2027: If you sample 1,000 Nigerians, 900 will not vote for Tinubu, Henry Shield says

Political analyst Henry Shield has offered a stark prediction for Nigeria’s 2027 presidential election: if 1,000 Nigerians were sampled today, he said, 900 would not vote for President Bola Tinubu.

Shield made the claim during an interview on Vanguard’s Politics Hub. Asked to support his assertion that Tinubu would not match his 2023 vote total, he pointed to what he called consultations, surveys and interactions with Nigerians from different parts of society.

“We do market consultation, market surveys, we do street surveys. We go out and we engage with the people, and I can tell you, sample 1,000 Nigerians, 900 of them are not going to vote for Tinubu,” Shield said.

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We do market consultation, market surveys, we do street surveys. We go out and we engage with the people, and I can tell you, sample 1,000 Nigerians, 900 of them are not going to vote for Tinubu.

He called on media organisations and other stakeholders to test the prediction through a nationwide opinion survey. “Please don’t take my word. You are a media house. Engage people to do this for the sake of our democracy, sample just 1,000. Don’t do 1,001. Don’t do the other 9,999. Exactly 1,000,” he said. Shield repeated that 900 of a sample of 1,000 Nigerians would not support Tinubu.

Tinubu won the 2023 election with 8,794,726 votes, or 36.61% of ballots cast. Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party received 6,984,520 votes, while Labour Party candidate Peter Obi won 6,101,533. Atiku has since moved to the African Democratic Congress, and Obi has left the Labour Party for the Nigerian Democratic Congress. Both are expected to remain prominent figures in the 2027 race.

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Please don’t take my word. You are a media house. Engage people to do this for the sake of our democracy, sample just 1,000. Don’t do 1,001. Don’t do the other 9,999. Exactly 1,000.