ABUJA, Nigeria (Chatnewstv.com) — Former Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai has said Nigeria’s 2027 presidential election may go into a run-off, warning that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is unlikely to make the top two contenders.
Speaking Sunday on Channels Television’s Politics Today, El-Rufai argued that no candidate is positioned to win an outright majority in the first round of voting.
“I was governor of Kaduna state; I was one of Bola Tinubu’s biggest campaigners, but I couldn’t deliver the state to him,” El-Rufai said. “Bola Tinubu himself couldn’t win his state with his own governor in place. So, these things are not as theoretical as people want them to be.”
He said a second round of voting was the most probable scenario. “The worst-case scenario in the 2027 elections is that no winner will emerge in the first round,” he said. “We may have to go for a runoff, and Bola Tinubu will not be on the ballot for the runoff, because he will, at best, be third in the election.”
El-Rufai accused the administration of relying on state resources and institutions to secure re-election, comparing it to former President Goodluck Jonathan’s failed 2015 bid.
“You may think, oh, I have money, I have INEC, I have the police, I have the army,” he said. “Invite ex-President Goodluck Jonathan for a chat and ask him if he didn’t have all this in 2015, and we got him out. Is the case still the same? It’s worse.”
He also said he would not have remained in government even if he had been cleared for a ministerial role under Tinubu. “I would have resigned,” El-Rufai said, adding that he no longer shares political alignment with the ruling party.
