By Abbati Bako,psc,bsis,political strategy and communications consultant, alumnus University of Kent the UK's European University
Mr. President,
I write not to plead, but to warn. Crushing opposition parties is not a strategy. It is not politics. It is the shortest road to one-party rule, and one-party rule is the longest road to state failure.
*This is not how democracy works anywhere in the world
In Ghana, the NPP lost in 2008 and 2024 and was handed over by noon. In Kenya, Ruto and Odinga fought to a standstill, but ODM still breathed. In South Africa, the ANC lost its majority in 2024 and now governs in coalition. Even in Modi’s India, Congress holds states and asks questions daily on live TV.
Only in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic has “victory” come to mean “extermination.” When opposition accounts are frozen by EFCC on Friday, when governors defect with entire assemblies on Monday, when courts sack winners on technicalities by Wednesday, that is not competition. That is asphyxiation not political democracy.
*Call it by its name-state capture:
Democracy requires an opposition that can lose today and win tomorrow. That means three oxygen lines must stay open:
1. Money Parties must fundraise without fear of SEDITION charges or sudden blocks.
2. Media Critics must speak without NBC fines or DSS midnight visits.
3. Mandate Votes must count without INEC declaring 2am results that reverse BVAS uploads.
When you cut those lines, you don’t get stability. You get silence. And silence is not peace. Silence is the sound a democracy makes before it snaps.
*Here is what nowhere else actually looks like:
1. USA: Trump faced 91 charges but his party still raised $400m and ran every state.
2. Brazil: Lula was jailed, then freed, then elected. The system didn’t jail his party.
3. Senegal: Sonko was barred, but his substitute won the presidency 3 weeks later.
In those places, the state fights people, not parties. In Nigeria today, the state fights parties, so that it never has to fight people again at the ballot.
*Mr. President, this is egocentric, and it is dangerous. Egocentric because it assumes Nigeria = APC, and APC = you. Dangerous because a country of 237 million with 60% youth unemployment cannot be governed by acclamation. If the ballot box is locked, the street becomes the polling unit. If courts replace voters, protests replace campaigns. You won a mandate to renew hope, not to retire from competition.
*Three red lines to restore the republic:
1. Order the EFCC, CBN, and FIRS to publish rules for investigating political parties, and apply them to all, including the APC. No more Friday-night account freezes.
2. Tell your governors:
stop buying oppositions. Support a constitutional amendment: any elected official who defects loses his seat and faces a by-election.
3. Appoint INEC RECs that the opposition can name not just confirm. A referee you pick alone is a player in your jersey.
Sir, history has no record of a democracy that survived by killing its opposition. It has many records of presidents who tried.
Undermining the opposition is not democracy. It is a coup without soldiers. And coups, quiet or noisy, always end the same way. Pull back now, while ballots can still save us from bullets.
For Nigeria,
Abbati Bako, [email protected]
Political Strategy Analyst, Researcher in Globalization Policy and Global Political Economic Interplay
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