Lessons Nigerians must learn from Washington, Pretoria before 2027 election

Within two days this month, two very different democracies delivered the same verdict. On November 3, American voters handed both chambers of Congress to the Democrats, ending the Republican trifecta in Washington. A day later, South Africans gave the African National Congress its worst result since the end of apartheid. Different continents, different histories, one message: no party owns the voter.

Nigerians, who go to the polls on Saturday, January 16, 2027 to choose a president, should study that message closely.

In America, the warning signs came from places Republicans once took for granted. Democrats celebrated historic statewide wins in Texas, ran neck-and-neck in Mississippi, and won back many of the Latino and young voters who had backed Donald Trump only two years earlier. Exit polls told the story plainly: more than six in ten voters blamed high prices on the president’s own policies, a majority said immigration enforcement had gone too far, and the war with Iran, with its punishing energy costs, was deeply unpopular. Even Vice President JD Vance conceded that the war cost his party.

In South Africa, the ANC’s share of the vote fell from about 46 per cent in the 2021 municipal elections to roughly 31 per cent. It remains the largest party nationally, but the Democratic Alliance kept Cape Town outright, took the lead in Tshwane, the capital, and says it won a million new Black voters. ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula called the outcome catastrophic. The grievances were not abstract: dry taps, darkened homes, potholed roads, and years of corruption and cronyism in municipal government.

The lesson is simple. Voters tolerate failure only for so long before a heritage of loyalty turns into a ledger of disappointment. Neither the Republican heartland nor the ANC’s liberation legacy survived contact with an empty wallet.

If misgovernance moves votes elsewhere, Nigeria has reason to listen. Since May 2023, ordinary Nigerians have absorbed the removal of the petrol subsidy and the floating of the naira, reforms the government insists were unavoidable. Perhaps they were. But the bill was handed to households. Food inflation peaked near 40 per cent. The World Bank estimates that 63 percent of Nigerians, about 140 million people, lived below the poverty line in 2025, and notes that income have not kept pace with prices.

Insecurity has deepened the pain. Between July 2025 and June 2026, at least 7,825 people were abducted in more than 1,700 incidents, according to SBM Intelligence data cited by civil society groups. Nigeria now ranks fourth on the Global Terrorism Index. Farmers abandon their farms, travelers fear the highways, and parents count ransom where they once counted school fees.

The government points to numbers on its side: growth of 4.2 per cent in the first have of 2026, stronger reserves, slowing inflation. Voters should weigh those claims fairly. But the question at the ballot box is not whether the economy looks stable on a World Bank chart; it is whether that stability has reached the kitchen table. That judgement belongs to the voter alone.

Can the ballot really change anything?

Sceptics will say Nigeria is not America or South Africa, and they have a point. Those countries’ electoral bodies, courts and media operate with more independence. Nigeria still battles vote-buying, thuggery, collation disputes and elections settled in courtrooms rather than polling units.

But Nigeria has done it before. In 2015, Nigerians voted out a sitting president for the first time in our history. It was not a gift from politicians; it came from turnout, vigilance and a determination to see results announced at the polling unit.

The real enemy in 2023 was apathy. Of 93.5 million registered voters, 87.2 million collected their PVCs, yet only about 25 million votes were cast. The winner emerged with 8.79 million votes, fewer than one in ten registered Nigerians. Put differently, about 62 million cardholders stayed home and let others decide for them.

The register now stands above 103 million, and two of every three new registrants are aged 18 to 34. If even half of the stay-at-home voters of 2023 turn out, every calculation by the political class collapses.

Five lessons for January 16

Vote your experience, not your identity. Hunger has no tribe. Kidnappers do not ask for church or mosque membership before demanding ransom. The price of garri in Kano and in Enugu answers to the same policies. American Latinos and South African township voters broke with old loyalties because their lived reality demanded it. Ask what the last three years have done to your household, and vote on that.

Turnout is the weapon. South African turnout rose from 46 per cent to about 54.5 per cent, and the political map changed. Collect your PVC now, confirm your polling unit, and plan your day around January 16.

Refuse the bag of rice. A vote sold for N5,000 is a mortgage on four more years of the very conditions you complain about. It is also a crime. Never sell the future for a meal.

Protect the vote. Stay at your polling unit until results are counted and posted. Photograph the result sheet. Check the upload on INEC’s Result Viewing Portal (IReV). Free elections are defended by citizens, not only by commissions.

Mind the arithmetic of protest. South Africa’s revolt produced dozens of hung councils, and Nigeria’s divided opposition in 2023 allowed a candidate to win with just over a third of the vote. With at least 15 challengers on the ballot and the opposition split again, a protest vote scattered too widely can return the very outcome it opposes. Voters, not only politicians, must think hard about where their votes land. And political elites who cannot unite should not be surprised when voters decide for them.

Will Nigeria be left out?

The wave in Washington and Pretoria was not really about one party replacing another. It was about citizens reminding those in power who employs whom. Whether Nigerians choose continuity or change, that choice is legitimate only if it is made by the many, not by the few who bother to show up.

On January 16, the Nigerian voter, northern or southern, Christian or Muslim, rich or poor, holds exactly the same single vote as the governor and the minister. That is the most democratic fact in our country. The question is not whether the ballot can change Nigeria. It is whether enough Nigerians will use it.