Editorial: Tinubu's One-party Agenda Erodes Nigerian Democracy

History, when ignored, does not repeat itself so much as it mutates, shedding its crude excesses for subtler, more insidious forms. Nigeria today finds itself staring at a disquieting reincarnation of one of its darkest democratic episodes: the cynical manipulation of institutions to predetermine political outcomes. The ghosts of June 1993 are not merely stirring; they are being methodically resurrected.

Nigeria has been here before. The country has seen how democracy can be strangled not only by soldiers in uniform but by civilians armed with institutions. The role once played by Arthur Nzeribe and his infamous Association for Better Nigeria has found a modern analogue, not in a shadowy pressure group, but in the coordinated conduct of the ruling All Progressives Congress, aided; whether by design or dereliction, by the supposed electoral umpire, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). What was once executed with military bluntness under Ibrahim Babangida is now being pursued with civilian finesse, bureaucratic euphemism, and legalistic camouflage. 

 

In 1993, the sabotage was crude. In 2026, it is clinical. In 1993, the objective was brutally straightforward - prevent the emergence of Moshood Abiola. The method was crude: injunctions procured in the dead of night, legal confusion and a crisis manufactured in broad daylight, and ultimately, the annulment of the June 12, 1993 election; the freest and fairest in Nigeria’s history - an annulment so brazen it scarred the nation’s conscience. Today’s strategy is more sophisticated, but no less pernicious. Instead of annulling elections, the aim is to ensure that meaningful elections never truly occur. Under the watch of President Bola Tinubu, the architecture of opposition politics is being quietly dismantled, not through outright bans, but through engineered dysfunction. Parties are not outlawed; they are hollowed out. Leadership structures are not formally dissolved; they are administratively erased. The result is the same: a political landscape where competition exists in theory but not in practice. Let us be clear: this is not mere political gamesmanship. It is the systematic corrosion of democratic choice. 

 

Critics now argue that the same playbook is being dusted off, updated, and deployed with greater sophistication. The facts are clear for all to see: Nigeria’s ruling party is engineering chaos within opposition parties, weaponizing litigation, and leveraging institutional power to tilt the 2027 elections before a single ballot is cast. And at the centre of this storm stands the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), whose recent actions have raised profound questions about neutrality and constitutional responsibility. The manufactured implosion of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) has become the most visible casualty of what critics describe as a coordinated strategy of destabilization. Once positioned as a potential rallying point for opposition forces, including figures such as Senator David Mark and Rauf Aregbesola; the party has been plunged into a leadership crisis so severe that it now borders on institutional paralysis. 

 

The turning point came when INEC removed the names of the recognised National Working Committee from its official portal. The commission cited a court order. But legal analysts argue that the court instructed all parties to maintain the status quo, not to erase the party’s leadership structure entirely. To interpret “status quo” as “delete the leadership” is, a linguistic and legal contortion so extreme it borders on administrative vandalism. The ADC was not leaderless before litigation began. It is leaderless now, because INEC made it so. This intervention is not neutrality; it is sabotage. And the beneficiaries are always the same: the ruling APC. INEC’s decision to remove a recognized leadership from its official records, under the pretext of maintaining “status quo,” is not merely questionable—it is Orwellian. One does not preserve a structure by deleting its foundation. 

 

The case of the African Democratic Congress is illustrative, but by no means unique. Across the political landscape, opposition parties are being pulled into factional disputes, suspicious defections, and litigation that appears to erupt with uncanny timing. These crises are not organic; they are engineered.

The pattern is unmistakable: a promising opposition platform gains momentum; a faction suddenly emerges, claiming leadership; litigation follows; INEC’s administrative decisions deepen the crisis; the party becomes unable to field candidates, and the APC advances unchallenged. This is not the messy unpredictability of democracy. 

