By Olufunke Baruwa

Africa is richly endowed with land, minerals, oil, gas, arable soil, creative talent, and the youngest population in the world. Nigeria alone has an estimated 37 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, vast gas deposits, and a population exceeding 220 million people. Yet decade after decade, much of the continent remains trapped in fragile democracies, weak service delivery, and leadership cycles that look more like generational inheritance than electoral succession.

The haunting question we must confront is this: Is public office simply too attractive in Africa? And if so, why? Answering this requires uncomfortable honesty about incentives, institutions, history, and our own collective complicity. While the allure of political power is universal, its grip on many African states including Nigeria included has become dangerously enduring.

One of the most striking paradoxes of African governance is the persistence of leaders in power far beyond reasonable democratic expectations. Across the continent, constitutions have been amended, courts reshaped, and electoral systems weakened to extend or rig tenures. In Cameroon and Uganda, presidents have governed for decades. In Nigeria, the aborted third-term agenda of 2006 remains a powerful reminder that even constitutional democracies are not immune to tenure elongation temptations.

But why does this persistence happen? At its core, power in many African states is not primarily exercised for service; it is leveraged for protection, privilege, and patronage. Public office becomes less about stewardship and more about access to state contracts, budget allocations, oil blocks, security votes, and political immunity.

Nigeria illustrates this vividly. Despite earning hundreds of billions of dollars from oil since the 1970s, the country still struggles with unreliable electricity, decaying public schools, and underfunded hospitals. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, over 130 million Nigerians are classified as multidimensionally poor. Yet political office holders remain among the highest paid public officials globally when allowances and opaque benefits are factored in.

In such an environment, stepping down from office is not merely relinquishing power, it is forfeiting access to enormous economic advantage and, in some cases, losing protection from investigation. Power becomes both prize and shield.

The Elusive Democratic Dividend

Nigeria has conducted uninterrupted civilian elections since 1999. Ballots are cast, results declared, and governments sworn in. Yet for millions, democracy has not translated into tangible improvement in daily life.

Youth unemployment and underemployment remain high. Inflation continues to erode incomes. Public universities face recurrent strikes. Hospitals lack equipment. Infrastructure deficits persist. This is the absence of the democratic dividend—the concrete benefits citizens expect from governance.

Why does this happen? First, institutions remain weak or compromised. Nigeria’s electoral body, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has made technological improvements, yet elections are still marred by logistical failures, vote-buying, and litigation. The judiciary is overburdened and occasionally accused of inconsistency in politically sensitive rulings. Legislative oversight often appears timid in the face of executive dominance. Without robust institutions, democracy becomes ritualistic—periodic voting without sustained accountability.

Second, political survival depends more on loyalty than competence. Elections are frequently shaped by patronage networks, ethnic alignments, religious rhetoric, and financial inducements rather than policy debates. Once elected, leaders prioritize maintaining coalitions that keep them in power. Budget allocations may serve political calculus more than national development.

Third, meaningful alternatives remain constrained. Opposition parties are often fragmented or weakened by defections. Civil society faces regulatory and financial pressures. Independent media operate under economic strain and political intimidation. The space for transformative political competition narrows.

The result is citizen frustration. Movements such as #EndSARS in 2020 exposed widespread anger over police brutality and governance failures. More recently, #EndBadGovernance and #OccupyNASS protests have voiced economic grievances and demands for accountability. Yet protests, while powerful, rarely translate into structural reform without institutional anchoring and sustained political organization.

The consequences are severe: declining public trust, rising emigration, and growing cynicism among young people who increasingly see politics as a closed club of elites. Nigeria loses thousands of skilled professionals annually to the “Japa” wave—not merely for economic reasons, but because of a crisis of governance confidence.

Across Africa, similar patterns persist. The African Development Bank has repeatedly warned that youth unemployment poses a threat to stability. Governance failures more than resource scarcity drive this crisis.

Political Dynasties and the Power to Perpetuate Self

Another troubling trend is the normalization of political dynasties. Across Africa, leadership has, in several cases, evolved into family inheritance—from Togo’s Gnassingbé family to Congo’s Sassou-Nguesso dynasty and Angola’s Dos Santos lineage.

