In 1960, Nigeria took charge of its own affairs, sending its colonial masters packing. When the British left, they essentially handed over a complex machine we had never been taught to drive, and so, our learning process began.
They say practice makes perfect, but Nigeria’s rehearsal was violently and repeatedly disrupted by military coups until 1999, when we finally had our longest, most stable stretch of democratic practice.
But in 2023, that practice session was disrupted yet again. Only this time, the disruption wasn’t wearing a military uniform but an agbada; it came from a civilian administration—the administration of Bola Tinubu.
This is how Nigeria’s democracy died in 2023.
Demo of democracy
Abraham Lincoln’s definition of democracy is perhaps the most quoted: “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” Because of this popular definition, the most easily understood aspect of democracy for most people is choice. In other words, we get to vote for our leaders. Voting is a massive pillar of democracy. But it is certainly not the only one.
True democracy also relies on vital concepts like the separation of powers, free speech, freedom of the press, and strict respect for the rule of law. Proper democratic practice requires all these pillars to function together, not just focus entirely on elections. Nigeria has historically focused on the voting aspect of democracy, and famously struggled in the non-voting areas, but we have never had it quite this bad. Since 2023, we have watched these foundational pillars be completely demolished.
State capture 101
If you want to destroy a democracy, one of the first pillars to attack is the Separation of Powers. It is the fundamental principle that a government must be divided into independent arms and tiers to prevent absolute control.
The arms represent the functional divisions of power:
- The Executive: Implements and enforces laws.
- The Legislative: Formulates and passes laws.
- The Judiciary: Interprets laws and administers justice.
The tiers represent the geographical levels of governance:
- Federal
- State
- Local Government
In an ideal democracy, each arm and tier operates within its own constitutional boundaries, completely free from outside interference. This structural wall ensures they act as vital checks and balances on one another, keeping excessive power in check.
In reality, however, the Tinubu administration has embarked on the grandest—or at least the most successful—campaign of state capture Nigeria has ever witnessed.
The minions ayes have it
The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) started the 10th Assembly with 59 out of 109 senators, and 162 out of 360 seats in the House of Representatives. For a ruling party, that is a perfectly respectable majority.
But the party spent the next three years aggressively recruiting opposition legislators to dump the parties that got them elected and switch to the APC. By March 2026, the APC had secured 84 Senate seats and 231 House seats. That sits well above the two-thirds supermajority needed to ruthlessly force through legislation.
To put it simply: any law Tinubu wants passed will be passed. Even if every single opposition lawmaker votes against an executive bill, the APC lawmakers vastly outnumber them. They will always win the vote in the chamber. You might need to read that twice.
Tinubu on the throne
Even before the APC secured this massive supermajority, the National Assembly had already proved to be almost entirely obedient to the president. Examples include rubber-stamping his move to change the national anthem, or their compliance when he suspended the democratically elected state government in Rivers State in 2025.
Whenever Tinubu needs something pushed through, he can confidently count on his yes-men at the National Assembly, led by Senate President Godswill Akpabio, to get it done. The absolute surrender of the legislature’s constitutional oversight powers over the executive is perfectly embodied by Akpabio himself.
This is a man who actively sings “On Your Mandate” when Tinubu enters the senate chamber, and has literally declared that “Tinubu is on the throne.”
We are not even kidding. It is genuinely that bad. The Senate President is invoking monarch status on the President. It’s Akpabio’s job to keep Tinubu in check, yet he calls him a king. If that doesn’t tell you we’re in trouble, nothing will.
All politics is local
Okay, so the federal lawmakers bow to “king Tinubu”. But what about the state governments? Surely, democratically elected governors—voted in by their own people—can stand up to federal bullying, right? You probably already know exactly where this is going.
The APC finished the 2023 elections with 21 governors out of the 36 states. But the campaign to take over the country has worked so well that the APC now controls a staggering 31 governors.
This is where things get ugly. The way the APC and Tinubu have captured these governors shows a very brutal, undemocratic side to how they run the country.
Governors like Dauda Lawal of Zamfara State and Ademola Adeleke of Osun State have openly accused the federal government of holding back money meant for their states to force them to join the APC. Sadly, the pressure worked. Just weeks after complaining that Abuja withheld up to ₦500 billion in palliative funds from Zamfara, Lawal gave up and moved to the APC in March 2026.
In Bauchi State, Governor Bala Mohammed has also accused the federal government of using agencies like the EFCC to harass him and his cabinet into switching parties.
Tinubu has also shown a willingness to unconstitutionally remove elected officials from their posts. In March 2025, Tinubu declared a state of emergency in Rivers State, deployed the military, and suspended the elected state government for 6 months.
And as you probably guessed, the rubber-stamp lawmakers in the National Assembly quickly approved it. Three months after the suspension ended, Governor Sim Fubara officially crossed over to the APC. In May 2025, we’d learn from Nyesom Wike that Fubara’s suspension was lifted following an agreement overseen by Tinubu.
