Nigeria’s political season has entered a deeply unsettling phase, where even the basic principles of mathematics appear no longer safe from manipulation.
As a member of the opposition, it ordinarily should not be my business how the ruling party conducts its internal affairs. But decency, democratic values, and concern for the survival of our collective democratic experiment compel me to speak. What we are witnessing is the dismantling of democratic values in broad daylight.
In ordinary arithmetic, ten naturally comes before eleven, and seven hundred must come before seven hundred and one. Yet, in some of the All Progressives Congress primaries currently circulating across social media, figures appear to have developed political wings. Votes no longer grow through careful counting; they jump by sheer ambition. Numbers no longer follow logical progression; they bow to raw power.
Across various digital platforms, Nigerians have been treated to clips allegedly showing counting exercises where figures reportedly leapt in broad daylight, right before party members, cameras, and a global digital audience drawning intense national scrutiny, forcing citizens to ask how a political party can conduct primaries in the modern age of smartphones and still behave as though the world is blind to its actions.
As Nigerians, we cannot simply look away when multiple public videos and independent commentaries raise similar and disturbing questions about the integrity of a process. Democracy does not die only when guns are fired; it dies slowly when numbers are manipulated, when silence replaces public outrage, and when political parties treat internal primaries as private coronations rather than democratic exercises.
What happened to basic counting, absolute transparency, and the dignity of party members whose presence and votes are supposed to matter? If numbers can allegedly leap from ten to one hundred, or from seven hundred to nine hundred, without any credible explanation, then we are no longer discussing a legitimate election. We are watching a poorly scripted political theatre.
The tragedy is not merely that the ruling party has embarrassed itself. The greater tragedy is that Nigeria is being humiliated on the global stage. In an era where every local political act can be recorded, uploaded, shared, and consumed worldwide within minutes, internal party practices are no longer hidden village affairs. Investors, diplomats, the Nigerian diaspora, and the global democratic community are watching.
How can the international community take Nigeria seriously when the ruling party, which should set the highest democratic standard, is associated with viral clips that make counting look like a magic trick? How do we demand external trust when our internal party primaries openly mock the simplest principles of arithmetic?
This crisis goes beyond partisan politics. It strikes at the root of Nigeria’s democratic culture. Party primaries are the foundation of representative democracy. If that foundation is compromised, the general election is already wounded before it begins. A party that cannot transparently count its own delegates cannot credibly lecture the nation about electoral integrity.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and other party leaders have repeatedly spoken about strengthening democracy and avoiding do-or-die politics, with reports even suggesting a push for direct primaries ahead of 2027. But warnings without strict enforcement are mere decorations. Nigeria cannot continue reducing democracy to financial inducement, consensus by coercion, delegate manipulation, and arithmetic without a conscience.
We cannot expect credible leadership to emerge from processes that citizens openly ridicule. We cannot tell young Nigerians to believe in democracy while showing them that announced figures may have no relationship with the actual people counted.
Nigeria desperately needs real change. If nations like India can manage elections involving hundreds of millions of voters with technological discipline, Nigeria has no excuse to remain trapped in analog manipulation. The ruling party carries a heavier burden because it shapes the democratic climate of the nation. It cannot preach national reform while tolerating internal chaos.
Every manipulated primary deepens public cynicism. It tells young people that merit is irrelevant. It signals to the diaspora that the homeland remains allergic to transparent systems. It weakens public faith in institutions and strengthens the dangerous belief that politics is not about the people, but about those powerful enough to manufacture outcomes.
Democracy is not built on inflated figures. It is built on trust. And that trust begins with something as simple as counting properly.
Nigeria deserves better.
Hon. Kenneth Gbandi is a Nigerian diaspora leader, ADC Deputy National Chairman for Diaspora Engagement under Nwosu led NWC, Chairman of the ADC Diaspora Network, and Delta North Senatorial aspirant. He writes on democracy, electoral integrity, diaspora participation, and national reform
