Opposition Cohesion and Strategic Coalition Building in Nigeria: Prospects and Pitfalls Ahead of the 2027 General Elections

Opposition coordination can widen electoral competition without necessarily producing either victory or accountable government. This article examines that distinction in Nigeria ahead of the 2027 general elections. It develops a conditional framework connecting elite agreements, organisational integration, voter consent and governing credibility. A critical documentary review combines coalition scholarship, electoral legislation, aggregate election results and dated reporting, with an evidence cut-off of 12 September 2026. Nigeria is the principal case; Kenya, Malawi and South Africa provide bounded comparisons. The analysis identifies three central problems. First, coalition announcements are frequently treated as evidence of durable cohesion even when candidate selection and party authority remain contested. Second, retrospective addition of opposition votes substitutes an arithmetic counterfactual for evidence of voter transfer. Third, office-sharing commitments may reduce elite uncertainty while leaving programme agreement and public accountability unresolved. Developments surrounding the African Democratic Congress initiative and subsequent opposition fragmentation make these distinctions especially consequential. The article proposes a sequential conversion framework in which each transition from agreement to organisation, electoral support and governance requires separate evidence. It argues that coalition viability depends on procedurally legitimate bargaining, lawful institutional arrangements, autonomous voter acceptance and credible implementation commitments. Coalition formation is consequently neither a sufficient condition for alternation nor an adequate measure of democratic consolidation. The contribution is an analytically explicit framework and a set of testable propositions, rather than a prediction of the 2027 result.