The Erosion of Democratic Space in Nigeria
The warning about the fragility of Nigerian democracy has long been present in my writings. In works such as When Ghosts Vote, Voters Register, and Credible Elections, I highlighted concerns about the structural weakening of electoral credibility. In Why the National Assembly Race Matters, I returned to the dangers of lopsided power in a democracy. And in Rascality of Political Parties & 2023 Election, I emphasized that democracy survives only where the rule of law is not selective. Together, these essays form a single argument: democracy does not always collapse in one loud moment. Sometimes it is thinned out, manipulated, cornered, and slowly emptied of meaning until citizens still have elections, parties, courts, and agencies, but less and less real choice.
That is why the phrase “opposition must die” should not be treated as mere partisan melodrama. It is better understood as a diagnosis of a mood settling over Nigerian politics: the suspicion that the opposition is no longer expected to compete and lose fairly, but to be weakened in advance through pressure, fragmentation, procedural obstacles, and institutional asymmetry. The fear is not simply that the ruling party wants to win. Every ruling party wants to win. The fear is that it may want to govern in a field where the opposition arrives bruised, divided, financially exhausted, legally distracted, and administratively obstructed. That is the path by which a democracy keeps its rituals while losing its soul.
Coercive Power and Legal Manipulation
The first battlefield is coercive power, especially when clothed in legality. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) insists it is not targeting opposition figures and says its operations are guided by statute, not politics. That is what any anti-corruption body in a constitutional democracy ought to say. Yet opposition leaders have accused the agency of selective pressure, warning against the politicisation of anti-corruption institutions and their conversion into instruments for weakening rival parties. In a country where enforcement has long been viewed through the lens of power, timing matters. Pattern matters. Public trust matters. Once citizens begin to believe that prosecution follows political movement more closely than criminal guilt, anti-corruption loses its moral force and begins to look like an arm of political management.
Then there is the judiciary, which in a healthy republic should settle disputes, not become the terrain on which political wars are prolonged by other means. Yet the courts have increasingly become the chambers where party legitimacy, convention outcomes, and institutional recognition are determined. In March 2026, a Federal High Court in Abuja again nullified the PDP’s 2025 Ibadan convention and barred INEC from recognizing its outcomes. Earlier, the Court of Appeal also invalidated that convention. Femi Falana, SAN, had argued that courts should not grant interim or interlocutory relief in matters concerning the internal affairs of political parties under the Electoral Act. Whatever side one takes in specific cases, the broader democratic effect is corrosive: parties are pulled out of politics and trapped in procedure; leadership contests become permanent litigation; and the citizen begins to suspect that electoral competition is being displaced by juridical warfare.
Institutional Obstruction and Administrative Barriers
INEC, too, now sits at the heart of this unease. The ADC has accused the commission of creating “administrative landmines” that could prevent it from fielding candidates, after disputes over leadership recognition and correspondence threatened to tighten already punishing timelines. Lawyers cited by Premium Times noted that INEC had withdrawn recognition from groups claiming the party’s leadership after a court ruling, while ADC figures interpreted that move as part of a broader effort to obstruct the coalition’s emergence. It is possible to explain each step in bureaucratic terms. But bureaucracy is not innocent in politics. Deadlines, portal access, recognition letters, correspondence rules, and status-quo orders can do the work that a blunt prohibition no longer dares to attempt.
Even access to physical space has started to look political. Days before its April 2026 convention, ADC said it had been denied access to Eagle Square and the Moshood Abiola National Stadium, before settling for the Rainbow Event Centre. FCT Minister Nyesom Wike denied that the party had been blocked and argued that no proper application had been made to the relevant authority. Yet the very fact that a major opposition platform held its convention amid venue uncertainty, public recriminations, and a last-minute relocation captures the condition of opposition politics in Nigeria today.
Financial Pressure and Political Survival
Financial pressure is often more effective than open repression because it leaves fewer fingerprints. A party whose meetings are disrupted may still shout. A party whose donors are frightened, whose operational channels are constricted, and whose financial ecosystem is put under pressure begins to suffocate quietly. That is why the weaponisation of financial regulation, or even the credible fear of it, is so dangerous in a fragile democracy.
Defections deepen the same perception. APC’s strength is not merely electoral; it is gravitational. Federal lawmakers and governors have continued to leave opposition parties for the ruling party, reinforcing its parliamentary advantage and feeding the fear that power in Nigeria increasingly accumulates through absorption rather than persuasion. Tinubu has denied wanting a one-party state. Even so, AP reported that key opposition leaders formed the ADC coalition precisely because they feared shrinking democratic space and believed only a united platform could resist the drift toward dominance.
Internal Sabotage and Legislative Challenges
Internal sabotage completes the picture, whether it is centrally choreographed or merely opportunistically exploited. The PDP has been trapped in a struggle so deep that rival factions held competing centres of authority, police sealed and later unsealed the party’s secretariat, and analysts openly described its convention as a test of the party’s survival as a viable national force. The Labour Party has also been consumed by leadership disputes, with court battles over who legitimately controls the organisation. ADC itself, the very vessel meant to rescue the opposition from disunity, is now entangled in litigation and status-quo orders over its leadership.
The legislative dimension makes the anxiety still sharper. Opposition leaders rejected the Electoral Act 2026 and described some of its provisions as an attempt to subvert the will of the people and edge Nigeria toward one-party rule. Their concern was not simply with text, but with context: in a country where institutions are already distrusted, rules that appear neutral in abstract form can operate unevenly in practice.
The Tragedy of a Weakened Opposition
And this is where my broader democratic warning becomes especially relevant. The death of opposition is never only about parties. It is about the voter. Once opposition is systematically weakened, the citizen loses the practical ability to punish failure, reward alternatives, and force renewal. Power becomes less answerable not because elections cease, but because the outcome starts to feel pre-managed by institutions that were supposed to be neutral.
The tragedy is that Nigeria knows better. APC itself came to power through the democratic possibility of coalition, alternation, and a credible opposition challenge. To deny that same possibility to others now would not simply be hypocritical. It would be an assault on the very principle that made peaceful turnover possible in 2015 and still keeps republican hope alive today.
