President Bola Ahmed Tinubu returned over the weekend, swagger intact, despite his tumble in Turkey. His face was calm; his steps steady. His left arm tucked into the left fold of his agbada; his right palm expectantly popped into the waiting hands of top appointees lined up to receive him. Ministers and governors do this praise-and-worship ritual routinely. From the aircraft steps to his waiting car, Tinubu left no one in doubt: power, in his court, walks with a king’s gait.

‘American Idolatry: The Worship of a President’ was an opinion article published in the November 9, 2004 edition of the Yale Daily News by Christopher Ashley. What I have here is the Nigerian version of that headline; it borrows from Ashley’s critique which deplores the worship of a leader who demands “support of his person in spite of his policy” and argues that people must resist such idolatry. For Nigeria, the warning goes daily unheeded. For America, the writer’s primary audience, the warning came twenty years too early—before Donald Trump and the flood from his swamp.

‘Everybody believes in democracy until he gets to the White House’. That quote is from American political scientist, Thomas Edward Cronin, who, in 1972, did an analysis of the relations that existed between US presidents and their secretaries. The quote above is the title of the article. The title interests me more than whatever analysis he did – because it is so true here and everywhere. 

Bringing the Cronin quote here, we can confirm that every ambitious politician in Nigeria is a democrat until he gets to the Villa. Throughout his eight years as governor of Lagos State, I never saw Mr. Bola Ahmed Tinubu in slavish relations with Abuja and the strong presidency of Olusegun Obasanjo. Governor Bola Tinubu was a celebrated democrat, daring and outspoken. Tinubu worshipped no one – not even the godfathers who made him. Now, less than two years in power, he has been made a deity, and he enjoys it with the several pots and baskets of votive offerings. He basks in the claps, drums, songs, and rich votaries at his shrine. To know how much he loves his deification, watch him at the airports. 

Democracy decays. Ours has—and the odour is horrific. Under Obasanjo, we had a legislature and a judiciary that acted as checks on the rampaging treads of an elephant. We also had a president who, for all his flaws, checked the festering tendency of lawmakers and judges to commodify their offices. Today, under Tinubu, one suspects even the president may be surprised by how small these institutions have become—so diminished that he carries them, squeezed, in his back pocket.

No presidency, not even Trump’s, has ever been this blessed, unrestrained. It is imperial.

Historian and public intellectual, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., in his ‘The Imperial Presidency’ (1973), warned that “no one institution—neither the president nor Congress nor the court—should hold the power.” What Schlesinger wrote was, in fact, an elaboration on a caution issued 125 years earlier by Abraham Lincoln. In a 15 February, 1848 letter to William Herndon, Lincoln insisted that “no one man should hold the power of bringing …oppression upon us.” When power is concentrated in one man, or in the presidency itself, what emerges is no longer democratic leadership. It is imperial rule. In the words of Lincoln, when presidents stand “where kings have always stood” what you have is an imperial lord presiding over a system emptied of the meaning and substance of democracy. Yet Schlesinger was not arguing for a weak executive as an antidote to the “imperial presidency.” His prescription was “a strong presidency acting within the Constitution.” This raises the central question: how do we get a strong president, and how do we distinguish such strength from imperial excess?

Louis W. Koenig, a US professor of government, attempted an answer in ‘The Chief Executive’ (1975), a study of what citizens desire, and fear, in a presidential democracy. Koenig identified five principles that must define a “good” presidency:

1. Presidential power must be exercised through constitutional means.

2. The presidency must respect the public’s capacity to distinguish between good and bad candidates, between wisdom and folly.

3. The presidency must observe the right of the opposition to criticize, to challenge, and—even—to remove it through free elections.

4. The ethical standards on which democracy rests must apply to the president personally.

5. Democracy and its public offices, including the presidency, require an ethical foundation within society itself.

Now, which of these five principles can we honestly find in our Presidential Villa? If you demand too much of any of the items, you are likely to be “a danger to this democracy.” The ideas came from a US citizen. Before anyone begins to question the applicability of American political thought to the Nigerian situation, let us remember this: we did not author the system we are running—or the one that now runs our lives.

We copied our presidential democracy from the Americans. The founding fathers of the United States carefully thought through what they have. They conducted several experiments before settling on what we later rank-xeroxed. They began with a confederation that had no clear head, only to discover that a house without a head is a structure built for commotion. They then produced a constitution that vested the presidency with “substantial powers.” Even so, history records that the authors of that constitution were “clearly opposed to the creation of an American king.” One scholar interrogates the above further and says that “The (US) President was supposed to be a strong executive, not a monarch, —one watched closely by Congress, the Supreme Court, and the citizenry, to guard against Caesarism.”

