“The greatest danger to democracy is not merely that elections may be rigged; it is that citizens may gradually lose the confidence that the institutions conducting those elections belong to them.”
Nigeria’s 2027 general election is already becoming more than a contest for political power. It is emerging as a profound test of whether the Nigerian state can maintain the constitutional and ethical distinction between public office and partisan political interest.
The recent composition of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Campaign Council has therefore generated legitimate questions. Among the appointments attracting particular public attention are Zacch Adedeji, Chairman of the Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS), as Deputy Director of Fundraising, and Abisoye Coker-Odusote, Director-General of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), as Director of Data Management. These appointments have been independently reported in the published membership of the campaign council.
The issue should not be reduced to whether these individuals are entitled, as citizens, to political convictions. They are. Nor should the debate become another partisan contest between supporters and opponents of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
The deeper question is institutional:
Can public institutions that exercise extraordinary powers over citizens’ identity and finances simultaneously occupy strategic positions in the political machinery seeking to retain the government that appoints them without creating a serious perception or possibility of conflict of interest?
That is the question Nigeria must confront before 2027.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has revised the 2027 electoral timetable following the enactment of the Electoral Act 2026. The presidential and National Assembly elections are now scheduled for 16 January 2027, while the governorship and State Houses of Assembly elections are scheduled for 6 February 2027.
This means that Nigeria is entering the electoral season at a moment when institutional credibility is itself becoming an electoral issue.
INEC has already acknowledged that the integrity of the voters’ register remains fundamental to public confidence. As of the 2023 general election, the national voters’ register contained 93,469,008 registered voters, while the Commission identified concerns including duplicate registrations, deceased voters, non-citizen registration and incomplete or inaccurate records.
Against this background, the relationship between identity data, electoral politics and political campaigning deserves extraordinary scrutiny.
Nigeria cannot afford a situation in which citizens begin to wonder whether the information they surrender to government for legitimate administrative purposes can somehow become politically useful.
Even the perception that this might happen can damage democracy.
The concern surrounding NIMC is particularly sensitive because Nigeria’s national identity infrastructure has become enormous.
NIMC reported in July 2026 that more than 136 million Nigerians and legal residents had been enrolled in the National Identity Database. The new NIMC Act 2026 further strengthens the importance of the National Identification Number as the foundational identifier within Nigeria’s digital identity ecosystem.
This is not ordinary administrative information.
Identity databases contain information capable of identifying individuals across multiple dimensions of social and economic life. NIMC itself describes its mandate as establishing, owning, operating, maintaining and managing the National Identity Database.
Consequently, when the head of such an institution assumes a senior role in a partisan campaign’s data-management structure, the appropriate response should not be defensiveness but institutional transparency.
There is an important distinction here.
It would be irresponsible to assert, without evidence, that NIMC’s database has been handed to the APC campaign. There is presently no demonstrated evidence in the material examined that government NIN data have been transferred or used for campaign purposes.
But democracy does not require citizens to wait until a breach occurs before demanding safeguards.
The prevention of abuse is part of good governance.
The Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 treats political opinions or affiliations and certain biometric information as sensitive personal data and establishes lawful-basis requirements for processing personal information. It also provides for stronger safeguards where processing poses significant risks to citizens’ rights and freedoms.
The ethical question therefore becomes unavoidable:
What firewall exists between the public authority responsible for national identity management and the partisan organisation responsible for winning an election?
If such a firewall exists, government should explain it publicly.
If it does not exist, one must be created.
The second concern involves the NRS.
Zacch Adedeji, Chairman of the Nigeria Revenue Service, has been listed as Deputy Director of Fundraising in the APC Presidential Campaign Council.
Again, the argument must be carefully framed.
Being appointed to a campaign position does not automatically prove that government revenue is being diverted to a political campaign. Such an allegation would require evidence.
But the institutional dilemma is nevertheless serious.
