By Emmanuel Omolayo
INTRODUCTION
The Federal Republic of Nigeria: A patient with a detailed documented history of chronic, recurring illnesses has been officially booked for her 8th consecutive democratic session, scheduled for January 16, 2027. The attending body, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has confirmed to the citizens that progressive preparations are ongoing steadily. There are new innovations employed, upgraded equipment, and the operating theatre will be ready in a bit. The patient, on her part, keeps bleeding.
PATIENT HISTORY
Nigeria’s first session at the democratic ward was in 1999, tired of the military hullabaloo, she developed an acute hunger for self-governance. She was admitted, diagnosed, and administered therapy; a standard four-year treatment cycle. However, she keeps returning every four years. The therapists already mastered the art of diagnosing her and giving her the regular treatment as she presents the same symptoms consecutively, the symptoms include: executive corruption, destabilised economy, insecurity disorder, national sclerosis, and a persistent fever that spikes often during election season.
The files are extensive. Physicians recorded over 20,000 deaths from violent incidents between 2020 and 2024. By the first half of 2025 alone, in just six months, 6,800 civilians had been killed. For the northwest, 2,938 people were kidnapped within 12 months. In November 2025, at least 402 citizens, predominantly school children, were kidnapped across four northern states in a month, worse than the 2014 Chibok girls saga that captured the world’s attention, briefly.
In 2026, the patient arrived with the following condition:
Admission Notes — January to February 2026
– 1,258 deaths recorded in the first 41 days of the year.
– 160+ worshippers abducted, late January
– 160+ killed in coordinated attack, Kwara State villages, February 3
– 35 million Nigerians projected to face acute food insecurity in 2026
– 2.3 million internally displaced by violence and ongoing insecurity
There’s a national constant fear, with grave trauma and severe social disorder.
Attending physicians scanned the notes, nodded ashamedly, and began printing the timetable for the next proceeding.
THE DOCTORS’ CONFIDENCE
It would be inhumane to assume that those saddled with the responsibility to cater for the patient’s welfare have been ignorant of her condition. It has been clamoured, alarmed and reported over the years in press conferences, in the media space, in the wailings of the dead. Mr President himself, accepting his party’s presidential ticket planning towards the 2027 election on May 24, 2026. This was two days after 1,258 citizens had been reported dead within six weeks. He addressed the nation with characteristic precision:
“We have invested in intelligence, surveillance, and modern equipment, and we are addressing the root causes of insecurity. We will not rest until we restore peace and stability to every corner of our country.”
-President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, APC Presidential Acceptance Speech, May 24, 2026.
In the same speech, Mr President described Nigeria as being on an “irreversible path of economic expansion” and encouraged the nation toward “continuity.” He explained that his administration laid the foundation of a modern Nigeria. That the foundation seemed to be laid upon an open mass grave was not mentioned in the remarks.
Earlier, when a journalist mentioned that the incessant insecurity of the nation could have an eroding effect on his next political ambition, the President stated clearly:
“You are playing to the hand of agents, including my own enemies, who want to use insecurity to get rid of me.”
–President Tinubu, addressing Plateau State stakeholders.
THE PAEDIATRIC WARD
On May 15, 2026, ten days before Mr President incurred his party’s ticket for the next season, some gunmen riding motorcycles executed an attack on three schools in Ahoro-Esinele, Oriire Local Government Area, Oyo State. They came in the cool of the morning, while assembly was ongoing and the pupils were gathered and most vulnerable. They sprayed bullets sporadically, dragged pupils, teachers, and a Vice Principal, Mrs Alamu Folawe, into a nearby forest. An Assistant Headmaster, Mr Adesiyan, was killed in the process. An okada rider who was hell-bent on not releasing his bike was shot dead at the spot.
Painfully, among those taken into the forest was Christianah Akanbi. She is a two-year old victim of a bleeding system, a girl-child aptly exposed to traumatic experiences and deprived of her right to grow in sanity.
By the Christian Association of Nigeria’s count, 46 people were abducted, mostly children within the age-range of two to sixteen. Al Jazeera confirmed the figure that 39 students, along with 7 teachers, were taken captive. Twelve days later, on Children’s Day, they were still in the den of the abductors. The families were still waiting. The forest was still gloomy and dark.
This was not a northern seizure surfacing for once, in a southern headline. Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State had himself forewarned that bandits uprooted by military operations in the north-west were heading southward, encamping in forests wherever security is lax. The Gani Adams alert of November 2025 that terrorists had pervaded forests across all six south-west states had been documented, filed, and apparently remained there unattended.
At least 816 pupils were taken from 22 different schools across the country in attacks between 2023 and late 2025. Since 2014, the aggregate toll has exceeded 2,400 children, and that figure does not account for all those who never returned. Many a time, Nigeria has been here, and has each time responded with a consistent mix of alarm, clamour, prayer, and inaction that explains the next attack as a schedule, not a tragic occurrence.