 

INEC insist the commission is merely obeying court orders. But INEC’s interpretations consistently produce outcomes that weaken opposition parties and strengthen the ruling party. In the ADC case, INEC did not preserve the status quo; it obliterated it. In other cases, INEC has selectively recognized factions, attended meetings of one group while ignoring another; issue administrative decisions that tilt internal disputes, and delay or accelerating recognition in ways that shape political outcomes. An electoral umpire must be above suspicion. But critics argue that INEC’s conduct increasingly resembles that of a participant, whose decisions carry decisive political consequences.

 

The parallels with 1993 are chilling. Then, as now, a legal maneuver was used to derail democratic choice. Then, as now, a small group of actors exploited institutional levers to produce political paralysis. Then, as now, the consequences threatened national stability. Arthur Nzeribe later boasted that he had achieved his objective. Today’s actors are more discreet, but the effect is the same: the systematic erosion of electoral competition. Democracy does not die only through coups. It can be suffocated through institutional capture, procedural sabotage, administrative manipulation, and the quiet elimination of political alternatives. What happened in 1993 was swift. What is happening now is slow, deliberate, and potentially more dangerous.

 

Nigeria is drifting toward a de facto one party state, not through persuasion or performance, but through the incapacitation of opponents. If opposition parties enter 2027 fragmented, leaderless, or legally entangled, the election risks becoming a coronation rather than a contest. A government that wins by disabling its opponents does not gain legitimacy. It gains power, but at the cost of national cohesion. Nigeria has seen this before. It ended in crisis. The strategy is not only anti democratic; it is profoundly reckless. Nigeria is not a country that quietly accepts political manipulation. From the June 12 struggle to the #EndSARS movement, Nigerians have repeatedly shown that they will resist attempts to curtail their political rights. 

 

The ruling APC, for its part, has perfected the art of plausible deniability. Every crisis within opposition ranks is dismissed as an “internal affair.” Every judicial entanglement is framed as due process. Every defection is celebrated as political freedom. Yet the pattern is too consistent, too convenient, and too beneficial to be dismissed as coincidence. What we are witnessing is not organic political evolution, but curated disintegration. This is how democracies decay; not with the clang of tanks, but with the quiet complicity of institutions. The danger of this trajectory cannot be overstated. A one-party state, whether declared or de facto, is not merely a political arrangement; it is an existential threat to national stability. 

 

A one party state imposed through subterfuge will not produce stability. It will produce resentment, unrest, and a crisis of legitimacy that no amount of state power can suppress. A government that secures victory by incapacitating its opponents rather than persuading its citizens governs on borrowed legitimacy. Such legitimacy is inherently fragile. It breeds cynicism, fuels resentment, and invites resistance. It turns elections into rituals rather than contests, and governance into imposition rather than representation. The consequences will not be confined to the political class. Ordinary Nigerians, already burdened by economic hardship and social insecurity, will bear the cost of institutional decay. When citizens lose faith in the electoral process, they do not simply become apathetic; they become alienated. And alienation, in a country as complex and volatile as Nigeria, is a dangerous condition.

 

Competition in politics is not a luxury; it is a necessity. It disciplines power, legitimizes authority, and provides citizens with a sense of agency. Remove it, and what remains is governance by imposition, not consent. History is merciless to those who manipulate democratic institutions for short term gain. The forces that once used Nzeribe eventually lost control of the chaos they created. Nigeria paid the price. The course being charted today; through institutional manipulation, administrative engineering, and political sabotage, leads to a dead end. Attempts to circumvent democracy, however sophisticated, are ultimately self-defeating. The APC and INEC stand at a crossroads. They can continue down the path of engineered dominance, mistaking control for legitimacy and compliance for consent. Or they can recalibrate and restore institutional integrity, respect the autonomy of opposition parties, and allow elections to function as genuine contests of ideas and performance. The choice should be obvious. The consequences of ignoring it are equally so. History, after all, is not merely a record of what has been. It is a warning of what could be. And Nigeria, having once paid dearly for the manipulation of its democracy, can ill afford to repeat the lesson—no matter how elegantly disguised the repetition may be.