By Salahuddeen Gambo Ardo
It is one thing to argue from sentiment that the retention of Vice President Sen. Kashim Shattima on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s 2027 ticket, in place of the more religiously balancing option of General Christopher Gwabin Musa (Rtd) OFR, the Honourable Minister of Defence, carries political risk. It is another thing entirely, and a recourse of discourse more befitting a serious political family, to interrogate that risk with the actual figures INEC itself put in the public domain in 2023. This piece avails itself of that statistical duty. As a card-carrying member of the All Progressives Congress, I undertake this exercise not to malign my party, but in all ramifications to arm it with the numbers it needs to defend its ticket intelligently between now and 2027.
Arithmetic of Risk;
Recalled that President Tinubu was declared winner of the 25th February 2023 presidential election with 8,794,726 votes, representing roughly 37 percent of valid votes cast, against Atiku Abubakar’s 6,984,520 votes (29 percent) and Peter Obi’s 6,101,533 votes (25 percent), with Rabiu Kwankwaso of the NNPP polling 1,496,687. It cannot be over emphasize that a President who assumes office with only about a third of the vote, in an election where national turnout collapsed to 26.71 percent, the lowest recorded since the return of democracy in 1999, inherits a mandate that is numerically thin and, in all ramifications, vulnerable to erosion at the margins. Sixty-four percent of Nigerians who voted in 2023 voted for somebody other than Tinubu and the APC. That arithmetic alone ought to caution any strategist in Abuja against complacency going into 2027.
Zonal Breakdown: A Region-by-Region Dissection;
A zone-by-zone dissection of the 2023 result, drawing from INEC’s declared figures, avails a picture far more revealing than the topline national numbers:
NORTH CENTRAL: Tinubu carried this zone with approximately 39 percent of the vote against Atiku’s 25 percent and Obi’s 31 percent, translating to roughly 1.7 million votes for the President-elect. This was, on the surface, a win. But it is on record, neither fallacy, that political analysts before the election had tipped Obi to actually capture North Central precisely on account of Christian disquiet over the Muslim-Muslim configuration of the APC ticket. That Obi came within eight points of Tinubu in a zone the APC was expected to dominate is itself a warning sign, not a comfort. More tellingly, official results show Plateau State was lost outrightly to Obi, who polled 466,272 votes against Tinubu’s 307,195 and Atiku’s 243,808. Nasarawa State followed the same pattern, with Obi polling 191,361 against Tinubu’s 172,922 and Atiku’s 147,093, a margin of fewer than 19,000 votes. Two of the zone’s most religiously mixed states, both with substantial Christian populations estimated by demographic surveys at well above two-fifths of their people, slipped from APC’s grasp entirely. It is only in Kwara, a considerably more Muslim-majority state, that Tinubu won comfortably, polling 263,572 against Atiku’s 136,909 and Obi’s 31,166.
NORTH EAST: Atiku Abubakar won this zone outright with about 51 percent against Tinubu’s 34 percent and Obi’s 9 percent, delivering him roughly 1.7 million votes. Taraba and Adamawa, both carrying significant Christian populations, remained firmly in Atiku’s column, while even Gombe, ordinarily considered safe APC territory, fell to the PDP, with Atiku polling 319,123 against Tinubu’s 146,977. As a recourse of discourse, it must be noted that Atiku’s Adamawa base makes this zone a structural headache for APC regardless of who occupies the running mate slot, but the Christian-populated pockets within it remain an added layer of vulnerability that a Musa candidacy could have neutralized in part.
NORTH WEST: This remained comfortably Tinubu’s strongest zone by raw numbers, delivering him about 39 percent against Atiku’s 35 percent and a mere 5 percent for Obi, translating to roughly 2.6 million votes, more than his own South West home zone managed. This is overwhelmingly Muslim-majority terrain, and the Musa question carries little weight here, save for Kano, where Kwankwaso’s Kwankwasiyya structure, now folded into the NDC, remains the dominant local threat.
SOUTH WEST: Tinubu’s home zone gave him 54 percent against Atiku’s 22 percent and Obi’s 20 percent, approximately 2.2 million votes, actually less than what the North West delivered him. It is insightful, and rather humbling, that Tinubu lost his own Lagos State outrightly to Obi, who polled 584,454 against the President’s 572,606, a margin of fewer than 12,000 votes in the President’s home turf. Ogun, Ondo and Ekiti held firmly for APC, but Osun, official figures avail, went to Atiku’s PDP by a slim 354,366 to 343,945. Governor Seyi Makinde’s Oyo State held for Tinubu in 2023 with 449,884 votes, but with Makinde now himself the APM presidential flagbearer alongside Alhaji Lawal Musa Daura for 2027, this zone can no longer be treated as fully settled.
