BY EMMA POWERFUL IPOB SPOKESPERSON
The debate over Nigeria’s 2027 elections again presents another ballot as the answer to a crisis that elections have repeatedly failed to resolve. Governments change. Parties change. Slogans change. The foundational questions remain.
For IPOB, the issue is not whether Nigerians should choose between Atiku Abubakar, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Peter Obi or any other politician. The deeper question is: who gave the constituent peoples of Nigeria the chance to decide whether they still want this political arrangement at all?
That is why our leader and the greatest prophet of the modern era Onyendu Mazi Nnamdi Kanu and IPOB place referendum and self-determination at the centre of their position. The peoples trapped in this colonial construction named Nigeria should determine, peacefully and democratically, the future they want — to remain together under a new constitution, to adopt a different federal or confederal arrangement, or to choose another future altogether. Meaningless cycles of elections every four years is not the answer.
The definition of madness is doing same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
Let the people decide.
WHAT BRITAIN ALLOWS — AND WHAT NIGERIA DENIES
Britain constructed the entity called Nigeria. Yet the United Kingdom itself treats referendum as a legitimate constitutional instrument.
Scotland voted on independence in 2014. Devolution referendums were held in Scotland and Wales in 1997. Voters in Northern Ireland endorsed the Belfast Agreement in 1998.
This week the point was made again. On 14 September 2026, in Cardiff, the leaders of Plaid Cymru, the Scottish National Party and Sinn Féin signed a memorandum affirming that their nations “have the right to self-determination” and that “no Westminster government has the right to block democracy or undermine the principle that our people will decide their own future.” They called on the British government to prepare for, plan and facilitate constitutional change.
They were not shot. They were not abducted. They were not subjected to extraordinary rendition. They were not put through a sham conviction. They held a political meeting and signed a document.
Days later, the tiny Oxfordshire village of Piddington held a parish vote on leaving the United Kingdom. The result was symbolic and had no legal force. Still, 285 residents voted to leave and 26 to remain. The parish chairman called it “an example of democracy in operation.” No soldier opened fire on the village hall. No one was flown out of the country in the night.
IPOB therefore asks the question the moment itself raises:
If the leaders of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland can sign a memorandum demanding referendum, and if even an English village of a few hundred people can hold a vote on leaving the United Kingdom without guns, bullets, rendition or a manufactured conviction — why must the demand of Biafrans be treated as a crime?
Are we to be told that referendum is good for the white British and forbidden to black Africans? That indigenous peoples inhabiting the geo-political space called Nigeria are somehow less entitled to a peaceful, democratic choice? The question answers itself. No people is subhuman. No people should be denied the right others are allowed to exercise.
If referendum can settle constitutional questions in Britain, why should the peoples of Nigeria be permanently denied the same opportunity?
ELECTIONS ARE NOT SELF-DETERMINATION
The ballot can decide who governs. A referendum can decide the more critical question of what arrangement the people consent to live under. Those are different questions.
Endless presidential elections cannot, by themselves, resolve Nigeria’s foundational political questions.
EVEN FORMER PRESIDENTS HAVE QUESTIONED THE SYSTEM
This is not a question Mazi Nnamdi Kanu invented.
On 11 August 2026, chairing the Goodluck Jonathan Foundation Democracy Dialogue in Bauchi, former President Olusegun Obasanjo said: “There’s nothing like African democracy. We were given Western liberal democracy by our colonial masters.” He said Africa “swallowed it, hook, stock and barrel,” and asked whether it has delivered, is delivering, or will deliver. He said the system has “no African context, no African content,” likening it to a dress not made to fit. In November 2023 he had already argued that African countries continue with a system in whose “definition and design” they had no hand, even though “it is not working for us.”
If the system itself needs rethinking, why must Nigerians keep choosing politicians under the same arrangement without first allowing the peoples to decide what arrangement they want?
Former President Goodluck Jonathan has also acknowledged the failure of nation-building. In September 2023 he said that since the 1914 amalgamation, founding fathers “failed to integrate us into a proper nation,” and that there was “no sense of commitment to integrate Nigeria into an entity… with core values [and] common philosophy.” He recalled Awolowo’s view that Nigeria is a geographical entity and a state, “but there is no nation.”
Separately, in 2019, warning about destructive leadership struggles, he said infrastructure can be rebuilt, “but you cannot easily repair people’s psyche, reconcile aggrieved persons and restore hope in a nation, once they are damaged.”
Obasanjo says the inherited model needs African context and content. Jonathan says Nigeria failed to become a nation. IPOB says the democratic beginning is to ask the peoples what political arrangement they consent to.
That question cannot be answered by another presidential election alone. It can only be answered by the people.
THE 2027 CHOICE
Is Nigeria’s future to be decided only by another presidential election, or should the constituent peoples have a direct voice on the structure in which they are expected to live?
A referendum does not predetermine the answer. It allows the people to give the answer. If they choose to remain together, that choice should be respected. If they choose a different constitutional arrangement, that choice should be considered. If a people chooses self-determination, that choice should be heard through a peaceful, democratic and internationally recognisable process.
For Biafrans, Biafrans must decide the future of Biafra.
DO NOT ALLOW ANOTHER ELECTION TO SUBSTITUTE FOR THE PEOPLE’S RIGHT TO DECIDE THEIR FUTURE.
LET THE PEOPLE SPEAK.
LET THE PEOPLE CHOOSE.
LET THERE BE A REFERENDUM.
COMRADE EMMA POWERFUL SPOKESPERSON/MEDIA AND PUBLICITY SECRETARY FOR THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE OF BIAFRA IPOB.
