Abia South Senator, Enyinnaya Abaribe has made a forecast , opining that incumbent President Bola Ahmed Tinubu will not emerge Victorious in the 2027 general elections.
Abaribe argued that the power of incumbency will not rescue what he described as a fragile mandate.
Speaking on Channels Television on Monday, the Abia South Lawmaker questioned the legitimacy of Tinubu’s 2023 victory, saying the opposition accepted the outcome to preserve stability but would challenge the president squarely at the polls in 2027.
According to him the political machinery credited with delivering Tinubu’s win would falter under a transparent process,come 2027.
His remarks revived the bitter disputes that trailed the February 25, 2023 presidential election. Tinubu was declared winner by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) with 8,794,726 votes, ahead of Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Peter Obi of the Labour Party. Both opposition candidates immediately rejected the results, faulting INEC’s failure to upload polling-unit results in real time to the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal via the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS)—a feature widely touted before the vote as a guardrail for transparency.
The legal battle climbed to the Supreme Court after the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) upheld Tinubu’s victory. Atiku and Obi argued, among other grounds, that Tinubu did not secure 25 percent of votes in the Federal Capital Territory and raised questions about his qualification, alongside claims of substantial non-compliance with the Electoral Act 2022.
In October 2023, a seven-member Supreme Court panel led by Justice Inyang Okoro dismissed the appeals, ruling that the non-transmission of results electronically did not void manual collation and affirming that the FCT holds no special status above other states.