The head of the national revenue-collection institution occupies a position of enormous public trust. Taxation is not a personal contribution to the president. It is a constitutional and civic mechanism through which citizens and businesses finance the commonwealth.
The moral principle is simple:
Public revenue belongs to the public before it belongs to any administration.
A tax authority must therefore be perceived as politically impartial in its administration, enforcement and institutional conduct.
If the same official responsible for mobilising public revenue is simultaneously mobilising private political contributions for the governing party’s presidential campaign, Nigerians are entitled to ask where the institutional boundary lies.
The question is not merely:
“Has public money been used?”
The more fundamental question is:
“What mechanisms guarantee that public money cannot be used and that citizens can independently verify that it has not been used?”
That distinction between actual corruption and institutional vulnerability is essential to serious democratic analysis.
Nigeria’s Public Service Rules have historically sought to establish boundaries around partisan political activity. Rule 030422 provides that, without appropriate permission, an officer should not hold an office in a political organisation, publicly support or oppose a political party or candidate, or engage in canvassing for political candidates. The rules also provide for resignation in circumstances involving partisan political activity or elective political ambitions.
There is, however, an important scholarly complication.
Professor Abiodun Odusote has argued that aspects of Nigeria’s public-service restrictions on political participation raise constitutional questions, particularly regarding citizens’ freedom of association under Section 40 of the Constitution. His scholarship calls for a more nuanced distinction between legitimate political rights and the requirement of institutional neutrality in sensitive public offices.
This is crucial.
The answer cannot simply be to tell every public servant that he or she has no political identity.
Citizens retain political rights.
But political neutrality in the exercise of public power is different from political neutrality in personal conviction.
A civil servant may privately support a political party. The ethical challenge becomes much greater when that person occupies an office whose powers can directly affect citizens, public money, identity systems, electoral administration or regulatory enforcement.
The higher the institutional power, the higher the ethical obligation.
This debate cannot be adequately understood through political science and constitutional law alone. It also has a profound public-theological dimension.
Christian public theology begins from the conviction that political authority is a form of stewardship, not private possession.
Romans 13:4 describes governing authority as one entrusted with responsibility for the common good, while Jesus’ teaching in Mark 10:42-45 rejects the model of leadership based on domination and instead presents leadership as service.
The biblical prophetic tradition is even more demanding.
The prophets repeatedly confronted rulers who converted public power into private advantage. Isaiah condemned those who “decree unrighteous decrees” and “turn aside the needy from judgment” Amos demanded that justice flow through society like a river (Amos 5:24).
The theological principle is therefore straightforward:
The state is not the property of the governing party.
A president governs for citizens who voted for him and citizens who did not.
A public agency serves the republic, not the electoral fortunes of the incumbent.
A national identity database belongs within the legal custody of the Nigerian state, not within the strategic arsenal of any political organisation.
And public revenue must serve the common good, not become an invisible financial reservoir for partisan ambition.
This is why the issue transcends Tinubu, APC, PDP, Labour Party, ADC or any other political organisation.
The principle must survive the politician.
Nigeria has repeatedly demonstrated that elections are not merely contests over votes; they are contests over institutional legitimacy.
When citizens believe that government agencies are being politically captured, they begin to question everything: voter registration, taxation, appointments, policing, regulation, public procurement, social intervention programmes and ultimately the electoral outcome itself.
That is dangerous.
Democracy depends not only upon the arithmetic of votes but upon the credibility of the institutions that count, protect and administer those votes.
The temptation for every incumbent government is to confuse the interests of the administration with the interests of the state.
But the two are not synonymous.
An administration is temporary.
The state is permanent.
A political party is partisan.
The state is supposed to be universal.
A campaign seeks victory.
Government is supposed to pursue justice.
The failure to preserve these distinctions is one of the pathways through which democratic institutions gradually become instruments of political patronage.
Nigeria should not wait for scandal before strengthening institutional safeguards.
First, establish an independent firewall around public data.