Nigeria, though formally democratic, is not insulated from dynastic politics. Political families dominate party structures at federal and state levels. Children of former governors, senators, and presidents frequently occupy strategic offices. Party tickets often circulate within elite networks rather than emerging through transparent internal contests.

First, political identity has become personalized rather than institutional. Parties are frequently vehicles for individual ambition, not ideological platforms. Where institutions are weak, grooming a family successor appears safer than risking independent leadership.

Second, internal party democracy is fragile. Candidate selection processes are often opaque and monetized. Delegates are courted through inducements. Meritocratic pathways are limited, discouraging competent outsiders.

Third, social deference to status and lineage seeps into political culture. Leadership becomes associated with inherited entitlement rather than earned legitimacy. The outcome is predictable: elite reproduction. Policies rarely disrupt entrenched inequality because beneficiaries of the system design the rules.

Reimagining Leadership for a New Africa

To understand the magnetic pull of public office, we must examine incentive structures. In Nigeria and elsewhere, public officials enjoy extensive immunity while in office, control over procurement and budget processes creates opportunities for rent extraction, political appointments serve as rewards for loyalty and anti-corruption enforcement is inconsistent and sometimes selective.

When governance systems fail to guarantee consequences for abuse, the rational calculation shifts. Public office becomes an investment with high returns and low risk. As long as these incentives remain intact, politics will attract those seeking wealth and protection more than those seeking service.

If public office is too attractive, how do we make it less so? How do we transform leadership from prize to responsibility? First, strengthen institutions not individuals. Electoral reforms must deepen transparency. Judicial independence must be safeguarded. Legislative oversight must become assertive rather than symbolic. Anti-corruption bodies require insulation from political interference.

Second, defend and enforce term limits. Constitutional safeguards are only as strong as citizen vigilance. Third, institutionalize internal party democracy. Parties must adopt transparent primaries and financial accountability. Fourth, empower youth and women meaningfully. Nigeria’s “Not Too Young To Run” Act was a milestone, but structural barriers—campaign finance costs, patronage networks—still limit participation while the Reserve Seats Bill for Women is pending.

Fifth, move beyond voting to continuous accountability. Citizens must track budgets, demand open procurement, use freedom-of-information mechanisms, and support investigative journalism. Accountability cannot be seasonal.

Finally, build reform coalitions. Faith leaders, professional bodies, labour unions, student groups, diaspora communities, and civil society organizations must coordinate rather than operate in silos.

Ultimately, structural reform must be accompanied by cultural change. Leadership must be redefined as stewardship, not entitlement. Public service should be honourable precisely because it is accountable.

So, is public office too attractive in Africa? Yes, because we have built systems that make it lucrative, protective, and inheritable. But this is by design. We can redesign incentives, strengthen institutions and reward integrity so that leadership becomes temporary and service permanent.

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

By Funke Egbemode

Scene: A wooden bench outside Mama Silifa’s Buka. Generator humming. Power just went off. Again. For the second time in 40 minutes.

Koko: (fanning himself with an old newspaper) Nigeria is finished. Completely finished. These politicians have eaten everything. They ate yesterday, they are eating today and now they are taking our future to Dubai.

Kaka: Calm down, prophet of doom. Leave Dubai out of this. Your politicians are taking everything everywhere , especially tax havens that cannot export them back to EFCC custody.

Koko: They carried our money there! Every time EFCC coughs, one politician is hiding in London, Dubai, or pretending to be sick in Germany.

Kaka: I do not know what your ‘aggro’ is? You seem to forget that going into public office is not like boarding a plane to sleep on the beach in Maldives. It is a lot of hard work, politicking. Yes. And don’t forget who carried the politician into office?

Koko: (pauses) You are determined not to let me enjoy my gbegiri and abula with this hot amala.

Kaka: Eating during Lent and Ramadan. You are not faithful to any faith. You are a suspect. But to answer your question, it is we the voters that voted for the politicians who are robbing us blind.

Koko: But we didn’t know they would be corrupt!

Kaka: (laughs loudly) Koko, you mean you didn’t know? The man shared rice, wrappers, and 75,000 at the rally. You called him “our generous son.” What were you expecting? Angel Gabriel?

