Elrufai, politics is beyond mathematical projections – Edward Onoja
I am no mathematician, and I cannot claim to foresee the future with divine accuracy. But as a trained geologist with political experience and a fair grasp of history, I must respectfully disagree with His Excellency Mallam Nasir El Rufai’s projection on Channels TV that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu will lose in 2027 because he has done the mathematics. That claim is not only false, it is a weak attempt to tickle a dwindling political base with chalkboard theatrics.
This is not the first time the former governor has dazzled with figures that reality later shredded. Let me take you back to November 13, 2019, three days before the Kogi State gubernatorial elections. I was the APC deputy governorship candidate representing Kogi East, and he was chairman of our electoral committee. We held a closed door strategic meeting in Lokoja on the eve of our final rally. That night he reeled out statistics and projections with the assurance of a prophet. According to him, APC would not win a single local government in Kogi East, not even my own. He even went as far as quipping that my wife, Her Excellency Mrs Ejura Onoja, would thumbprint for the PDP against me.
After listening, I told him, let us go into a bet. From the works and engagements we have had, we will deliver more than one local government. In fact, we will win at least one from each of the three federal constituencies. We will put up an excellent performance from the Kogi East axis that I lead. He smiled, brushed it off, and instead offered a wager. If you deliver Dekina, the local government of the PDP candidate, I will buy you a Rolex wristwatch. Imagine that, reducing the sweat, risks, and sacrifices of an election in which I was running mate to the price of a luxury timepiece. That was how trivial he made it sound.
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But elections are not wristwatches, and politics does not tick to Swiss timing. The results came, and reality humbled the numbers on his notepad. APC won two local governments outright in Kogi East, Olamaboro and Ibaji, and would have won Bassa but for the outright cancellation of Eforo ward where we had victory. In six out of nine local governments, excluding Idah, Dekina, and Ankpa, APC and PDP were separated by fewer than 800 votes each. At the end, PDP barely edged APC in Kogi East with a margin of about 30,000 votes, a margin that one or two local governments from Kogi Central or West could easily erase. In fact, even if you deducted APC’s entire votes from Kogi Central, where allegations of over voting swirled, APC still carried the election by over 3,000 votes. I strongly doubt even His Excellency himself believed his own projections after the results were declared.
That is why I am unmoved by his latest mathematical acrobatics on 2027. He has a history of bold calculations that the ballot box humiliates. Politics, as I have always maintained, is not solved with a marker on a whiteboard. It is lived. It is fought in the dust of the grassroots, negotiated in rooms of alliance building, and sustained by patient strategy. Equations do not vote, people do. Whiteboards do not mobilize, structures do.
Here my background as a geologist offers perspective. In geology, we rely on the Law of Uniformitarianism, the present is the key to the past. The same forces shaping the earth today are the same ones that shaped it for millions of years. Apply that to politics and the truth is clear. President Tinubu’s victories have never rested on miracles or sheer incumbency. They rest on the uniform forces of grassroots structures, political horse trading, and strategic alliances. These are the same forces that kept Lagos progressive when PDP dominated the South West, the same forces that built a nationwide network strong enough to deliver the presidency in 2023 against the odds. By that same law of consistency, they are the forces that will sustain him in 2027.
To be fair, His Excellency deserves his flowers. He is a founding member of the APC, a two time governor, a one time FCT minister, and one of the strongest public advocates for Tinubu’s 2023 victory. He helped galvanize Kaduna, one of the top three voting states in Northern Nigeria, to deliver heavily for APC. With insecurity in Southern Kaduna now being brought under control by this administration, APC’s numbers there will only swell further in 2027. In politics, every vote counts, and no serious actor writes anyone off.
But on this mathematics theory, I must disagree. My advice to the former governor is simple, sit back, rethink, and let the heat simmer down. Do not destroy the very house you helped to build. Politics will remember him more for being a co founder and sustainer of the APC than for wristwatch wagers and whiteboard projections that dismiss the very processes that once worked in his favor. History has already shown, and will continue to show, that in politics, reality defeats arithmetic.
