is decentralized, and its loyalty is to ideas rather than individuals.

This is what truly alarms the administration. You cannot compromise a network that has no single point of failure. You cannot intimidate millions of dispersed supporters watching from their phones. You cannot buy votes when the transaction is public within seconds. The President’s attempt to delegitimize digital political engagement is the reflexive response of a political establishment that has finally encountered something it cannot control through patronage, coercion, or manipulation.

The recent defection of Obi and other opposition figures to the African Democratic Congress has only intensified this anxiety. Political analysts suggest that Obi’s confidence about being on the ballot in 2027 indicates that “key negotiations may have already been concluded” within opposition parties . The President’s party may control the machinery of state, but the opposition is building something more durable: a coalition of citizens who have decided that their votes should actually matter.

The Economic Reality Behind the Statistics

If the President’s electoral commentary strains credibility, his economic messaging fractures it entirely. Speaking at the same event, Tinubu described an economy “picking up,” with “major investment decisions across Africa increasingly favour Nigeria” and “renewed confidence in our direction.”

The distance between that statement and lived Nigerian reality cannot be measured in kilometers—it must be measured in hunger.

Yes, the macroeconomic indicators may show signs of improvement. Inflation may also have slowed from its 2024 peak. The naira indicating some level of stability. But as BusinessDay reported in September 2025, “on the streets of Abuja, Lagos, Kano, Owerri, Jos, Kaduna, and Port Harcourt, the story is different”. The newspaper documented the cruel paradox of Nigeria’s “recovery”: prices stabilizing at levels that remain unaffordable for millions whose incomes have not increased.

“A loaf of bread is still N1,500,” one teacher told the publication. “Yes, it is no longer increasing every week, but it is still double what I used to pay before 2023. My salary has not really changed”.

Economists explain this gap between statistics and suffering with a distinction the President seems unwilling to acknowledge: disinflation is not deflation. Prices are still rising, just more slowly. The cost of living remains devastatingly high. As one economics lecturer put it, “Nigerians are not feeling any relief because prices are still climbing… Cost of living is still very high with inflation at 20.12 percent as shown in August CPI numbers. When inflation was half this in Europe, people were embarking on cost-of-living crisis demonstrations” .

A December 2025 report painted an even starker picture of survival: “For many households, 2025 was not the year of relief; it was the year of endurance.” Nigerians reported that “survival strategies had become almost universal,” with informal savings groups becoming “lifelines” rather than mere financial tools . Young graduates turned to content creation on TikTok not from choice but because “after two years without a job, TikTok started paying me small money” .

This is the economy the President asks Nigerians to celebrate? This endurance contest of hustling, borrowing, and hoping—this is “renewed confidence in our direction”?

The Insecurity That Statistics Cannot Capture

Perhaps most devastating is the human toll of the administration’s security failures. A report released just this month documented that violent conflicts across Nigeria claimed 4,654 lives in 2025, with 3,141 persons kidnapped in 1,274 incidents nationwide . Banditry emerged as “the deadliest driver of violence,” accounting for 599 incidents and 2,724 deaths—a sharp increase from the previous year .

Kidnapping has evolved into “a structured, profit-driven enterprise, thriving amid weak governance, vast unpoliced rural spaces and worsening security conditions across several regions”. Between July 2024 and June 2025, kidnappers collected at least N2.57 billion in ransom from their victims, with an estimated N48 billion demanded during the period . At least 4,722 people were abducted across 997 kidnapping incidents .

These are not social media fabrications. These are the bodies of Nigerians whose government could not protect them. These are families who sold everything to pay ransom demands that the state was powerless to prevent or punish.

The security report warned that “insecurity may escalate in 2026 due to emerging alliances between terrorists and bandits, the expansion of armed groups into new states such as Kwara and Kano, and rising political tensions ahead of the 2027 general election” . The threat matrix includes terrorism, banditry, kidnapping, secessionist unrest, communal violence, and criminal networks funded by illicit mining—all “interconnected and worsened by weak intelligence coordination and governance gaps”.

When the President speaks of elections conducted by Nigerians, which Nigerians does he mean? The ones who can vote without fear of abduction on the way to the polling unit? The ones whose communities are now controlled by armed groups who answer to no law?

The Opposition That Will Not Be Silenced

Peter Obi, addressing the European Parliament in November 2025, articulated what millions of Nigerians experience daily: “Africa is a continent of immense potential… Yet it remains the face of global poverty, largely because of bad leadership and entrenched corruption—a reality clearly reflected in Nigeria” .

He called on European lawmakers to “support our democratic processes in ways that promote the emergence of competent leaders with the capacity and integrity to transform our nations”. The appeal was not to foreign interference but to international solidarity with Nigerians seeking the democracy they were promised.

This is the opposition the President fears—not one that trades insults on social media, but one that articulates a vision compelling enough to attract international attention, organized enough to build a cross-party coalition, and patient enough to wait for 2027 while documenting every failure of the current administration.

The Democracy We Deserve

President Tinubu is correct about one thing: elections are not conducted on social media platforms. They are conducted at polling units where votes are counted, at collation centers where results are announced, and in the hearts of citizens who believe their participation matters.

But when polling units become theaters of intimidation, when collation centers become sites of negotiation rather than tabulation, and when citizens lose faith that their votes will determine their governance—then social media becomes the only space where democracy can still breathe. It becomes the record of what happened when official records were falsified. It becomes the archive of evidence when institutional memory fails. It becomes the organizing ground when every physical space is controlled by those in power.

The President’s dismissal of digital political engagement reveals an administration that has learned nothing from the 2023 election and forgotten nothing about the people it supposedly serves. While he lectures Nigerians about where “real” elections happen, his government presides over an economy that punishes the poor, a security apparatus that cannot protect the vulnerable, and a political system that treats the ballot box as a transaction rather than a sacred trust.

The 2027 election will not be won on social media. But if the President continues to govern as though the only voices that matter are those he can hear from Aso Rock, he may discover that the election was lost there as well—lost in the gap between his statistics and our suffering, in the distance between his confidence and our despair.

Nigerians conduct elections, Mr. President. But they also conduct business, raise families, bury their dead, and dream of a better country. Until your government helps them do any of those things with dignity, your dismissal of their digital voices will ring hollow—just another empty promise in a season of national disappointment.

The question is not whether elections happen on social media. The question is whether they happen at all. And by that measure, the jury is no longer deliberating. The verdict is in, and it is not in your favour, Tinubu.

Jeff Okoroafor is a social accountability advocate and a political commentator focused on governance, accountability, and social justice in West Africa.