Koko: That was empowerment!

Kaka: Empowerment? To do what? Fry akara for four years?

Koko: To you. That 5k is peanut but, at least, he remembered us before election.

Kaka: He assembled you somewhere and repeated his line from the last election but forgot you immediately after. That is what happens every time.

Small cup of rice, wrappers and you go home happy, until the next round, abi? You say politicians are corrupt. I agree. But Nigerian voters? We are saints , right?

Koko: Leave voters out of this. We are victims. Do not let me choke on this expensive amala o.

Kaka: Victims that collect money before voting?

Koko: Hunger is not a small thing, my brother.

Kaka: True but when a man starts thinking with his stomach instead of with his brain…The ?5,000 you collected—how many mudu of rice did it buy?

Koko: It is prepaid dividend of democracy.

Kaka: No, it is the politicians looting both your brain and your stomach. A few grains of rice that will last one week for the family, followed by bad governance.

Koko: We know what we are doing.

Kaka: You get ulcer, they get bouncers to keep your smelly selves from their new fortresses.

Koko: It’s just four years, their one term is effectively two years. By the third year, they are running up and down prostrating for godfathers and making sacrifices to their deities of good luck.

Kaka: Exactly. You sold four years for two weeks of enjoyment. Who does that? Someone will buy a G-Wag one year after election while you are left begging for acceptance fee for your child’s admission into the university. You see now that your head is not correct?

Koko: (hisses) So what do you want poor people to do? Refuse free money?

Kaka: It’s not free money. It’s advance payment for your silence and retrogression.

Koko: Silence about what?

Kaka: About bad roads. About no light. About no jobs. About hospitals where nurses will tell you to go and buy outside. Once you collect their money, your mouth is tied. If you complain, they remind you: “Didn’t we support you?”

Koko: But politicians steal billions! We only collect small change.

Kaka: Corruption is not measured by size. It is measured by integrity. If you can sell your vote for 75,000, and the politician can sell contracts for 75 billion, both of you are in the same family. One is junior brother, the other is senior brother.

Koko: So now I am related to thieves?

Kaka: Distant cousin.

Koko: But look at it this way. Elections are expensive. Politicians must spend money to win. So when they enter office, they recover their investment.

Kaka: Listen to yourself. You have turned corruption into business strategy. “Return on Investment Politics Ltd.”

Koko: That’s the reality! They sell their cars, houses. Elections in Nigeria is expensive.

Kaka: Reality created by who? Voters who won’t go out to vote unless paid something. When the candidate who refuses to share money loses election, what lesson are you teaching him?

Koko: That he should be more generous next time, that his ‘akagum’ strategy will only earn him the title ‘former candidate’.

Kaka: Exactly. So next time he will bring bigger rice, bigger cash, louder music. And after winning, bigger stealing.

Koko: (scratches head) Hmm. The politicians have weaponised poverty, that’s why. They made us poor so they can make us accept peanuts.

Kaka: Sharrap !. Weaponized poverty kill you there. So we must all take to crime and immorality because we don’t over enough? Since we started taking politicians vote-and-cook-soup money, are we now richer? Since voters started asking, “How much are they giving?”, has poverty left their homes?

Koko: No, the voters are still stranded and the country is on Life Support.

Koko: But politicians lie too much. They promise heaven and deliver potholes.

Kaka: The following year the voters still wear branded caps and clap for them.

Koko: Because they speak good grammar.

Kaka: Grammar has ruined this country. One candidate will say “infrastructural regeneration through holistic paradigms,” and everybody will shout, “Visionary!”

Koko: (laughing) Nigerians like big English and good music at noisy and dusty rallies.

Kaka: Instead of asking simple questions like : When will we start processing what we grow so we can generate jobs? What are the timelines? How will we fund the budget? No, everybody is dancing orisirisi dance.

Koko: These your questions are too stressful jare.

Kaka: Democracy is stressful. Corruption is comfortable.

Koko: Let me ask you. If you are contesting election and you see other candidates sharing money, will you just sit down?

Kaka: I will tell people to collect the money and still vote their conscience.

Koko: That one is advanced mathematics or even advance fee fraud.

