Consensus Candidacy: When Elite Imposition Overthrows The People's Democratic Will – Samson Itodo
In Nigeria, candidate nomination has traditionally been defined by two legally recognized modes of selection: direct and indirect primaries.
In Nigeria, candidate nomination has traditionally been defined by two legally recognized modes of selection: direct and indirect primaries. However, in 2022, former President Muhammadu Buhari pressured the National Assembly to institutionalize consensus candidacy as a third mode in the Electoral Act.
This conferred legality on a long-standing practice in which political parties adopt to nominate candidates, even at the expense of the will of party members. Consensus has always been used as a tool to eliminate competition, including candidates who do not enjoy the blessing of party hegemons.
In the 2026 Electoral Act, the National Assembly eliminated indirect primaries and retained only direct primaries and consensus candidacy as the two legally approved modes for candidate selection. For direct primaries, the Act empowers political parties to determine their procedures. However, the Act prescribes three strict conditions for validating a consensus arrangement adopted by a political party. First, only cleared aspirants may participate, and they must voluntarily withdraw from the contest. Second, each aspirant must endorse one of the remaining aspirants as the consensus candidate. Third, the consensus candidate must be ratified at a special convention or nomination congress held at designated centers across the national, state, senatorial, federal, and state constituency levels. All three conditions must be fulfilled before INEC will recognize any consensus candidate. Where one aspirant declines to withdraw, the party must conduct a direct primary.
As Nigeria counts down to the 2027 general elections, the political temperature is rising, and political mobilization is in full swing. Political parties are also racing to meet a highly compressed and arguably unjust timeline for candidate nominations. One mode of selecting candidates that is generating controversy is consensus candidacy. This is not due to its theoretical intent, but rather how it is currently being implemented. What is unfolding is not consensus; it is elite imposition. It is unmistakably clear that consensus candidacy has become a practice whereby political parties, godfathers, and so-called party stakeholders anoint a candidate ahead of any competitive process, then exert pressure on other aspirants to withdraw, step aside, or be simply ignored. Let us call this practice what it is: organized theft of the people’s franchise and the proscription of political aspiration.
Consensus candidacy is increasingly a mechanism of elite capture, dressed in the language of unity, cost reduction, and party stability. But recent experiences show that consensus candidacy shrinks the space for contestation, concentrates excessive powers in the hands of godfathers and party leaders, and strips party members of genuine choice.
In politics, there are genuine instances where convergence of opinion occurs around the suitability and preferability of a particular aspirant, especially when, following an assessment of the electoral landscape, one candidate commands broad support and offers the party its best prospect of electoral victory. That kind of convergence is democratic solidarity: earned, voluntary, and transparent. Where it authentically exists, parties can legitimately rally behind a single, electable candidate. Notwithstanding, that process needs to fulfill some conditions to be legally certified.
What is happening in the lead up to the primaries is a choreographed elimination of competition. Powerful individuals, governors, cabals, and backroom brokers decide who the candidate will be before any primary is conducted, then deploy financial incentives, intimidation, threats of political exile, and institutional manipulation to clear the field. Those who dare to resist are branded as disloyal, divisive, or worse, a tool of the opposition. This frontloaded “consensus candidacy” is undemocratic and amounts to the imposition of candidates.
At its core, democracy is defined by fundamental principles such as competition, participation, transparency, and legitimacy. Consensus candidacy undermines all four. Consensus candidacy hands the power of selection to party governors, godfathers, and backroom negotiators, rather than allowing party members to debate ideas, assess competence, and freely choose among aspirants. What is then presented to the public as an “agreement” is often nothing more than forced withdrawal dressed up as unity.
The first problem with consensus candidacy is that it substitutes negotiation among elites for genuine democratic competition. In theory, consensus suggests broad agreement reached through open consultation. However, in practice, it is often created by a small group of influential individuals in private settings, such as secret meetings, hotel rooms, or the homes of party stakeholders, well before ordinary party members are even aware of the “consensus” candidate. By the time the arrangement is announced, party members are expected to applaud a decision they never influenced or approved. That is not consensus. It’s an imposition dressed in democratic language.
Worse still, consensus candidacy produces candidates who owe their emergence not to the people they will represent, but to the political broker who cleared the path for them. This creates a dependency that shapes everything that follows: appointments, budget priorities, legislation, and ultimately governance. The elected official is accountable upward to their godfathers, not downward to their constituents. This practice is one of the clearest roots of the representation deficit Nigerians continue to experience and condemn.
Second, consensus candidacy undermines internal party democracy. Political parties are supposed to serve as schools of democracy, expected to model the values they claim to defend in national politics. When parties deny aspirants the opportunity to test their popularity through transparent, competitive, and democratic primaries, they affirm loyalty to powerful individuals rather than party members. Aspirants stop campaigning to voters and start lobbying power brokers. Issue-based politics and competence take a backseat while elite endorsement and backroom deals become the determining factor. The long-term effect becomes weak political institutions and a deeply entrenched culture of patronage politics.
Third, the consensus model is inherently discriminatory. It disadvantages women, youth, and reform-minded candidates, who lack access to entrenched patronage networks. Opaque negotiations, rather than open competitive primary elections, systematically shut out aspirants without financial war chests, influence, or godfathers. Consensus candidacy therefore reproduces inequality and preserves the dominance of an old political class that fears open competition.