Keeping vigil at the airport for the Nigerian president’s arrival is a lesson on self-delusion and corrupted loyalty. At what point did we acquire this culture of ministers, governors and military and security chiefs waiting for godot at airports for their “visiting” president? Each time they do that, they look like overgrown school kids expecting their headmaster’s arrival. If the minions feel no shame, they should know that their neighbours are catching it on their behalf.

I do not know of any democracy prescribing this aberration. But I know it is normal in a monarchy where the king rules in his majesty. When the Alaafin of old left his palace, every street, village and town stood still in awe and reverence of a king who was son and father of death. More historic is the story of Ooni Adelekan Olubuse I who was the first Ooni of Ife to travel outside Ile Ife, visiting Lagos on the invitation of Governor –General, Sir William MacGregor (Government Gazette of Lagos, February 28, 1903). History says that while the Ooni was on that journey, all Yoruba kings along his route vacated their palaces until his return. Even his people gathered at the river, vowing to wait for him.

It also happened once upon a time in the animal world:

Lion, king of the jungle, set out on a long journey. Soon, the other key animals gathered by the footpath, awaiting his return—Elephant, Tiger, Buffalo, Gazelle, Giraffe, and the rest. They kept vigil, stood stiff, afraid that sitting might look like disrespect, treason or treasonable felony. Even Elephant learnt to stand small.

Days turned into weeks. The Lion did not return, yet the waiting continued.

One day, the Tortoise passed by and asked, “Why are you all standing here?”

“We are awaiting the Lion,” the animals replied.

“For how long?” asked the Tortoise.

“As long as it takes,” they said.

“How about your work?”

“It must wait. The king must see that we are loyal.”

The Tortoise shook his head and felt sorry for them. “You are not loyal to the king; your loyalty is to yourself.”

Along with the idolatry of king-worship in a democracy comes the absence of questions and answers. Nothing can be more politically correct than seeing no evil and hearing no evil. And, silence can be sweet; it can also feel safe. But read Langdon Gilkey’s ‘The Political Meaning of Silence’. Death is bad; silence, where speech is necessary, is worse. It folds self, soul, and body. As Gilkey warns, “What silence qua silence mediates is the destruction of the self…” Silence hollows out the silent. As Shakespeare reminds us, “And oftentimes excusing of a fault / Doth make the fault the worse.”

We saw the president’s arrival, the fall and the rise in Turkey. We saw his engagements in the early days there. We did not see what he did in the latter days until he landed in Abuja on Saturday. The king came home at night, ministers and courtiers lined up for handshakes; the king exchanged short words with every mini-king who made it to the tarmac and proceeded to fold into the Villa. There were no questions to welcome the “father of the nation.” People who dared to ask questions did so under their wives’ beds. Even we, the press, have had no question for the president, and none for his handlers. Television stations that broke the news of his arrival showed footage. There was no demand from daddy what he brought from where he slipped.

Not asking questions can be a poisonous indulgence. Robert Locander’s ‘The President, the Press, and the Public: Friends and Enemies of Democracy’ treats issues such as this. Locander argues that “the president, the press, and the public can act as either friends or enemies of democracy.” In the scramble for the meat of this fallen elephant, the actions of all three, these days, are clearly enemy actions. We have become idolaters, worshipping the throne while paradise slips from our hands.

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

By Chinedu Agu

I arrived in Umuahia in the afternoon of 23 January 2026 for the Quarterly Meeting of the Eastern Bar Forum (EBF), held from 23–25 January 2026. I was privileged to serve as the Compère for the Cocktail on Thursday, the Opening Ceremony on Friday morning, and the Dinner on Friday evening. The duties were demanding, the atmosphere, electric, and the gathering memorable. Yet, beyond the microphone and formalities, the true high point of that weekend for me was the EBF Governor’s Tour of Abia projects.

Upon arrival, the Honourable the Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice of Abia State, Ikechukwu Uwanna, SAN, received the EBF Governor, D O. Nosike, and members of the Forum in his chambers [including me]. From there, he personally led us on a tour of ongoing projects undertaken by the Abia State Government.

Read Also: Tears From Enugu: A lawyer’s heartbreaking diary from a state that works to a state in ruins

What I saw did not merely impress me. It unsettled me not because I am allergic to progress but because of where I came from.

Our first stop was the Ultra-Modern Umuahia Central Bus Terminal, located right at the city centre. I know when something is local improvisation and when it is global thinking executed locally. In this case, it was the latter.

