Political allies of President Bola Tinubu have announced a target of 18.7 million votes for his 2027 re-election, as the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) seeks to translate its dominance of state governments into electoral gains.
The target is more than double the 8.79 million votes he secured in the 2023 election.
The announced pledges, by governors and political leaders across eight states and regions, show the intended scale of mobilisation effort ahead of the next presidential election.
However, the targets have drawn reactions from analysts who have questioned how realistic those promises are.
The APC currently controls 31 of Nigeria’s 36 governors, giving Tinubu’s party an extensive network of state-level political structures to support its re-election campaign.
Two opposition governors have also publicly declared support for the president’s second-term bid, potentially widening his support beyond the ruling party.
Who promised what?
A breakdown of the announced targets, published by StatiSense, shows that political leaders in the North Central states have pledged six million votes, the largest contribution in the projection. Akwa Ibom follows with 3.5 million votes even though the state has a total of 2.6 million registered voters.
His Edo State counterpart, Monday Okpebholo, promised a target of 2.5 million votes from a total of 2.865 million registered voters in the state.
Dapo Abiodun, Ogun State governor, has pledged two million votes, matching the target attributed to Benue State. Ademola Adeleke, Osun State governor, is associated with a target of 1.5 million votes, while Oyo and Ekiti states have targets of 800,000 and 400,000 votes, respectively.
Combined, the announced targets amount to 18.7 million votes, exceeding Tinubu’s 2023 nationwide tally by 9.91 million.
The promised votes also represent 75.1 percent of all total votes recorded for the 2023 presidential election.
Yet the scale of the pledges interrogates how effectively political leaders can translate their influence over state governments into presidential votes, particularly in states where historical voting patterns have frequently diverged from governors’ party affiliations.
Since the return to civilian rule in 1999, no presidential candidate has won 75.1percent of total votes in a presidential election. The lowest percentage recorded for a sitting president since 1999 was during the 2023 presidential elections, where Tinubu recorded 36.61 percent of the total valid votes in the election.
A recent electoral analysis by VIISAUS, a research and data analytics organisation, examining five presidential election cycles between 2003 and 2023, identified 19 states as swing states, 11 as consistent aligners and six as consistent non-aligners.
The analysis found that governors’ parties won the presidential vote in their respective states in 57.8 percent of the election cycles examined. This suggests that control of a state government can provide a political advantage but does not guarantee that voters will support the governor’s party in a presidential election.
The 19 swing states are particularly significant for the 2027 contest because their voting patterns have changed across election cycles. They include all six North Central states, Benue, Kogi, Kwara, Nasarawa, Niger and Plateau, as well as Lagos, Oyo, Ekiti, Rivers, Imo, Adamawa, Borno, Yobe, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Kebbi and Sokoto.
The North Central region’s six-million-vote target is therefore especially consequential. Although the region represents a major mobilisation opportunity for Tinubu’s campaign, VIISAUS classifies every state in the zone as competitive based on historical voting alignment.
The report also identifies Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta, Abia, Ebonyi, Enugu, Ogun, Osun, Taraba and Zamfara as consistent aligners, having voted for their governors’ parties in at least four of the five election cycles examined.
However, the classification is based on historical patterns rather than a prediction of the 2027 outcome. The 2023 election, when all five South East states voted for the Labour Party presidential candidate regardless of the party controlling their governorships, illustrates how candidate appeal and wider political conditions can override established alignments.
For Tinubu’s campaign, the challenge will be to convert governors’ pledges and the APC’s extensive state-level presence into actual ballots while competing in states where voting behaviour has proved less predictable.
With the 2027 election approaching, the announced 18.7 million-vote target provides a measure of the campaign’s ambition. Whether it translates into electoral gains will depend on voter preferences, campaign mobilisation and the ability of political leaders to deliver support beyond public declarations.
David Omogbemi, a political analyst, said the ambitions of the governors may not translate into votes considering the rising cost of transportation and the cost of living crisis.
‘It sounds very unrealistic, because even during his initial time, you saw the margin, so I doubt that would change just by having most of the governors in his party. Also, don’t forget that some of these governors are also fighting their own battles. Apart from that, there is the big challenge of the cost of living crisis; you saw on Saturday when the president himself admitted that there is poverty and hunger in the country,’ Omogbemi said.
He added that there would have to be a major turnaround in the cost of living for many Nigerians before Tinubu can move any closer to the promised votes.