POLITICAL POLITICS

Will 2027 Break Niger State’s Second-Term Jinx

by admin on | 2026-08-19 11:31:02

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Will 2027 Break Niger State’s Second-Term Jinx 

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On Wednesday, August 19, 2026, the drums for the 2027 general elections will begin to sound. For the next six months, that rhythm will roll across Nigeria from Abuja to the farthest hamlet in Niger State announcing that the battle for power has started again.

It will be a hard fight at every level. But it will be hardest for those already holding office. Governance is not for the faint of heart. As Niccolò Machiavelli warned centuries ago, “There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.” Nowhere will that truth be tested more keenly than in Niger State, where history has turned incumbency into a curse rather than a crown.

Since 1999, no governor in Niger seeking a second term has walked into it. Each one had to fight for it. Abdulkadir Abdullahi Kure was met with the grit of Engr. Mustapha Bello, Dr. Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu, Talban Minna, was stared down by Senator David Umaru. Alhaji Abubakar Sani Bello, Lolo, faced the bold entrance of Barr. Bello Bawa Bwari, BBBB. Their first-term records did not spare them. The message became clear and almost traditional: in Niger, a second term must be wrestled, not inherited.

So the question hanging over 2027 is simple and heavy. Will Governor Mohammed Umaru Bago, the man popularly called the Farmer Governor, be the one to break that cycle?

If patterns are broken by preparation, then the signs are worth watching. Aristotle once said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” Bago seems to have turned excellence into a habit long before he took the oath. He sought out experts, studied models of development, and toured those who had done it before. That was not the move of a man waiting to learn on the job. It was the move of a man who intended to change the job description.

Let us break them down sector by sector even though all sectors cannot be covered at once for their numerousness. 

In infrastructure, never before has Niger seen roads pushed into places once written off as unreachable. Villages that were cut off in rainy seasons are now being linked, not with promises, but with asphalt. Kilometers of new roads now crisscross all parts of the state, opening up areas that were long neglected.

In health, Primary Healthcare Centres and General Hospitals have been renovated, reconstructed and remodeled across the state. Plato’s old idea that we should strive for “a sound mind in a sound body” feels less abstract when clinics that were shells are now functioning and equipped to serve the people.

In education, the story is just as loud. Basic, secondary, and tertiary institutions have been built or rehabilitated. New tertiary institutions have been established, staffed and equipped. Beyond bricks and mortar, thousands of graduates — teachers and health workers who had been waiting years without hope — were finally employed. No administration in the state’s history can point to that kind of absorption.

In workers’ welfare, the national minimum wage of ₦70,000 was not only approved, it was raised to ₦80,000 in Niger, placing state workers among the best paid in the country. For retirees, after initial setbacks, billions have been approved for the continued settlement of their entitlements, and the testimonies are now deafening.

In people-centered governance, for the first time, a governor moved through all three senatorial districts in record time, enduring bad roads to hear complaints directly from communities instead of from reports. That direct engagement has shaped how projects are prioritized.

In security, the ghost that has haunted Niger for years has also seen a shift. Banditry and kidnapping have not vanished, but deliberate and sustained measures have pushed them back and restored relative peace to many communities. Thomas Hobbes argued that the bond between leader and people lasts only as long as the leader can protect them. By that measure, Bago appears to understand the contract.

Of course, no government is without flaws. Resources will never match needs, and some sectors are still waiting their turn. But as Edmund Burke put it, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” In Niger, something is being done, and at a scale not seen in recent times.

That is why the politics of 2027 may look different. With opposition parties still trying to find their footing nationally, and with a first-term record this visible, Bago’s legacy — roads, schools, hospitals, jobs, and a renewed sense of security — may simply be too loud to ignore. It may dwarf any challenger the way his 2023 campaign dwarfed his then-opponent, Kantigi.

But politics has its own sense of humor. Abraham Lincoln’s warning still holds: “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” Complacency is the only real trap.

If the current trajectory holds, then 2027 may finally do what no election since 1999 has done in Niger State. It may break the second-term jinx. Not by luck, not by rhetoric, but by work that people can see, touch, and live in.

That is the story the drums will be telling when they start on August 19.  

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