This terminal looks and will function like an airport. Inside, it is a hotel deliberately built for travellers who arrive late or need to catch early departures. There are eateries, ticketing halls, arrival lobbies, automatic stairways, and a large surveillance control room fitted with over twelve monitoring screens covering the entire terminal and its environment.

Without exaggeration, the only places I have seen anything comparable are Victoria Coach Station in London and Nottingham Broadmarsh Bus Station. This is the first of its kind I have seen anywhere in Nigeria.

From there, we on-boarded the Electric Vehicle Green Shuttle buses designated for the terminal. One of them conveyed us for the rest of the tour.

The bus was fully electric, noiseless, brand new, and manned by a highly professional pilot, co-pilot, and crew. Inside were air-conditioning, TV screens, spacious seating, waste disposal systems, and an overwhelming sense of calm. Like Abia Governor, you do not hear the engine. You just feel its progress.

As we moved through Umuahia, one thing was consistent: smooth roads. No excuses. No detours. No apologies.

The bus took us to the Isiala Ngwa High Court at Umuene, an ultra-modern High Court complex commissioned on 29 October 2025. Solar-powered. Digitized. Secure.

The exhibit room is built like a bank vault, a deliberate lesson learned from the destructions of public facilities witnessed during the #EndSARS protests. Courtrooms are fortified, functional, and future-facing.

According to the Attorney-General, one such High Court is being constructed in every Local Government Area, to be completed by the first quarter of the year. Immediately after, 17 High Courts each will be built in Aba and Umuahia, commencing in the second quarter.

Justice here is not a slogan. It is concrete, steel, solar panels, and software. Aba is rising again!

We proceeded to Aba, where contractors were already fully mobilised on similar court projects.

But Aba today is more than construction sites: cleanliness has returned, orderliness has returned, night life has returned, road connectivity has returned!

As these things are happening in Umuahia, even more is unfolding in Aba. Abia is not developing one city to impress visitors; it is rebuilding an entire state.

The EBF events held at the Michael Okpara Auditorium, a structure abandoned by previous administrations. Today, it stands elegant, functional, and worthy of regional gatherings of this magnitude.

During the vote of thanks, the Attorney-General was commended by the EBF Governor for exceptional hosting and hospitality. He remarked with justified pride that we have not had an EBF like this in recent times.

I added, half-joking but fully honest: “That is because we have not had an Abia this good in a long while.” The hall exploded in pearls of laughter and applauds. But the truth stayed seated.

For context, let me now tell a story.

There was a boy who consistently came last in his class. One day, his mother could no longer contain her frustration. She rebuked him and asked why he kept failing, why he kept allowing his classmate, Peter, to beat him every term.

The boy replied defensively:
“Mummy, Peter is far older than me. His father is a professor. His mother is a school principal. His uncles are professors. His siblings are teachers, lawyers, and doctors. How do you expect me to compete?”

The excuse sounded intelligent. It even sounded convincing. But his parents were not persuaded. Instead, they stepped him down by one class, hoping he would stabilize.

In the new class, another boy emerged, Alex. Alex beat him again. Worse still, Alex was much younger. His father was a mechanic. His mother was a food vendor. His siblings were okada riders. His uncles were timber cutters and carriers at the Timbre market.

This time, the boy had no excuse. None!

That shame; the kind that strips you of explanations, is exactly where Imo State stands today.

Recently, whenever Imo was compared with Enugu, the official response followed a familiar script: “Enugu has been around longer.” “Enugu was the capital of the old Eastern Region.” “Enugu has historical advantages.”

In this story, Enugu was Peter; older, advantaged, intellectually endowed by history. And few gullible people accepted that explanation.

But now comes Abia – a historical newbie: born on 27 August 1991; 15 years, 6 months and 24 days younger than Imo; endured decades of some of the worst leadership experiments since the return to civil rule; receives far less allocation than Imo; has no old regional capital pedigree. Yet today, Abia has overtaken Imo — clearly, quietly, and conclusively.

I think the excuses have evaporated.

Governor Alex Otti did not meet a functioning system. He met rot: unpaid salaries, abandoned infrastructure, broken institutions, demoralized civil servants, and shattered public trust.

He did not spend his time blaming predecessors. He did not govern by press releases. He folded his sleeves and went to work.