NIMC should publicly clarify the safeguards separating government identity databases from partisan campaign operations. There should be an independently auditable protocol prohibiting the use of NIN, biometric or other protected government information for partisan political targeting without a lawful basis.
Second, require complete transparency in campaign financing.
The NRS should maintain a clear institutional separation between its statutory revenue-collection mandate and political fundraising activities. Campaign contributions should be transparently disclosed and independently auditable.
Third, strengthen the independence of sensitive public institutions.
Nigeria must reconsider the extent to which heads of critical regulatory and administrative institutions can simultaneously occupy strategic partisan campaign positions.
This is not about denying political rights. It is about protecting institutional credibility.
Fourth, empower INEC and data-protection regulators to monitor political data practices.
As digital campaigning becomes more sophisticated, Nigeria must move beyond traditional election monitoring. Political parties should be required to disclose how voter information is acquired, processed, targeted and retained.
Fifth, demand ethical leadership from political parties.
The APC should not merely defend the legality of its appointments. It should demonstrate that its campaign practices meet the higher standard of democratic ethics.
Likewise, opposition parties must be willing to accept the same standard when they hold power.
Otherwise, Nigeria will simply replace one form of institutional abuse with another.
The forthcoming 2027 election presents Nigeria with a profound choice.
The question is not merely whether Bola Tinubu will win another term or whether another political coalition will defeat him.
The larger question is:
What kind of democracy will Nigeria become?
Will it be a democracy where public institutions retain sufficient independence to serve citizens regardless of political affiliation?
Will it be a democracy where personal information remains protected from partisan exploitation?
Will public revenue remain distinguishable from campaign finance?
Will public servants understand that their ultimate loyalty is to the constitutional order and the common good rather than to individual political patrons?
And will Nigerians demand these standards from whichever party eventually occupies Aso Rock?
These are not partisan questions.
They are republican questions.
They are constitutional questions.
They are ethical questions.
And, from a public-theological perspective, they are questions about justice, stewardship, truth and the moral purpose of political authority.
Nigeria must therefore resist the dangerous logic that says: “If our party does it, it is acceptable; if the opposition does it, it is corruption.”
That is not democracy.
That is tribalised morality.
A nation cannot build constitutional government on partisan double standards.
The State Must Never Become a Campaign Headquarters
There is a profound warning in Jesus’ words: “No man can serve two masters” (Matthew 6:24).
Although the biblical passage addresses the competing claims of God and wealth, its ethical insight has wider public significance: divided loyalties eventually produce distorted stewardship.
Public office carries one primary obligation the service of the public.
Political campaigns carry anothe the pursuit of electoral victory.
When the personnel, resources, information and institutional authority of the first become deeply entangled with the objectives of the second, democracy enters dangerous territory.
The concern, therefore, is not that government officials have political opinions.
The concern is that public power must never become partisan property.
Nigeria’s national identity system is too important to become an object of political suspicion. Its public revenue system is too important to become entangled with campaign fundraising. Its elections are too important to be administered within an atmosphere of institutional distrust.
The responsible response is neither hysteria nor silence.
It is transparency, independent oversight, legal compliance, institutional separation and ethical restraint.
As Nigeria approaches 2027, the governing party should welcome scrutiny rather than fear it; opposition parties should demand principles rather than merely seek opportunities; regulators should enforce the law without fear or favour; religious leaders should speak prophetically without becoming partisan; civil society should remain vigilant; and citizens should insist that the Nigerian state belongs to all Nigerians.
The final test of democratic leadership is not whether a politician can win an election.
It is whether, after winning, he can still remember that the country does not belong to him.
“When the machinery of the state becomes indistinguishable from the machinery of a campaign, democracy may retain the appearance of elections while losing the substance of citizenship. Nigeria must draw that line before 2027 not after it.”
Cliff Stanley, Political Scientist, Public Theologian
Cliffstanley3@gmail.com 07032826319.
..