Democratically elected state governors shouldn’t have to switch to the President’s party just to get the money meant for their people, or to protect themselves from being locked out of their office, but here we are.
The welcoming party
But Tinubu doesn’t just expect these captured governors to run their states according to his will. No, he likes to parade them like trophies. This is most obvious in the bizarre airport ritual that has become a regular tradition under this administration.
Governors who should be busy managing their own states constantly leave their offices to travel to Abuja just to wave Tinubu goodbye whenever he flies out of the country. Others fly across the world with him just to line up on the tarmac and shake his hand the moment he steps off the presidential jet, acting like a glorified welcoming committee.
We have even seen photographs of sitting, elected governors literally greeting Tinubu on their knees.
It is incredibly clear that this current crop of governors does not understand the basic rules of democracy or the independence that comes with their positions. They simply do not respect the weight and importance of their own offices.
But the bigger question is: do we, as Nigerians, truly realise just how messed up all of this actually is?
We’ve never had it this bad
Since the return to democracy in 1999, Nigeria has gone through three major leadership eras before Tinubu:
- Olusegun Obasanjo (1999–2007)
- Umaru Musa Yar’Adua & Goodluck Jonathan (2007–2015)
- Muhammadu Buhari (2015–2023)
While every single one of these past leaders had their flaws and definitely threw their weight around, the presidency was never as dangerously strong as it is right now. None of them managed to completely swallow up the rest of the government the way Tinubu has.
Old soldiers sometimes die
During the Obasanjo years, the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) held almost as much numerical power as the APC does today. They grew from 59 senators, 206 representatives, and 21 governors in Obasanjo’s first term to a massive 73 senators, 223 representatives, and 27 governors in his second term.
But being members of the president’s party did not turn these politicians into his stooges. The Senate constantly fought Obasanjo, actively revolting against executive control by repeatedly impeaching the Senate Presidents he tried to handpick. In total, the friction was so intense that the upper chamber went through five different Senate Presidents in just eight years. They even tried to impeach Obasanjo as president in 2002 over security issues. God when.
The defining moment of this legislative independence came in 2006, when Obasanjo tried to push through a constitutional amendment bill to elongate his political career and secure a third term in office. Despite the PDP holding a commanding majority in the chamber, lawmakers looked the old military general in the eye and threw the bill out, permanently killing his dream of an extended presidency.
Today, the contrast is stark. There is not a single political analyst in Nigeria worth their salt who would tell you they are 100 per cent sure the current National Assembly would say no if Tinubu asked for the same thing.
Tinubu, was that not you I saw?
It’s ironic that Tinubu, in his time as governor, operated democratically and was not a pushover.
In the early 2000s, Tinubu was the Governor of Lagos State. When he created new Local Council Development Areas (LCDAs) without federal approval, President Obasanjo got angry and completely cut off Lagos State’s federal allocation funds.
So, what did Tinubu do? Did he run to join the ruling PDP? Did he travel to Abuja to beg Obasanjo on his knees? Absolutely not. He stood his ground, fought the presidency all the way to the Supreme Court, and won.
It is incredibly ironic that a man who built his political career by using the independence of state governments to fight executive bullying is now the very president destroying those same pillars of democracy today.
Bad luck motel
Goodluck Jonathan saw out the remainder of Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s first term after the president passed away from a long illness. When Jonathan ran for his own fresh term in 2011, the PDP had 71 senators, 202 representatives, and 23 state governors. But having those numbers on paper did not guarantee smooth sailing. At almost every turn, the lawmakers and governors within his own party chose to make Jonathan’s tenure thoroughly miserable.
The trouble began immediately when the House of Representatives flatly rejected Jonathan’s handpicked choice for Speaker, Mulikat Akande-Adeola, electing Aminu Tambuwal instead. Jonathan and Tambuwal would go on to feud for the entire duration of that presidency.
Worse was to come. Between 2013 and 2014, a massive wave of 37 PDP representatives and 11 PDP senators defected en masse to the newly formed opposition party, the APC, effectively shattering the PDP’s absolute control over the National Assembly.
The pull-out the military method
The battle with the state governors was just as intense. In November 2013, five powerful PDP governors—popularly known as the nPDP—launched an open revolt against Jonathan’s leadership. Governors like Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State and Rabiu Kwankwaso of Kano State led a historic walkout and defected to the APC, instantly erasing the ruling party’s dominance across the states.
But since we are tracking political ironies, let’s look at a truly remarkable one: the bitter feud between Jonathan and Kashim Shettima, who was the Governor of Borno State at the time.
With his state sitting at the heart of the Boko Haram insurgency, Shettima openly and fiercely criticised the federal government’s handling of the security crisis. An exhausted and furious Jonathan lashed out publicly, even famously threatening during a live broadcast to withdraw federal troops from Borno for a month just to see if Shettima “would stay in that government house.”
Shettima later revealed that Jonathan had actively planned to suspend and remove him from office, much like Tinubu eventually did to Governor Fubara in Rivers State.