Today, Abia has rebuilt critical road networks across Umuahia and Aba; restored Aba as a commercial, clean, and livable city; paid civil servants promptly; cleared pension arrears and restored dignity to retirees; digitized and functionalised the Ministry of Lands without shutting it down for three years; launched massive judicial infrastructure across all LGAs; digitized court processes and records; reimagined public transportation with electric buses and a world-class terminal; revived abandoned public assets; built synergy across justice sector institutions instead of rivalry.

These are not promises.
They are verifiable facts.

Comparatively, Imo did not inherit deeper decay than Abia. It did not face more severe institutional collapse, nor did it suffer greater economic dislocation. Yet the state remains trapped in explanations, blame-shifting, and avoidance.

Where Abia builds courts, Imo debates appointments. Where Abia digitizes justice, Imo weaponizes and politicizes it. Where Abia aligns institutions, Imo allows them to sabotage and arm-twist one another. Where Abia works, Imo explains.

In my story, Enugu was Peter. Abia is Alex. And Imo has lost to both – to both older and younger, punching below its weight!

Governance is not ancestry; it is discipline, competence, and will. States that work do not arrest critics, they outgrow criticism through verifiable and formidable performance. Abia is doing exactly that.

Measuring a state’s success solely by comparing the present administration with its predecessors is the hallmark of leadership myopia. Had Alex Otti done that, he might have focused narrowly on road construction, then told critics: “See, I have outperformed my predecessors; Abians should be satisfied. Call me the Infrastructure Ambassador.”

He did no such thing. Instead, he gauges governance by comparing with states and countries that work, setting benchmarks that challenge mediocrity, not excuses.

What use is an argument between two dwarfs disputing who is taller? True perspective comes from looking beyond our borders. Otherwise, one risks mistaking oneself for a giant fish in a small pond, or a local champion in a continental contest.

Abia is playing in the Champions League, competing with European heavyweights and winning matches; Imo is stuck in a relegation battle in the Championship.

As I disembarked from the EV Green Shuttle Bus, one thought stayed with me: History will not read statements. It will read results.

And right now, Abia has left us behind, sadly.

Chinedu Agu is a Solicitor and Notary Public | Former Secretary of NBA Owerri | Human Rights and Good Governance Advocate | Former Political Detainee
+234 8032568512

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

Abdul Leigh Balogun became a judge of the High Court of Lagos State in 1976. In a career as a trial judge spanning 17 years and three different decades, the man better known as A.L.A.L Balogun earned a deserved reputation as one of the most knowledgeable trial judges to adorn the Nigerian judiciary. His reputation for fairness was unquestioned. That ultimately saved his judicial career.

On 9 March 1979, Justice Balogun delivered judgment in a land matter originally filed in 1975, the year before he became a judge. His judgment decided the case against the original claimants. The following day, on 10 March, Abdul Balogun showed up at the law office of the counsel to the claimants. It was a Saturday. The claimants, who had lost the case, were in consultation with their lawyers when the judge visited.

At the visit, Justice Balogun invited the claimant’s lawyers to attend court the next working day. On Monday, 12 March 1979, the court proposed to hear submissions from lawyers as it considered the “recall” its earlier judgment of 10 March to correct errors he had spotted in the judgment.

On the appointed day, the lawyers for the claimants did not attend court. The defendants, who had won the case, were represented and addressed the court through their lawyers. The judge had also invited them.

Thereafter, Justice Balogun delivered a lengthy and well researched judgment in which he claimed an inherent jurisdiction to correct errors he said he had identified in his original judgment but his original verdict remained unchanged. So, in two separate judgments over two working days, the claimants lost twice. They had good reason to be irate.

The claimants appealed, asking the appellate courts to nullify both judgments of 9 and 12 March 1979 and order a retrial. When it decided the appeal seven years later on 17 June 1986, the Supreme Court was at pains to point out that the motive of the judge in this case was not bias but what it called the “laudable aspiration” of perfection. However, Supreme Court described the conduct of a judge choosing to go to the law office of counsel involved in litigation before him as both “reproachable and irregular” and justified its decision on the ground that this caused “erosion of confidence in the judicial process.” The court warned that “a trial judge ought to know that he is on trial for any improper conduct during the trial of a case before him and immediately thereafter.”

In the judicial traditions of those days, the idea of extra-judicial mingling or intercourse between litigants or their counsel on the one hand and appellate judges on the other was unheard of. So, the court was content to confine its admonition to trial judges. Today, the ethics of judging in Nigeria appear to know of no such distinctions anymore.