SOUTH EAST: This remained Obi’s fortress, delivering him close to 90 percent of the zone’s vote and roughly 1.9 million votes overall, his best zonal performance nationwide. APC’s combined haul across all five states, Enugu, Ebonyi, Imo, Abia and Anambra, was a mere 127,605 votes out of a combined valid vote total exceeding 2.1 million, a vote share of under six percent. In Anambra alone, Tinubu polled just 5,111 votes to Obi’s 584,621. This zone remains structurally resistant to APC irrespective of the running mate arithmetic, but the Muslim-Muslim ticket removed whatever marginal sympathy could have been cultivated.
SOUTH SOUTH: Obi topped this zone with about 42 percent against Tinubu’s 28 percent and Atiku’s 25 percent, delivering him roughly 1.2 million votes, while Tinubu’s zonal haul of 799,957 contributed only about nine percent to his national total. Delta, Cross River and Edo all fell to Obi. Only Bayelsa produced a genuinely three-way contest, with Atiku’s PDP narrowly prevailing at 41.62 percent against Obi’s 30.23 percent and Tinubu’s 25.75 percent, a result that avails how fractured and contestable Christian-majority South South politics truly is.
How Regional Turnout Shapes the Math;
It is material, and often overlooked in this kind of discourse, that turnout itself skewed against APC’s comfort. Analysis of PVC collection and voting patterns by the International Centre for Investigative Reporting avails that turnout in the South East, an Obi stronghold, was the lowest of all six zones at roughly 22 percent, while North Central, precisely the zone where Christian disaffection over the Muslim-Muslim ticket was most keenly anticipated, recorded the highest turnout nationwide. Thus, to tell you that, had South East turnout matched North Central’s, Obi’s national numbers, and by extension the pressure on APC’s zonal firewall, would in all ramifications have been considerably higher. This is not a comforting statistic for any APC strategist banking on low civic enthusiasm among aggrieved Christian voters to persist indefinitely.
Why Religious Demographics Matter;
Nigeria’s population divides almost evenly between its two major faiths, a near 49 to 49 split according to standard demographic surveys, which is precisely why the informal religious-balancing convention on presidential tickets developed in the first instance, and why its breach in 2023 drew open condemnation from the Christian Association of Nigeria and expressions of concern from the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria. Plateau and Benue States, both within Musa’s Middle Belt catchment, carry Christian majorities estimated at well above half and, in Benue’s case, closer to three-quarters of their population by most demographic accounts, while Taraba itself, this writer’s own State, carries a similarly substantial Christian population. It is neither fallacy nor exaggeration, therefore, to state that a Musa candidacy would have spoken directly, in religious and regional terms, to precisely the voters who handed APC its narrowest zonal margins and its most humiliating individual state losses in 2023.
Fragmentation as the Electoral Wildcard;
Let it avail some comfort, in fairness, that the opposition APC faces in 2027 is no longer the single insurgent candidacy of 2023. Alhaji Atiku Abubakar now leads the ADC alongside Rt. Hon. Rotimi Amaechi as running mate, Peter Obi has moved to the NDC with Rabiu Kwankwaso as his running mate, and Governor Seyi Makinde flies the APM banner with Alhaji Lawal Musa Daura. Three separate platforms, three separate structures, competing for the same disaffected vote that Obi alone consolidated in 2023. This fragmentation, statistically speaking, avails APC a genuine cushion, since anti-APC sentiment in Plateau, Nasarawa, Lagos, the FCT, Delta, Cross River, Edo and the South East will now be split three ways rather than channelled through a single vessel. Whether this cushion proves sufficient to offset the accumulated grievance of a second consecutive Muslim-Muslim ticket remains, in all honesty, the open statistical question that will define 2027.
Conclusion & Call to Action;
The lesson from these figures is not that APC is destined to lose in 2027. It is that the margins in the zones that matter most, North Central, South South, South East and the FCT, were thinner than the party’s own propaganda machinery often admits, and that the retention of Sen. Shattima over General Musa forecloses a strategic option that the data suggests could have meaningfully widened those margins. As a loyal member of this great party, I avail this statistical reckoning not to sow despair, but to sound an alarm that sincere party managers ought to heed.
May God Almighty grant APC victory in all ramifications come 2027. May He guide Mr. President, Asiwaju Bola and Sen. Kashim Shattima, in the task ahead. May He continue to preserve and strengthen General Christopher Gwabin Musa (Rtd) OFR in service to the fatherland. And may He bless, unite and preserve Nigeria at large, regardless of zone, region or faith. Amin!
Salahuddeen Gambo Ardo writes from Jalingo, Taraba State.
