Don’t sell Tinubu phantom million votes in Kwara central

By Yaqub Olohuntoyin  

When my namesake, Dr. Yakub Oloriegbe, said the Ilorin Emirate Political Advisory Council would deliver one million votes to President Tinubu in 2027, it sounded ambitious, loyal, and decisive. But the promise fell apart the moment it met the hard facts.

The first problem with the one-million claim is arithmetic. Kwara Central has four LGAs: Asa, Ilorin East, Ilorin South, and Ilorin West. According to INEC’s final list of registered voters used for the last general elections in 2023, Kwara Central had 648,091 registered voters. To get to one million, the zone would need to add 351,909 voters in three years from 2023 to 2026. Let’s put it in context. For the whole of Kwara State, INEC added 157,318 voters between 2019 and 2023. So, does it make sense for Dr. Oloriegbe to think he can double the state’s four-year growth in a single senatorial zone, and also do it faster within a few months to the 2027 general elections? That is not a thoughtful plan. It is only a product of weird imagination.

Even asuming the phantom growth happened, the problem of voter turnout remains. In 2023, Kwara Central’s voters’ turnout was roughly 30%, while the state’s turnout was 32.7%. For perspective, the highest turnout Nigeria has had in any presidential election since 1999 was 69.1% of the registered voters. And that was in 2003. To therefore turn one million registered voters into one million votes, Dr. Oloriegbe expects all registered voters to turn up and every ballot cast to be valid. No LGA or state has ever achieved that .

The one million vote promise has also thrown up the practical matter of where the votes actually reside. What no one can dispute is that a large number of people of Kwara South origin live and vote in Ilorin. While they understand both zones, they vote with the discipline of the zone they come from. Any serious talk about Kwara Central’s voter figures must account for that population, and it is the Kwara South candidate that can reach them without raising the usual storms. 

It will be recalled that twice in 2019 and 2023, Kwara South voted Mallam AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq as governor. It is interesting that Kwara South did not wait for the candidate to be from home before turning out en masse. That steadiness is why 2023 did not turn into a disaster for our party in Kwara, and why the party flag bearer for 2027 should come from Kwara South.

As an Ilorin-born and a staunch APC supporter, I am raising my voice on the “one million votes” claim to protect our President from being misled. This is really not about envying my brother, Dr. Oloriegbe, a retired teacher and political neophyte who is desperately seeking public attention. His promise to deliver one million votes to President Tinubu from a senatorial zone that gave APC abysmal votes in 2023 is ridiculous. It is a dangerous illusion that invites under-investment in mobilization, allows internal fractures in Kwara Central to fester, and sets the party up for a public credibility problem when the results return to reality.

The bigger issue is what Kwara Central has actually done with the voters it had. In the 2023 presidential election, Kwara Central’s four LGAs delivered only 87,989 votes, which is 33% of the 263,572 votes President Tinubu got in Kwara State. The governorship number is even starker. APC’s governorship vote in Kwara Central fell from 123,063 in 2019 to 90,804 in 2023 — a drop of 32,259 votes. Even as an indigene, I have no illusion about the fact that a zone that loses over 32,000 votes in one cycle is not a base you build a one-million vote promise on.

Yes, politics needs confidence, but confidence has to sit on a solid plan. The APC in Kwara does not need a screaming headline that announces a fake promise. It needs a plan that recognizes where the votes are and where they have been consistent. No doubt, Kwara South has been consistent. In a state where every cycle feels like starting all over, that consistency counts a lot for us, the loyal supporters. 

At last, authentic data now reveals that Kwara Central is not a vote bank. It is a zone in retreat. So the idea that a political advisory council can “deliver” some bogus votes to Mr. President treats our voters as objects to be moved by fiat. It ignores that Kwara politics since 2019 has been driven by volatility between Kwara Central and Kwara North, with South holding steady. 

President Tinubu should not be sold a promise that cannot be kept. APC in Kwara cannot build its 2027 plan on a number plucked from the air, just as Kwara Central cannot deliver what it does not have. The voter register, the turnout history, and the 2023 results all point to a zone whose vote is collapsing at a dizzying rate. 

If the goal is to win Kwara convincingly in 2027, our strategy must rest on what is real and not what sounds impressive in a press release. That reality, if we must face it, leads squarely to Kwara South as the consistent vote bank of Kwara State.

•Yaqub Olohuntoyin, a public affairs analyst, writes from Ilorin.

The post Don’t sell Tinubu phantom million votes in Kwara central appeared first on Vanguard News.