On Children’s Day, May 27, 2026, Christianah Akanbi and dozens of her peers are still held in bandit custody. President Tinubu issued an official statement. It was neither an announcement about a rescue operation nor a declaration of a state of emergency on school security. He asked Nigerians to pray.
“We call on those who have taken to the path of violence to rethink and abandon their evil ways.”
-President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Eid el Kabir / Children’s Day Message, May 27, 2026.
Two-year-old Christianah Akanbi and her playmates are still sleeping in uneasiness and unrest, at the clashing sounds of metal in a forest in Oyo State, and Mr President’s prescription is a plea to the dead conscience of the kidnappers. The same statement celebrated the economy. Nigeria, the President assured the nation, was becoming “a preferred investment destination.” The walk through the dark tunnel, he declared, is over.
No one told Christianah.
INEC Prepares the Theatre
While the patient haemorrhages, the hospital has been commendably active. INEC’s new Chairman, Prof. Joash Amupitan, assumed office in October 2025 and has immediately communicated the commission’s preparedness to a nation that has not asked how the hospital is doing, only whether the bleeding will be stopped.
“The eyes of over 200 million Nigerians and the entire continent are upon us. The work ahead is demanding, the hours will be long, and the scrutiny will be intense.”
-Prof. Joash Amupitan, INEC Strategic Retreat, January 2026.
The Chairman has pledged to the nation that the 2027 general election will be “a watershed moment in Nigeria’s history” and that INEC has made plans to deliver a “world-class, technologically driven and transparent election that is beyond reproach.” He defined the voters’ register as “the foundation upon which free, fair and credible elections are built,” and has supervised its thorough cleaning, erasing the names of the deceased from the register, as the morgue’s list of names keeps a regular update.
The timetable, as released, is scrupulous: Continuous Voter Registration runs from April 2026 through January 2027. Party primaries wrapped up between April and May 2026. Campaigns start in August. PVC collection opens in December. The Presidential election will be held on January 16, 2027. The schedule has been revised once, in conformity with a newly legislated Electoral Act, revealing INEC’s faithfulness to the letter of the law, if not its spirit.
“We will try to give Nigerians a near-perfect election. Credible elections remain the lifeblood of democracy.”
-Prof. Amupitan, Citizens’ Townhall on the Electoral Act, March 2026.
The lifeblood of democracy. An ironic phrase of a nation that has lost, conservatively, tens of thousands of civilian lives to violence and terrorism since the last routine. But the Chairman is not without advocates. The head of the Nigerian Institute for Security Studies extended his institution’s congratulations and added, graciously: “No matter what we do, there may be hitches. But we pray for a seamless process in 2027.”
Now we pray
In a rare display of cross-party honesty, even stakeholders of the ruling party have begun to recognise the critical condition of the patient, not out of moral imperative, but out of electoral uncertainty. Osita Okechukwu, a founding member of the APC, gave this diagnosis after the party’s presidential primaries credited Mr President with 10.99 million votes:
“My fears regarding the tall-order results are guided by many factors; among which are the history of low voter turnout, hunger in the land, palpable insecurity, gross unemployment, epileptic power supply, and the unfavourable debt-to-service-revenue-ratio.”
-Osita Okechukwu, APC founding member, May 2026.
This is, bared off its political narrative, a clinical inventory of a nation in institutional worn-out. This is not a call to amend these things for the sake of the Nigerian citizens. It is a call to a quick fix before the vote, just to secure the top seat for the party. The patient’s welfare is, as ever, accidental to the plan.
PROGNOSIS
Weighing all available clinical evidence, Nigeria’s condition remains fatal. The patient has witnessed seven previous sessions; each session comes with the same experience and she has emerged from each in the same state as she entered: older, poorer, and with more fresh and severe cuts than the former.
The eighth session is scheduled for January 16, 2027. The hospital is prepared. The doctors have calibrated the equipment. The timetable has been printed, laminated, and shared among the beneficiaries. A pre-assessment exercise has been administered to verify the equipment’s functioning. The electoral register has been purged of the dead; nonetheless, the dead keep accumulating faster than the purging can proceed.
The patient has been advised to collect her Permanent Voter Card between December 2026 and February 2027. She has been motivated to take part in the next election. Her participation, the hospital assures her, is “crucial to executing a credible, peaceful, and optimised electoral process.”
Lastly, the patient has not been told when the bleeding will stop. She has not been told of any corrective measures to differentiate this time. Like seven times before, she has been told, that the eyes of the continent are watching and hovering, that the procedure will be, by God’s grace, almost flawless.
She is expected to survive. She always does.
