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President Bola Tinubu is likely to secure victory in Kaduna and most states across Nigeria’s North-Central region in the 2027 presidential election, according to Professor Femi Otubanjo, a Research Professor at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs.
Otubanjo made the prediction during an interview with ARISE NEWS, where he argued that the growing number of governors backing Tinubu could give the president a significant advantage in the next election.
He said governors remain important players in presidential contests because of their access to state and local government structures, which can strengthen grassroots mobilisation.
According to the professor, Tinubu’s current political backing is considerably broader than it was during the 2023 election.
“Today Tinubu has 31 governors behind him,” Otubanjo said, adding that some other governors, including those in Osun and Anambra, have also indicated support for the president.
He noted that Tinubu managed to emerge victorious in 2023 despite not having the backing of most state governors at the time.
Otubanjo said the president’s performance in several states during the last election could also provide a basis for assessing his prospects in 2027.
“If you look at the results of the last election, Tinubu was first or second in almost 28 states. Now, if you follow that pattern, this time he has 31 governors,” he said.
The professor specifically identified Kaduna as one of the states where he expects Tinubu to improve his performance.
He argued that the current governor, Uba Sani, could be a more committed supporter of the president than former governor Nasir El-Rufai was during the 2023 election.
“El-Rufai had his own, El-Rufai was useful in the 2023 election, but Tinubu still lost Kaduna State with El-Rufai as the sitting governor,” Otubanjo said.
He added that the margin by which Tinubu lost Kaduna in 2023 was not sufficiently large, in his view, to rule out a possible turnaround in 2027.
“So I see Tinubu under Uba Sani winning Kaduna. I see him winning most of the states of the North-Central, except Nasarawa,” he said.
Otubanjo also predicted victories for Tinubu in Jigawa and Zamfara, while cautioning that election outcomes remained subject to changing political circumstances.
He rejected the tendency to treat the North as a single electoral bloc, stressing that voting patterns vary from one state to another.
“It’s always a mistake to talk about the North. You assume that the North is just one homogenous ethnic group,” he said.
According to him, Tinubu won Benue, Kwara and Kogi in 2023, while coming second in Nasarawa and Plateau, making the region more politically diverse than broad descriptions of a unified “North” suggest.
The professor further argued that governors possess significant political and administrative structures that can influence election mobilisation.
“Governors have resources. This is an objective thing. They have the resources of the state,” he said.
He added that recent developments surrounding local government administration could further increase the resources available to governors and local government chairmen for grassroots mobilisation.
However, Otubanjo warned against assuming that every governor supporting Tinubu would automatically deliver their state to the president.
He singled out the South-East as a major exception, arguing that the region’s desire to produce the next president could outweigh the political preferences of individual governors.
He also mentioned Oyo and Rivers states as areas where the influence of the governors may not necessarily translate into electoral support for Tinubu.
On Rivers, Otubanjo criticised the handling of the state’s political crisis and predicted that the situation could work against the president’s interests.
He similarly said Oyo State Governor Seyi Makinde would not support Tinubu, while expressing uncertainty over how governors in the North-West would perform.
Despite those exceptions, Otubanjo maintained that most governors backing Tinubu would work towards his victory in 2027.
“I expect that most of them will,” he said. “But you are going to find that the majority of governors will work for him. And that he will have victory.”
He stressed that his assessment was a political prediction rather than a scientific forecast, noting that electoral outcomes depend on a combination of past voting patterns, current circumstances, candidates and the messages they present to voters.
“I’m ready to stick my neck out on that as an analyst,” Otubanjo said.