However, Jonathan was stopped dead in his tracks. Then-Speaker Aminu Tambuwal told the president that he lacked the authority to sack an elected official. Even Jonathan’s own Attorney-General of the Federation, Mohammed Bello Adoke, backed by other cabinet members, looked the president in the eye and told him he did not have the constitutional power to remove a sitting governor—”not even a [local government] councillor.”
During the Jonathan era, the legislature, the cabinet, and the country’s legal framework stood up to the president. They stood firmly on the core tenets of democracy and successfully protected Shettima’s rights from executive overreach.
Today, that same Kashim Shettima sits as the Vice President to Bola Tinubu—a leader who arbitrarily suspended an elected governor and dismantled a state government, fully aided and abetted by a completely subservient National Assembly.
The ironies are loud, clear, and incredibly tragic.
One battle after another
When Muhammadu Buhari won the 2015 election, his party, the APC, started the 8th National Assembly with 60 out of 109 senators, 212 out of 360 representatives, and 22 state governors.
Buhari was a former military dictator with a reputation for getting his way. But the 8th National Assembly, led by Senate President Bukola Saraki, quickly proved that a civilian presidency could not simply order the parliament around.
The resistance started on day one. The APC leadership wanted Ahmed Lawal to lead the parliament, but Saraki outmanoeuvred the presidency. He even struck a deal with the opposition PDP, resulting in a historic anomaly: a ruling-party Senate President working alongside an opposition Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu.
For Buhari, those eight years were one battle after another with the National Assembly.
In 2016, at the height of an economic recession, Buhari sent a massive $29.9 billion external borrowing plan to the Senate. In a move that would be unthinkable today, the Senate completely rejected the loan request, citing a lack of detailed information and transparency.
The current Senate continues to approve loan requests after loan requests from Tinubu. And with such speed, you’d think they’re gunning for a world record.
Buhari nominated Ibrahim Magu to head the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). Despite heavy pressure from the presidency, the Senate screened Magu and officially rejected his confirmation—not once, but twice. Multiple times, we’ve seen this Senate tell Tinubu’s executive picks to “bow and go” during confirmation hearings. They have completely abandoned the job of grilling the people who will run our ministries.
My state, my rules
Even the governors during the Buhari era maintained their independence. While the APC held 22 states, governors from both the ruling party and the opposition routinely challenged federal policies.
When Buhari tried to introduce the controversial Ruga cattle settlement policy nationwide, several state governors—including opposition figures like Samuel Ortom of Benue State—resisted, forcing the federal government to suspend the plan.
Under Buhari, the executive had to fight, negotiate, and occasionally suffer embarrassing defeats at the hands of the other arms of government. The presidency was powerful but not absolute. That is how it’s meant to be.
The most powerful president
Compared to his predecessors, Bola Tinubu is the most powerful civilian president Nigeria has seen since 1999. His will is basically the law. But apart from proving that our democracy died in 2023, this absolute consolidation of power does something else: it shows us exactly who to blame for all our problems.
Goodluck Jonathan still argues that he was unable to implement the recommendations of the 2014 National Conference due to political resistance, including from Tambuwal. Buhari supporters can claim that his Ruga cattle settlement plan would have solved the deadly herder-farmer clashes if state governments hadn’t rejected it.
Tinubu has no such excuses. There is no policy he wants that he cannot push through the National Assembly, and no directive he cannot force state governors to implement. He has total control.
Yet, here we are. Nigeria is currently recording wartime numbers of conflict deaths. We are paying billions in ransom every year as the kidnapping epidemic spins completely out of control. Runaway inflation has made basic survival—just buying food—unaffordable for millions of citizens. During his tenure alone, over 16 million more Nigerians have fallen headfirst into poverty. The list of disasters goes on. Nigeria has become an incredibly dangerous and difficult place to live.
And remember: not a single plan to fix these issues has been blocked by a stubborn governor or a defiant Senate. Tinubu has had complete free rein. Yet, he has fixed nothing.
For the first time in Nigeria’s modern history, if there is anything you hate about the state of the country, you can lay it squarely at the feet of one single man—Bola Tinubu.
It’s flatlining!
There is some good news. Our democracy may be dead right now, but it can always be resuscitated. The thing, though, is that it won’t happen by accident; it will take deliberate, aggressive effort from all of us.
As citizens, we must become fiercely active in politics. At this point, it is no longer just about civic pride or fulfilling a duty—it is pure self-defence. These past three years of the Tinubu presidency have proved one terrifying reality: a badly run Nigeria is fatal. Paying attention and participating in politics is how you protect your own life.
Follow the politics. Study the candidates and find out what their actual policy stances are. Decide who you are backing. Then, get your PVC before the upcoming deadlines and prepare to vote at all levels. We desperately need state and local governments and federal lawmakers with the spine to stand up to presidential overreach.
It is bad right now. It really is. But we can still save our democracy.
Nigerians, lock in.
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