Kaka: It’s called strategy. Take their money. It is your money anyway. But vote wisely.

Koko: And if they monitor?

Kaka: Secret ballot is secret for a reason. But the problem is not fear. The problem is that many voters genuinely prefer the highest bidder. Indeed, the trading starts long before Election Day. The political parties members themselves behave like traders.

Koko: That’s harsh. Party members are stakeholders, insiders, pillars of their parties

Kaka: Be honest, do party members trade or not? Do they buy and sell votes at party primaries or not? Do they get paid for party activities or not?

Koko: But it is still the politicians that manipulate results.

Kaka: Yes. But why is it easy? Because the same voters or party members who will agree to be party agents for small money and look away while figures are adjusted.

Koko: So everybody is chopping something?

Kaka: That’s the tragedy. Corruption in Nigeria is democratic. It goes round.

Koko: You’re sounding like you blame voters more than politicians.

Kaka: No. Politicians hold power; their sins are heavier. But voters create the environment. Think about it: when a known corrupt politician attends a wedding, what happens?

Koko: People rush

to greet him.

Kaka: They struggle to take selfies. They call him “Your Excellency,” even after EFCC invitation.

Koko: Respect is culture in our society. They are just giving honor to the Honorables.

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

By Umar Ardo, Ph.D

1. Yesterday’s (Saturday, February 21) voter turnout of 7.2 per cent in the Federal Capital Territory council elections is the lowest electoral participation recorded in Nigeria since independence. It is not merely a statistic; it is an indictment on our political class and should alarm anyone who still pretends that our democracy is functioning as intended. Democracies do not die only through coups, decrees or when ballots are stolen; they also die when citizens conclude that voting is pointless and quietly withdraw their participation. This is what we have seen yesterday in the nation’s capital!

