BARELY seven months to the 2027 general elections, a reign of insecurity is casting a shadow over preparations for what should be a watershed democratic exercise, 33 years after the June 12, 1993, historic free and fair election.
Between January and May 2026 alone, no fewer than 5,272 Nigerians, according to media reports, have been killed in violence-related incidents.
According to the 15th Report on Violence in Nigeria, released by Nigeria Watch and compiled by Dr Vitus Nwankwo Ukoji, with support from Dr Abiola Victoria Ayodokun, 222,137 Nigerians were killed in 46,182 violent incidents across the 36 states and the FCT between 2006 and 2025.
With this background, the 2026 death toll has prompted the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, rights activists, and senior lawyers to warn that the polls scheduled for January 16 and February 6, 2027, could be conducted under the cloud of an unprecedented security crisis. Continued terrorist attacks, banditry, kidnappings, and other violent crimes in most zones of the country, especially in the North-East, North-West, North-Central, and now creeping into the South-West, have caused tension and fear in the polity.
As the 2027 polls countdown intensifies, the consensus emerging from multiple fronts, INEC’s leadership, the police high command, the human rights community, and civil society, is unambiguous: Nigeria cannot afford to treat security and elections as separate conversations.
The two, as INEC Chairman, Professor Joash Amupitan, put it, are “two sides of the same coin of national stability.”
However, leading opposition parties, such as the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, African Democratic Congress, ADC, and Nigeria Democratic Congress, NDC, last week, warned against postponing the elections, saying doing so would amount to surrendering the nation’s democracy to terror groups.
First, during a courtesy visit to the Inspector-General of Police, IGP, Olatunji Disu, Amupitan formally sought the support and collaboration of the Nigeria Police, ahead of the general election.
In a statement by the commission’s Director of Publicity and Voter Education, Mrs. Victoria Eta-Messi, the INEC chairman identified electoral malpractices, vote-trading, and threats of violence as factors capable of undermining public confidence and posing risks to national security.
He stressed the need for proactive security measures, including comprehensive risk assessments, to identify potential flashpoints and deploy appropriate mitigation strategies ahead of time, rather than waiting for trouble to erupt.
“The scale of insecurity across various parts of the country presents a threat to the conduct of free and fair elections. It is essential that we carry out thorough security risk analyses, ahead of the elections,” Amupitan stated.