In the markets of Abakaliki and across the flood-scarred plains of Makurdi, a quiet political reckoning is underway. Residents of Ebonyi and Benue states — two of Nigeria's most electorally unpredictable territories — say President Bola Tinubu's legacy projects are doing something his handlers could not manufacture: building genuine goodwill on the ground, goodwill they say will travel with them into the 2027 polling booth.
The two states together account for an estimated 5.5 million registered voters — Ebonyi contributing roughly 1.7 million and Benue approximately 3.8 million — spread across communities where road quality, healthcare access, and agricultural support have long determined which party a family backs. For many of these voters, the calculus is simple: projects they can see and touch matter more than party affiliation.
Ebonyi, which sits in the South-East geopolitical zone, has historically been a stronghold of the Peoples Democratic Party, but the zone's relationship with Tinubu's All Progressives Congress has been complicated by long-standing grievances about federal marginalisation. Benue, in the North-Central, carries the additional weight of years of farmer-herder violence that has displaced hundreds of thousands and made security — not just development — the dominant voter concern.
That context makes the emerging sentiment more striking. Federal infrastructure investments, targeted agricultural interventions through the administration's food security agenda, and road rehabilitation projects linking rural LGAs to commercial corridors appear to be shifting perceptions in communities where the APC previously struggled to gain traction. Traders in Abakaliki's main market and farmers in Benue's Guma and Logo LGAs — areas ravaged by seasonal flooding and conflict — are among those beginning to speak a different political language.
Residents interviewed by the News Agency of Nigeria were direct in their assessment. They said visible federal presence — through projects they attributed to Tinubu's administration — had changed how they intended to vote, with several stating plainly that the president deserved a second term if the pace of delivery was sustained. "We are not doing this because of sentiment," one Ebonyi resident was quoted as saying. "We are doing it because we can see the work."
The political significance of this shift cannot be understated. A Tinubu who consolidates Benue and makes meaningful inroads in Ebonyi would arrive at 2027 holding gains in two zones — North-Central and South-East — where the opposition had banked on either dominance or neutrality. The PDP and Labour Party, both of which drew competitive numbers from these states in 2023, will need to respond with concrete counteroffers, not just appeals to memory. Analysts will now watch closely whether the APC accelerates project delivery in these states in the months ahead, and whether Tinubu makes direct campaign visits to consolidate what the concrete is apparently beginning to build.
In Nigerian politics, the most durable campaign poster has always been a finished road — and in Ebonyi and Benue, it appears the president may finally be putting one up.
