Why Kaduna, Not Lagos or Kano, Could Decide Tinubu’s Path to a Second Term
As political strategists inside Aso Rock begin mapping out President Bola Tinubu’s path to a second term in 2027, analysts argue that Kaduna State, rather than more obvious heavyweights like Lagos, Kano, Katsina or Rivers, could prove the most decisive battleground of them all.
At first glance, Kaduna appears an unlikely centre of attention. It is not Kano, with the country’s highest number of registered voters. It is not Lagos, the president’s own political base. It is not even Katsina, home state of the late President Muhammadu Buhari. Yet analysts argue the state is small enough to overlook casually, but big enough to upend an entire electoral calculation. The reason lies in Kaduna’s unusual internal diversity, often described as a microcosm of Nigeria itself: a largely Muslim Kaduna North sits alongside a predominantly Christian Kaduna South, with Hausa-Fulani communities coexisting alongside more than 60 other ethnic groups, including the Bajju, Atyap, Ham and Gwong, while the state simultaneously grapples with major urban challenges and rural banditry.
The numbers underline why the state carries such outsized strategic weight. Kaduna sits within Nigeria’s North-West, the country’s largest voting bloc, which recorded more than 22.4 million registered voters and cast over 6.5 million votes in the 2023 general election out of roughly 25 million total votes cast nationally from more than 93 million registered voters. Kaduna alone accounted for 4.3 million registered voters, the third largest in its zone behind only Kano and Katsina. Unlike Katsina, where the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) can rely on a comparatively safe path to victory, Kaduna represents a genuine electoral battleground. Official results from the 2023 presidential election showed Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) topping the poll in Kaduna with 554,360 votes, ahead of Tinubu’s 399,293 and Peter Obi’s 294,494, even as the APC went on to win the state’s governorship race in the same cycle. At the time, Atiku’s PDP held Southern Kaduna firmly and made inroads into parts of Kaduna Central.
Analysts frame the electoral logic across the North-West’s key states in distinct terms: Kano offers sheer numerical strength, Rivers brings drama and resources, and Katsina carries the symbolic weight of Buhari’s legacy. Kaduna, by contrast, is said to offer something arguably more valuable to an incumbent seeking re-election: legitimacy. A convincing win in a state as internally diverse and historically competitive as Kaduna would allow Tinubu to claim he has successfully united a genuinely complex political landscape, and by extension, a complex Nigeria. That, analysts suggest, is why attention to the state, from local government elections and ministerial visits to infrastructure projects such as the Abuja-Kaduna-Kano road and postings tied to the Defence Industries Corporation, continues to carry disproportionate political significance.
Southern Kaduna indigene Luka Binniyat echoed the state’s growing importance to the presidency, saying the significance of Kaduna could not be overstated. “Kaduna is important. Mr President and those around him know this and they are taking steps to ensure he wins come 2027,” he said, adding that a large percentage of the state’s residents now feel seen for the first time in a long while, pointing to appointments and project distribution he said had begun accounting for the state’s underlying diversity.
With Kano widely expected to determine numerical strength and Katsina largely considered safe territory for the APC, Kaduna’s position as a genuine swing state, shaped by its unique religious, ethnic and regional balance, places it at the centre of both the ruling party’s re-election strategy and any opposition coalition’s hopes of demonstrating that the North-West is not permanently locked to a single political direction. As 2027 approaches, political attention on the state looks set to intensify, with both camps increasingly treating Kaduna not merely as one battleground among several, but as a potential bellwether for the wider presidential contest.
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