There is an old lesson in Nigerian politics: you cannot harvest where you did not plant.
As the 2027 general election draws closer, that saying may become particularly relevant to the National Democratic Congress, NDC, if the party goes into the election with major gaps in its candidate structure.
NDC has no governorship candidate in 11 states — Cross River, Borno, Ebonyi, Katsina, Kebbi, Niger, Plateau, Taraba, Yobe, Zamfara and Akwa Ibom — covering 233 local government areas.
With Nigeria having 774 LGAs, the affected areas represent about 30 per cent of the country’s local government structure.
That is too large a gap for a party seeking the presidency to dismiss as a mere problem concerning governorship contests.
The real question is straightforward: can NDC win a national election in areas where its political presence is already weakened by the absence of candidates?
That is the question the party must confront before campaign slogans drown out the harder realities of electioneering.
One of the mistakes political parties make is to reduce presidential contests to the popularity of the person at the top of the ticket.
The candidate matters enormously, but the machinery beneath that candidate often determines whether popularity becomes votes.
A presidential campaign needs people who understand the wards, know the communities and can communicate directly with voters.
It needs candidates at other levels who can carry the party’s message into constituencies where the presidential candidate cannot possibly maintain a daily presence.
This is why the absence of governorship candidates in 11 states should concern NDC beyond the question of who will occupy the Government House in those states.
The party risks losing political visibility in places where it should be building the foundation for its presidential campaign.
That problem becomes more serious when viewed alongside the reported absence of NDC candidates in about 141 House of Representatives constituencies.
A House candidate is not merely a name competing for a legislative seat.
In many constituencies, that candidate is the party’s local face, fundraiser, mobiliser and political contact.
Remove that person from the ballot and the presidential campaign inherits another burden.
Who fills that space?
Who keeps the party visible in the constituency?
Who maintains contact with voters when the national campaign team moves on?
These are practical questions, not theoretical ones.
2023 showed both the power and limits of popularity
NDC should study the 2023 election carefully because it provides perhaps the clearest recent lesson on what political enthusiasm can achieve and where it can fall short.
Peter Obi and the Labour Party secured 6,101,533 votes and won 11 states and the Federal Capital Territory, producing one of the most dramatic electoral performances by a relatively small political party in Nigeria’s recent history.
The Obidient movement demonstrated the enormous power of grassroots enthusiasm, volunteer mobilisation and social-media campaigning.
It also proved that Nigerians were willing to abandon traditional voting patterns when they found a candidate who captured their imagination.
Yet the Labour Party did not win the presidency.
That outcome should not diminish its achievement, but it should remind opposition parties that a strong movement still needs national reach to complete the journey.
The 2023 experience therefore presents NDC with a simple warning: popularity can create momentum, but momentum must eventually be converted into votes across the country.
That conversion requires deliberate organisation.
The geography of the presidency matters
The stakes become higher because Nigeria’s presidential election is not decided solely by whoever records the highest national vote total.
The Constitution also requires a candidate to secure at least one-quarter of the votes cast in at least two-thirds of the states and the Federal Capital Territory, alongside securing the highest number of votes.
That geographical requirement makes every part of Nigeria politically significant.
A candidate cannot afford to dominate a few regions while leaving large portions of the country practically unattended.
Peter Obi’s 2023 performance illustrated this point.
He made historic gains and won several states convincingly, but his support was not sufficiently distributed across the country to satisfy the constitutional requirement for victory.
NDC therefore has to think beyond its strongest territories.
If it lacks governorship candidates in 11 states, it must find another route to establish and sustain its presidential presence there.
That will not be easy.
But it is necessary.
The agents and result-sheet question
There is another matter the party cannot afford to overlook.
Election campaigns end at polling units, but the work of protecting votes continues after voting.
The 2023 presidential election eventually produced a prolonged legal battle, with Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar challenging Bola Tinubu’s victory.
The courts ultimately dismissed the major petitions, but the litigation demonstrated how important polling-unit records and electoral evidence can become after an election.
This should shape NDC’s preparations for 2027.
Where will its agents come from?
Who will record its results?
Who will preserve the evidence?
Who will identify discrepancies quickly enough for the party to respond?
These are questions that cannot be postponed until election week.
The party must know its answers long before voters arrive at the polling units.
The claim that missing candidates could cost NDC four to six million presidential votes deserves a more cautious treatment.
There is no credible basis for assigning a precise number of lost presidential votes merely by counting constituencies without candidates.
Voters do not always follow the choices of local candidates.
Some vote primarily because of the presidential candidate, while others are driven by party loyalty, regional interests, economic conditions, personality or anger against the government.
Some will vote for President and ignore the other contests altogether.
Therefore, the stronger argument is not that NDC has already lost millions of presidential votes.
The stronger argument is that the party may have surrendered part of the machinery needed to maximise its vote.
That is a serious disadvantage without exaggerating the mathematics.
The party still has a window
NDC should not interpret its current weaknesses as an automatic death sentence.
Nigerian politics has repeatedly produced surprises, and the 2023 election itself showed how quickly an outsider can disrupt the established order.
But political surprises are usually created by preparation, not wishful thinking.
NDC must therefore identify every gap and determine what can legally and politically be done before election day.
Where there are genuine nomination or administrative disputes, the party should pursue them through the proper channels.
Where vacancies cannot be altered, the party should build alternative structures capable of carrying the presidential campaign.
It must strengthen its ward organisations, train polling-unit agents and identify constituencies where additional resources are required.
Most importantly, it must understand that a political rally is not an election.
A crowded stadium may demonstrate enthusiasm, but it does not tell us how many supporters will vote, where they will vote or whether the party will properly monitor the process.
The choice before NDC
The 2027 presidential contest is still open, and no responsible analyst should declare the outcome before Nigerians have spoken.
But NDC must recognise the difference between having a presidential ambition and possessing the machinery required to pursue it effectively.
If 233 LGAs have no NDC governorship candidate and about 141 federal constituencies have no NDC House candidate, the party has an organisational problem that requires urgent attention.
It does not necessarily mean defeat.
It means the party has less room for mistakes.
The 2023 election taught Nigerians that political enthusiasm can shake the establishment, but it also showed that presidential victory requires something broader than enthusiasm.
NDC now has the opportunity to learn from both sides of that experience.
It must turn its message into a national campaign, its supporters into voters and its political ambition into a structure capable of surviving the pressure of election day.
Because when the campaign posters come down and the microphones go silent, Nigerians will not vote for the best rally.
They will vote for candidates on the ballot.
And the party that understands how to convert that moment into a nationwide electoral advantage will have the last laugh.
