COUNT US BEFORE YOU COUNT OUR VOTES; … a Question of Tinubu’s 2027 Re-Election Bid
By Bolaji O. Akinyemi
Nigeria is again standing at a dangerous intersection of identity, power, and silence; curiously, Peter Obi has called for transparency, Nasir Elrufai has issued a worrisome bait, and the First Lady has projected a “Muslim Majority” voting ratio. Words spoken casually by those close to power now carry the weight of history, fear, and possible bloodshed.
Contrast with the words coming from the opposition. The world should be worried about the dregs of what may be brewing politically in Nigeria. This is no longer a season for political banter; it is a moment for sober global attention.
From Peter Obi came: “In the upcoming election in 2027, anybody who refuses to count our vote, we will count the person join. Anybody who refused to count our votes in 2027, we will count him”
No contemporary political actor embodies the ideological boldness of Nigeria’s Muslim–Muslim Ticket experiment more than Nasir El-Rufai.
As Governor of Kaduna State, El-Rufai did not merely advocate the ticket in theory; he operationalised it. And left for the state a legacy of Muslim dominance political structure; from the executive branch, the parliamentary branch and the Chief Judge in the Judicial arm with an underscore of the Attorney General /Commissioner for Justice. In addition, other key functionaries of the Kaduna State administration are entirely muslims.
Elrufai’s tenure was openly marked by prioritizing Muslim areas in resource allocation, stating that Christians in Kaduna State were less than 30% of the population and shouldn’t expect 50% of government positions and project allocations.
This approach has been criticized for exacerbating religious tensions and undermining national unity. Elrufai’s administration was also accused of suppressing Christian voices and imposing harsh policies on Christian communities.
As governor, he ran a Muslim dominated administration as a deliberate micro-replica of what he envisioned for the federal government of Nigeria. That choice, defended repeatedly with provocative rhetoric, was accompanied by policies and statements widely perceived as dismissive of plural sensitivities. Whether one agrees with him or not, Elrufai’s record is inseparable from Nigeria’s present identity tensions.
Against this background, the reported statement credited to Nigeria’s First Lady—suggesting that Muslims are numerically more than Christians—is not a throwaway line. Coming from Oluremi Tinubu, the wife of the sitting President and an ordained Pastor of the Redeemed Christian Church of God is worrisome; such a claim functions politically as an argument for inevitability: numbers as destiny, demography as entitlement. Yet it raises an unsettling question: on what empirical authority does this claim rest?
Nigeria has often conducted census without the provision of spaces for respondents to disaggregate population by religion and ethnicity in a manner acceptable to all stakeholders. In the absence of such data specifications, demographic certainty becomes conjecture, and conjecture—when weaponised—becomes a threat. More troubling still is the implied irony: while the First Lady’s words appear to suggest Muslim numerical advantage, significant Muslim political blocs of the 12 Sharia States remain openly hostile and disenchanted with the re-election prospects of Bola Ahmed Tinubu in 2027; why spite the nose to please the face.
Numbers, even if proven, do not automatically translate to voting loyalty.
Equally deafening is the silence of the Christian Association of Nigeria. In moments of existential national discourse, silence is not neutrality—it is abdication. If a claim touching the demographic soul of the nation goes unchallenged or unverified, suspicion fills the vacuum. And suspicion, in fragile states, is combustible. Is CAN unaware of the cited religious claims of the Remi Tinubu?
This brings us to the most alarming dimension of this national moment: Elrufai’s public allegation regarding an inquiry by the National Security Adviser into the importation of poisonous substances from Poland. Though firmly denied by Nuhu Ribadu, the National Security adviser, the gravity of the allegation itself demands more than official rebuttals. Elrufai insists the claim is backed by intercepted communications and asserts that the NSA’s phone was tapped. These are not accusations to be waved aside in a country with Nigeria’s history of ethnic massacres and electoral violence.
History is unkind to nations that dismiss early warnings. From industrial gases repurposed for genocide, to chemical agents used under the cover of “security operations,” poisonous substances have too often marked the prelude to mass murder. When such allegations surface—especially in eve of an election-bound polity—they must trigger international scrutiny, not partisan defensiveness.
The timing deepens global concern. At a moment when foreign military troops and aircraft are reportedly landing in Nigeria for joint counter-terrorism operations, transparency is non-negotiable. The world has both a moral and strategic obligation to ensure that counter-terrorism cooperation does not mask or enable demographic cleansing, voter suppression, or state-sanctioned violence under any guise.
At the heart of all these tensions lies one unavoidable truth: Nigeria cannot conduct a credible election in 2027 without first affirming the availability of credible census data. You cannot count votes when you refuse to count people. Those eager to calculate electoral victories while avoiding demographic truth reveal more than political ambition—they reveal fear of accountability.
Let it be said plainly: those who want to count those who will not count their votes must first demand that we all be counted.
A transparent, independently audited census data, conducted with international observation and full demographic disclosure, is no longer a bureaucratic exercise. It is a peace-building imperative for which those who want to count our votes must be asked how they plan to carry out their counting; in body bags? Without it, every electoral outcome will remain suspect, every demographic claim incendiary, and every transition vulnerable to violence.
Elrufai now is a political party chieftain of the ADC, once threatened a planned foreign intervention in our polity, that those who dares it, will go back in body bags. Obi is better positioned to emerge as the Presidential Candidate of ADC, a party that may produce a Christian/Muslim Ticket a balance that Elrufai worked fiercely against in 2023.
Citizen’s ignorance is the most potent tool of our manipulation by the political class. The only logical things to do now to deflate the building violence and assure national unity prior to 2027, is not an election; but a structural re-engineering of our constitution.
The storms are no longer gathering, they have gathered, from the threats of those preparing to count in body bags, the conspiracy of chemical weapons and the assertion to numerical strength of Muslims over Christians, by a First Lady, who only a few days ago was struggling to convince the world against the existence of Christian persecution and genocide in Nigeria.
The global community must not wait for body counts before it acts. Nigeria stands at the edge of a question history has asked too many times before: when the warnings were issued, who listened, who acted or who ignored it all?
Citizen Bolaji O. Akinyemi
Founding President, PVC-Naija
Chairman, Board of Trustees
Apostle & Nation Builder
Dr. Bolaji O. Akinyemi is an Apostle and Nation Builder. He’s also President Voice of His Word Ministries and Convener Apostolic Round Table. BoT Chairman, Project Victory Call Initiative, AKA PVC Naija. He is a strategic Communicator and the C.E.O, Masterbuilder Communications.
