Lere Olayinka, Senior Special Assistant on Public Communications and Social Media to the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, has argued that not all the candidates expected to contest the 2027 presidential election are genuinely seeking to win.
Olayinka made the assertion on Friday during an interview with Arise News while discussing the growing field of presidential contenders ahead of next year’s general election.
He said the presence of 19 candidates on the presidential ballot did not necessarily mean that all of them believed they had a realistic chance of winning the presidency.
“So it is not everybody that contests elections that wants to win. There are people that contest elections just to register their presence. For instance, in this 2027 election, we have 19 presidential candidates. Can we say honestly that all the 19 are contesting with the mindset of winning? The answer is no,” he said.
To support his argument, Olayinka referred to the performance of African Action Congress presidential candidate Omoyele Sowore in the 2023 election.
He noted that Sowore secured 14,600 votes in the election, arguing that such a result demonstrated the difficulty smaller parties faced in mounting a successful presidential campaign.
“For instance, the candidate of AAC, Omoyele Sowore, had 14,600 votes in 2023. How would that person win the election next year? They know that they cannot win. They are just contesting,” Olayinka said.
He also applied the same argument to the Nigeria Democratic Congress, the party he identified as belonging to former Anambra State governor and 2023 presidential candidate Peter Obi.
“Even NDC, the party of Peter Obi, they know they cannot win the election. They are just contesting to try to register their presence,” he said.
Olayinka maintained that winning a presidential election required a strong grassroots organisation and an extensive presence across the country.
He questioned how a party could realistically secure the presidency without sufficient structures at state and local levels, citing the number of governorship candidates fielded by the NDC.
“You don’t have governorship candidates in 15 states. You only have in 13,” he said.
He also pointed to the party’s absence from the recent Ekiti and Osun governorship elections as an indication, in his view, of its limited organisational capacity and grassroots presence.
According to Olayinka, political parties need a substantial number of personnel at polling units to effectively monitor and manage election-day activities.
He noted that Nigeria has 176,846 polling units and argued that a party seeking to mount a serious presidential campaign would need at least five representatives at each polling unit.
Olayinka said the calculation was based on lessons from previous elections and the practical demands of election-day operations, rather than simply political rhetoric.