2. This historic voter apathy in the FCT is not accidental, nor is it surprising. It is the predictable outcome of prolonged elite betrayal, institutional decay and the steady erosion of trust between the Nigerian state and its citizens. The hardship currently ravaging the country under the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has reached excruciating levels. Inflation has hollowed out incomes, food and energy prices, suffocating taxes have become punitive and basic survival has turned into a daily struggle for hundreds of millions.
3. ⁠Yet, in obscene contrast, members of the ruling elite, beginning from the president himself, governors, ministers, legislators, political appointees, to Local Government chairmen and councilors are seen living in wealth and flamboyant affluence, insulated from the pain they themselves have imposed upon society. This grotesque disparity has convinced many Nigerians that their elected government is no longer a public trust but a private racket. They are being asked to sacrifice, but those who call for these sacrifices are not seen sacrificing themselves. The electorate have naturally become despondent.
4. Section 14(2)(b) of the Constitution states that “the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government”. On both counts, the state has failed the electorate. Insecurity persists, livelihoods are destroyed and social protections are absent. Meanwhile, those elected to serve grow wealthier by the month. Such a system cannot command trust or turnout. Worse still is the open contempt for constitutionalism displayed by those entrusted to defend it. Undertaken mainly by the Presidency and the leadership of the National Assembly, unconstitutional practices have become normalized. The rule of law is treated as a nuisance rather than a restraint. Executive overreach goes unchecked. Legislative oversight has collapsed into complicity. Institutions that should protect democracy are the ones now seen destroying it.
5. This collapse of civic participation violates the spirit – if not the letter – of the 1999 Constitution. Section 14(2)(a) “declares unequivocally that sovereignty belongs to the people of Nigeria from whom government derives all its powers and authority”. When over 92 per cent of eligible voters stay away from the polls, then that sovereignty has effectively been withdrawn. Perhaps nothing illustrates this decay more clearly than the casual destruction of the ballot’s meaning. That politicians routinely abandon political parties on whose platforms they were elected, defecting without consequence or moral hesitation, is now standardized. Thus, party affiliation has been rendered meaningless, voter choice mocked and ideological accountability erased. When electoral mandates can be casually transferred like personal property without compunction, citizens are justified in asking: Why vote at all?
6. Campaign promises have become ritualistic lies. Oaths of office and allegiance are recited, then violated without shame. Insecurity persists unabated, with communities left to fend for themselves while officials issue hollow statements from fortified residences. Nigerians grow poorer by the day; their elected representatives grow astronomically wealthier. This is not governance – it is extraction!
7. Oversight failure is central. The National Assembly, constitutionally empowered to check the executive, has largely abdicated that role. Executive excess persists without consequence, violating the separation of powers that undergirds constitutional democracy. Most alarming, especially to international constitutional lawyers, is the authorization of foreign military action and basing without constitutional process. That on Christmas Day last December, the United States forces have conducted kinetic operations on Nigerian territory and lately established military bases in Maiduguri and Bauchi raise grave constitutional questions. Nigeria’s Constitution is explicit in protecting our sovereignty. It stipulates that military treaties and international agreements require legislative domestication (Section 12); the armed forces are established to defend Nigeria from external aggression and are subject to legislative regulation (Sections 217–218); executive power under Section 5 is bounded by the Constitution; and Section 1(1) proclaims constitutional supremacy. Authorizing foreign bombing or basing without National Assembly approval would be ultra vires – an affront to sovereignty and democratic control of the use of force!
8. The ruling All Progressives Congress must bear a heavy share of responsibility. Having campaigned on reform, discipline and change, it now presides over economic misery, institutional vandalism and moral exhaustion. Instead of rebuilding public confidence, the party has perfected political arrogance by openly shielding incompetence, rewarding loyalty over performance and dismissing popular suffering as collateral damage. The Presidency, for its part, appears either unwilling or unable to recognize the gravity of the moment. Democratic legitimacy does not reside in court validations alone; it rests on the consent and participation of the governed. When fewer than one in ten eligible voters bother to show up in the nation’s capital, legitimacy itself is in question.
9. The implications for 2027 are stark. Elections require belief – belief that votes matter, mandates endure and power is constrained by law. That belief is fast evaporating under the Tinubu style of leadership. Persisting on this path risks converting the 2027 general elections into procedural rituals devoid of democratic substance in which ballots are cast, results are declared, but legitimacy is absent. The danger ahead is indeed profound, in that a system sustained by apathy rather than consent cannot endure.
10. History offers a sobering lesson: when citizens disengage en masse, the vacuum is rarely filled by reformers. It is often occupied by extremism, authoritarianism or chaos. Nigeria stands at that threshold. This moment demands urgent introspection from those in power. Democracy cannot survive on propaganda, repression or elite consensus alone. It survives only when citizens believe their voice matters, their vote counts and their suffering is acknowledged.
11. The 7.2 per cent turnout in the FCT is not a failure of voters. It is a verdict on Nigeria’s political class. If that verdict continues to be ignored, the next casualty will not be an election; it will be our democracy itself.

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

By Suyi Ayodele

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu proved critics wrong last Wednesday. Those who hold the belief that the President is old, tired and physically inactive were damned when, with the speed of light, Tinubu appended his signature to the controversial Amended Electoral Bill 2026. By the stroke of his presidential pen, the strong man of the moment has shut down all protests and agitations against the controversial law.

It is not funny. The National Assembly led by the whippy Senator Godswill Akpabio passed the Bill on Tuesday, February 17, 2026. Only 12 senators voted against the Bill. The rest of the yes-men senators endorsed the Bill. In the House of Representatives, opposition lawmakers left the chamber, singing and denouncing the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) majority.

At the end of the day, our novel democracy was at play. The minority had their voice, and the majority had their way. Then came Tinubu and his speed. Less than 24 hours after our legislators threw us back to the Stone Age of ballot snatching and election results doctoring, President Tinubu said yes and gave life and blood to the Bill!

 I don’t speak Latin. I did not take any elective courses in Classics. I stumbled on the Latin phrase morituri salutamus te, during an interaction with a retired octogenarian broadcaster with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Tony Abolo. Ose (meaning an elder in Urhobo Language) Abolo is a delight any day, anytime.

I have yet to come across an avid reader like the 83-year-old journalist; he turned exactly 83 on Saturday. Ose Abolo does not read; he studies his books. That is not even totally correct! Abolo edits all his books. I take a bet that when it is time for him to transition, he may do so holding a book. I say this because while sitting at his table with his favourite Heineken beer and a small bottle of groundnuts, Abolo holds a book, a pen and he talks to you while stealing a glance at a page he has marked, underlined and made several footnotes!