Justice Balogun recovered from this case and went on to have a stellar career on the High Court of Lagos, from where he retired in 1993. He lived for another 20 years thereafter, before he died in August 2013. Six months before his death, in February 2013, the National Judicial Council, (NJC) terminated the judicial career of Thomas Naron, a judge of the High Court of Plateau State, because  “there were constant and regular voice calls and exchange of mms and sms (text) messages between Hon. Justice Naron and one of the lead counsel for one of the parties to the suit in the Osun State Gubernatorial Election Tribunal, contrary to the Code of Conduct for Judicial Officers of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”

In the wake of an unprecedented operation by the State Security Service (SSS) against some senior judges across the country in October 2016, a serving Justice of the Supreme Court, Inyang Okoro, was reported to have informed the then Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Mahmud Mohammed, in February of the same year of a nocturnal visit to his home by then Transport Minister and former governor of Rivers State, Rotimi Amaechi.

At the visit, Mr. Amaechi reportedly claimed that his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), had “mandated him to inform (the judge) that they must win their election appeals in Rivers State, Akwa Ibom and Abia State at all costs.” Mr. Amaechi’s media spokespersons publicly denied these claims in colourful language. Despite the best efforts of civil society advocates to ensure a transparent investigation, the allegations appear to have subsequently been swept under the proverbial carpet.

The latest public disclosure of extra-judicial dalliance involving senior judges and litigants before them came last week from that most durable phenomenon in contemporary Kano politics, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso.

In March 2019, the contest for the governorship of Kano State pitted then incumbent, Abdullahi Gabduje of the APC against Kwankwaso’s protégé, Abba Kabir Yusuf, of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP). With about 100,000 votes left to harvest, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared the contest inconclusive. At that point, Yusuf was ahead with 26,655 votes.

When INEC concluded the supplementary vote, it awarded 45,876 votes to Ganduje and 10,239 votes to Yusuf, enabling it to declare the latter the loser with a margin of just 8,982 votes out of 2,242,396 votescast. The contest ultimately ended in January 2020 when the Supreme Court affirmed Ganduje as duly elected.

In the wake of last week’s feckless embrace by Kabir Abba Yusuf of his former nemesis, Abdullahi Ganduje, a heart-broken Kwankwaso disclosed that in the struggle for what they believed to be their mandate in 2019, he went with Abba Yusuf “to the homes of all the supreme court judges in Nigeria to beg them…. in their villages and towns.”

Muhammad Dattijo, who memorably retired from the Supreme Court in 2023 and was on the Court in 2019, promptly issued a rebuttal challenging Kwankwaso’s claim and denying ever having met him or Abba Yusuf. He has also rightly challenged Kwankwaso to disclose the names of the Justices of the Supreme Court whom he claims to have met. The Supreme Court chooses to maintain eloquent silence.

Judges, according to the United Nations Basic Principles on the Independence of the Judiciary, “shall decide matters before them impartially, on the basis of facts and in accordance with the law, without any restrictions, improper influences, inducements, pressures, threats or interferences, direct or indirect, from any quarter or for any reason.”

In June 2023, Senator Adamu Bulkachuwa confessed on the floor of Nigeria’s Senate that indeed, some important cases may have been decided in the bedroom that he shared with his wife, Zainab, who was President of the Court of Appeal for over six years until 2020. It would be surprising if this species of concupiscent jurisprudence was brewed exclusively chez Bulkachuwa.

There was a time when this would have attracted consequences in Nigeria. But after a few news headlines, Adamu Bulkachuwa’s disclosures were buried in the sepulchre of the NJC’s complicit silence.

40 years ago, the Supreme Court found that Justice Balogun’s quest for perfection mitigated his transgression. The erosion of public confidence in the judiciary which the Supreme Court was conscious to safeguard against then has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Today, a predominant species of judicial vagabondage pursues perfidy.

The NJC’s own Judicial Code of Conduct indeed requires that “[a] Judge shall avoid developing excessively close relationship with frequent litigants – such as government ministers or their officials, municipal officials, police prosecutors in any Court where the Judge often sits.”

In November 2023, the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court, John Tsoho, turned up in the office of the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, to heartily congratulate the minister for his “bias” for judges and beg him to allocate choice land in Abuja to them. Apparently, no one informed the Chief Judge that his posture was injudiciously intimate or that Mr. Wike was exactly what the Judicial Code of Conduct described as both a Minister and a “frequent litigant” before his court.

The norms of acceptable judicial conduct have been re-made. Yet many live in denial of the reality that, increasingly, cases before many courts in Nigeria are no longer decided in the courtrooms but in worshipful processions to the homes of the people we call “My Lord”.

A lawyer and a teacher, Odinkalu can be reached at [email protected]

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.