By Abu-Taqiyah Zumo
The 2027 election is fast approaching. Political campaigns have begun. The grains have started coming, but not to the woman who wakes at 4am to queue for bread, not to the farmer sleeping on a mat in an IDP camp and not to the graduate who rides NAPEP for lectures but to the doors of the influential voter first. They’re reaching to the delegate who has become campaign coordinator, the youth leader who has become influencer, the women leader who has become mobilizer, the title holder who has become endorser, the cleric who has become prayer contractor, and the journalist who has become image launderer.
The ordinary voter will see his grain in January 2027, but by then, his mind will have already been bought through the mouth of the man he trusts. This is not an election anymore; it is a market, and the most valuable commodity is not the vote, it is the voice that controls the votes.
This is the final stage of a brutal political experiment history credits to Adolf Hitler, a lesson Nigerian politicians have not just learned, but perfected since the return of civil rule in 1999.
Adolf Hitler is said to have walked into a meeting of his inner circle holding a live chicken. As he spoke, he began to pluck its feathers one after another. The bird screamed, bled, struggled violently to escape. He did not stop. He plucked until it was completely naked, bare, shivering, stripped of every dignity that made it a chicken. Then he dropped it on the cold floor and pushed it away. He brought out a handful of grains and scattered a few before it. The same chicken that fought him with all its strength a minute ago, now cold, naked, hungry and desperate, forgot its pain and humiliation. It limped forward and began to peck grains at his feet. It followed him wherever he threw the grain, clucking in gratitude to the very hand that plucked it.
Hitler then turned to his men and said, “This is how you rule the masses. Impoverish them, strip them bare, make them desperate. Then give them a little back. They will forget who stripped them. They will follow you for the grain.” That is not a story from Berlin. That is Nigeria’s electoral blueprint.
Let us count the plucking from 2023 to 2026, and how the plucking became savagely total. On May 29, 2023, fuel subsidy was removed in one pronouncement without functional refineries, without buses, without buffers. Petrol moved from N197 to over N1,200. The Naira was floated from N460 to over N1,600 in one policy. That single move wiped out the working capital of every trader, every transporter and every small factory.
Electricity tariff was increased by over 300% under Band A, yet darkness remained. Food inflation averaged above 32% for 18 months straight.
A bag of rice that was N35,000 in May 2023 became N100,000 by early 2025. School fees doubled, then tripled. Federal universities that were N45,000 became N200,000. Public hospitals collapsed into “go and buy gloves, go and buy syringe.” Real wages died.
The N30,000 minimum wage became worth less than $20. The new N70,000 minimum wage cannot buy one bag of rice. The Purchasing power of an average Nigerian was not only eroded, it was erased completely. The middle class did not decline; it disappeared into graves or into depression.
According to NBS, 133 million Nigerians are now in multidimensional poverty. Nigerians did not become lazy, they did not become unproductive. They were plucked, deliberately, systematically, until they had nothing left to cover their nakedness. And now that they are naked, bleeding and angry, the timetable for 2027 is out, and the grains have started coming.
What makes 2027 more dangerous than 2019 and 2023 is that the elite have realized the poor are now too angry to be bought directly with one gallon of cooking oil and spaghetti. You throw 10kg bag of rice at a man who watched his child drop out of school because of N200,000 fees, will openly invoke the curse of the Almighty on you.
Now the strategy has changed. They know one influential voter is worth 5,000 poor voters. Buy the voice the poor listen to, and you buy the poor without meeting them. That is why today, a youth leader who was shouting about bad governance last month suddenly receives a call for “stakeholders engagement” in Abuja with N2 million logistics.
A women leader who could not afford her shop rent last year now gets appointed as State Women Coordinator with a Hilux and monthly imprest.
A cleric who pulls crowds now gets a special invite to “pray for the nation” – and dollars rain into his account before he says amen.
A journalist who was writing fiery editorials about hardship now gets a contract as “strategic media consultant” for a candidate. A traditional ruler who was complaining about banditry in his domain now gets his palace renovated and his car changed.
The grain is reaching their doors first. By the time it reaches the ordinary voter in January 2027, the sermon, the editorial, the youth rally, the market sensitization would have already been paid for. The poor man will be told by his own trusted pastor, his own imam, his own youth president, his own women leader, “This is our turn. Collect your own grain. God has answered our prayers.” He will collect, not because he is stupid, but because his trusted voice has already collected.
This is not voter stupidity. Do not insult the poor man. A man who has not eaten in two days is not irrational when he collects rice from a politician. He is responding rationally to state-engineered survival. When you destroy economic security, you destroy political accountability. That is the essence of Hitler’s formula.
Our democracy has become a cruel cycle: pluck for three years and six months, then scatter grains for six months to win another four years to pluck again. And with each cycle, the feathers grow less, the chicken becomes weaker, the flesh is exposed, and the grain becomes smaller. As we eat the grain of 2027 and follow, we will be plucked again from 2027 to 2030, and next time there may be no feathers left to pluck. Only the bone will remain.