I never miss any opportunity to engage him. I had that chance last Wednesday evening. A group of men were gloating over the speed with which President Bola Ahmed Tinubu signed the Amended Electoral Bill 2026 into law. The guys were happy because, according to them, Tinubu had given the opposition “another master stroke.”

Ose Abolo took his leave of the group and held my hand, drawing me aside. He asked: “Have you ever heard the Latin phrase: morituri salutamus te” I answered in the negative. He laughed and said: “It means we who are about to die salute you.” The old man tore a piece of paper, wrote the words and asked me to read more about it, adding: “You will find it funny and sad at the same time”, and looking at the direction of the discussants, he added: “They are over there; those who are about to die.”

I went in search of the phrase. Morituri salutamus te, has different variants. The one I consider most fascinating is Avē Imperātor, moritūrī tē salūtant. It means “Hail, Emperor, those who are about to die salute you.” One account of the phrase traces it to Claudius, the fourth Roman Emperor of the Julio-Claudian Dynasty, who ruled between AD 41 and AD 54. The account says that Claudius formed the habit of assembling gladiators, who are mostly condemned criminals, armed them with swords and ordered them to fight lions at the pit section of the Roman Amphitheatre.

While Emperor Claudius sits in royal attire, surrounded by his courtiers and other invited guests, the helpless gladiators are led into the pit. And before the lions are released, they raise their swords and in unison, raise their voices, saying: Avē Imperātor, moritūrī tē salūtant. Then the fight for survival against the lions will ensue. The Emperor watches from his throne in delight as those who earlier hailed him die one after the other, devoured by the hungry lions unleashed on them!

READ ALSO: Electoral Bill: The other side of clause 60(3)

Harry J. Leon of the University of Texas, USA, in a 1939 paper titled; “Morituri Te Salutamus” published in the Transactions of the American Philological Association (70: 45–50. Retrieved 2012-10-11), observed that “the salute had become widely represented and embellished in numerous works dealing with Roman antiquities, so that it has become one of the best known and most often cited of Roman customs.”

The Irish playwright and literary critic, George Bernard Shaw (July 26, 1856-November 2, 1950), popularised the ‘salute’ in his 1912 play, titled: “Androcles and the Lion”, where, just before the condemned Christians face the lions, they chorus: “Hail, Caesar! those about to die salute thee”, with the Emperor responding, “Good morrow, friends”.

The debate has been on since then. Many of Tinubu’s fans are out in merriment. Their singsong is: ‘did we not tell you that the President is a master strategist?’ I have heard many of such clichés. Thanks to Ose Abolo, who led me to study that Roman fatalistic phrase, which denotes the acceptance of defeat! Each time anyone gloats about the ‘political sagacity’ demonstrated by Tinubu in signing the Amended Electoral Bill 2026 into law, I recourse to the Latin phrase and its psychological implications.

The reality of the whole scenario is that we are all victims. And if the truth must be said, the greatest victims are those who know the truth but choose to stand with party loyalty at the expense of collective willpower to fight for that which is just and equitable. Those are the real ones who are about to die but will still hail the one sending them to their early graves.

The major argument against the real-time electronic transmission of election results is the idea of non-availability of networks in some rural areas. Another argument against the innovation is the issue of network failure in the urban centres. Nobody in his right senses will declare the two reasons as invalid. That is not even the point that many Nigerians who are in support of real-time electronic transfer of election results are putting forward.

It is very unfortunate that in the year 2026, Nigeria is still debating the issue of electronic transfer of election results. It is sadder to even note that the majority of those who tenaciously oppose the idea are those, who, in the comfort of their bedrooms,  electronically transfer millions of naira from their phones to beneficiaries across the globe! The only time these fellas remember that there could be network failure is when it comes to elections and their results.

I feel personally sad that when Nigerians should be talking about electronic voting, we are still tied down by the debate of availability of a network or network failure. I have been asking what happened to the rural telephony efforts of the various telecommunication outfits in the country. I say this because as far back as 2006, I led a team of Mobile Publicity Unit (MPU) on a Road Telemarketing Campaign (RTC), when the indigenous telecommunications company, Globacom, launched its We Live Where You Live (WLWYL), rural telephony initiative.

