By Aondoakaa Tersugh Daniel 25/07/2026
The Nigerian constitution grants every President and Governor the chance to seek a second term. It does not grant them victory. That distinction has humbled some of the biggest names in Nigerian politics, and it is about to humble another.
If a second term were automatic, Adebayo Alao Akala would still have been governor of Oyo State beyond 2011. Olusegun Mimiko would not have exited Ondo State in 2016. Mukhtar Ramalan Yero, who inherited Kaduna’s seat after the death of Patrick Yakowa, would not have lost his bid for a first full term in 2015. And Goodluck Jonathan, sitting President of the Federal Republic, would not have watched his re election bid collapse in 2015. Power does not renew itself. It is renewed by the people, or it is withdrawn.
Chief Hyacinth Iormem Alia is walking straight into that history. He will not be the first governor to discover that incumbency is not insurance. The comfortable myth in Nigerian politics, that every sitting governor eventually wins a second term, has never been true, and 2027 is shaping up to be the latest proof.
Consider Rivers State. Governor Siminalayi Fubara once spoke with the same swagger Alia now carries, insisting no force could deny him a second term. Days ago, that ambition was quietly shelved. He will not be on the ballot. The man who boasted the loudest is the man who stepped aside first.
The parallel to Benue is impossible to ignore. Fubara is a political product of Nyesom Wike who turned around and went to war with the very benefactor who built him. Alia is a political product of the Bokoti, the structure built around Senator George Akume, and he has chosen the same path, turning his fire on the hand that raised him. A governor who wages war on his own foundation should not be shocked when that foundation declines to carry him back to office.
Alia may already have done to himself what Fubara only recently admitted out loud. The difference is that Fubara had the sense to read the writing on the wall before the ballot forced him to. Whether Alia reads it in time, or waits for 2027 to read it for him, is now the only open question.