The North Will Decide This, And The North Is Not One Bloc
Analysts keep modelling a northern realignment that would put Tinubu under real pressure. The modelling usually assumes a level of coordination that has not so far materialised.
Almost every serious projection of January's result runs through the same variable: what the north does. It is also the variable most often described in a way that flattens it.
The standard analysis holds that if opposition support consolidates across the northern states, the incumbent faces genuine difficulty, and that if it fragments, he does not. That is arithmetically sound. It also treats nineteen states with different economies, languages, security situations and political histories as though they behave as a unit.
Three norths, not one
The north-west is the largest voting bloc in the country and the region worst affected by banditry. Its politics have been shaped for a decade by insecurity and by the collapse of rural safety, which cuts against any incumbent but does not automatically favour any particular challenger.
The north-east carries the insurgency, mass displacement and the food crisis. Turnout there is suppressed by conditions on the ground, which means its influence on the national result is smaller than its population suggests.
The north-central, the middle belt, has a different fault line again: farmer-herder conflict, and a religious and ethnic composition that makes the region far less predictable than either of the others.
What the models usually get wrong
The correlation between where the state has retreated and where turnout collapses will tell you more than any coalition announcement.
They assume coordination. A united opposition front across the north would be formidable, and figures across the opposition have periodically endorsed the idea. But endorsing a front and delivering one are different operations, and delivering one requires the very coalition agreement between Obi and Atiku that has repeatedly failed to conclude.
Without it, northern anti-incumbent sentiment splits along the same lines as everywhere else, and a divided majority loses to an organised plurality.
The quiet factor
Turnout. Nigerian elections are decided by a small fraction of registered voters, and northern turnout is unusually sensitive to security conditions on polling day. A deterioration in the north-west in the first two weeks of January would do more to shape the result than anything said at a rally in December.
That is an uncomfortable thing to write, because it means the most consequential campaign actor may be nobody's campaign.
Three regions, three grievances
The north-west is the largest voting bloc in the country and the region worst affected by banditry. Its politics have been reshaped by a decade in which rural safety collapsed and successive administrations failed to restore it. That cuts against any incumbent without automatically favouring a particular challenger.
The north-east carries the insurgency, mass displacement and the sharpest edge of the food crisis. Conditions there suppress turnout, which means its influence on the national result is smaller than its population implies.
The north-central, the middle belt, has a different fault line: farmer-herder conflict, and a religious and ethnic composition that makes it the least predictable of the three.
The variable nobody controls
Nigerian elections are decided by a relatively small share of registered voters, which makes turnout the most powerful single factor in the result.
In the north-west, turnout is closely tied to whether people believe it is safe to walk to a polling unit and queue there for several hours. A deterioration in security during the first two weeks of January would shape the outcome more than any speech delivered in December.
That is an uncomfortable thing to write, because it means the most consequential actor in this campaign may not be a campaign at all.
Sources: Channels Television; Legit.ng; SYMFONI; ADF Magazine.
Nigerian political commentary has a bad habit of treating the north as a bloc that can be won or lost as a unit, usually through a deal with a small number of senior figures.
That model was never fully accurate and it is increasingly wrong. The collapse of rural security in the north-west has produced a generation of voters whose primary grievance is not ideological or ethnic but existential, and who have watched establishment figures from their own region fail to fix it across multiple administrations.
The assumption that those voters can be delivered by an endorsement is exactly the kind of thinking that produces surprised commentators in February.
If you want to understand the northern vote in this cycle, stop reading the endorsements and start reading the security tracker. The correlation between where the state has retreated and where turnout collapses will tell you more about January's arithmetic than any coalition announcement.