The entire country was divided into six. Each MPU covered six states. My team was assigned the South-East. From Igbere to Akwa Etti, from Uturu to Ohafia, we were in the villages selling the Globacom Subscriber Identity Modules, otherwise known as SIM cards. In communities where there was no network, each team wrote a report and the Roll Out Department moved in to either establish a Base Transceiver Station (BTS), or reinforce the closest BTS for optimal network coverage.

It was for this reason that the company deployed mostly 75-metre towers with seven-kilometre radius coverage. The year 2006 is some 20 years ago. Today, the fear of non-availability of networks in rural areas has denied Nigerians the opportunity of having their votes counted, transmitted and guaranteed as true reflection of their choices!

Like many of the would-be ‘beneficiaries’ of the new electoral laws are wont to argue, ‘those who don’t like the new law can go to court’, I think Nigerians and their government need to do more. If indeed, 26 years after the coming of the mobile telecommunications system, there are still some rural areas that are not covered, the regulatory agency, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), must rise up and do the needful. The various operators must be mandated to deploy their facilities in the rural areas. No Nigerian should be allowed to remain in the Stone Age. It is an aberration that communities still exist without a network as canvassed by the wise men and women in the National Assembly!

Beyond monitoring the quality of the network and the consumer-friendliness of their tariffs, telecommunications operators must be made to realise that rural telephony is not a luxury but a basic necessity of life that no Nigerian should be denied. Whatever the efforts telecommunications operators like Globacom might have made 20 years ago should be redoubled. Our politicians should not be allowed to behave like the proverbial dirty woman who finds an alibi in the death of her husband to say that she is so devastated that for three days, she could not have her bath as if it is a regular personal hygiene she engages in (Obun rí ikú oko di òrò mò; ó ní láti ojó tí oko òun ti kú, òun ò bu omi sórí).

Beyond the above, an average Nigerian knew from day one that the Akpabio-led National Assembly would pass the electoral bill. On this page on February, 10, 2026, I wrote, under the title: “The Senate coup against Nigerians”, thus: “If the Electoral Act 2020 (Repeal and R-enactment) Amended Bill 2026 passed by the Godswill Akpabio-led senate is allowed to be the guiding laws and principles for the 2027 general elections, Nigerians can kiss democracy goodbye. With the new bill as passed by the senate, everything called credibility, fairness, decency and morality, is gone and gone forever!”  Nothing has changed; not even the attempt by the Presidency to deodorise the new law as one that will make Nigerians “to see democracy flourish”, notwithstanding.

Every Nigerian is a victim of the new law, irrespective of their political affiliations. Even those sitting on the fence, who have remained largely apolitical, will have their own fair share of the pains. It is not the new law that is faulty. Everything about our electoral system is an aberration. The President appoints the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). That makes the Commission dependent on the appointing authority, which also funds it. A pliable National Assembly led by Akpabio, approves the appointment. We keep moving from one dirt to another. All INEC National Commissioners and Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) are appointed by the same President. These are the men and women who will supervise the elections.

In case of any dispute, the aggrieved parties go to the courts presided over by judges and justices appointed either by the President or the governors. We all know the controversies that had trailed the activities and judicial pronouncements of our judges and justices in the recent past. This is one of the reasons why Nigerians have lost confidence in the entire system. Again, this is the reason why those in power today are quick to ask the rest of us to ‘go to court’. They know that the courts are no longer courts!

The only hope of credibility in our electoral system is real-time electronic transmission of election results. But that, President Tinubu and his cohorts in the National Assembly have thrown over the bar, with the President asking Nigerians to “…question our broadband capability. How technically sound are we today? How technically sound will we be tomorrow in answering the call, whether in real time or not?”

While we will do as the President demanded by asking those concerned to strengthen the nation’s “broadband capability”, we shall also ask Tinubu to attend to other issues, especially insecurity, affecting Nigerians with the same speed and timeliness he attended to the new electoral law. We shall be asking the President to treat other matters with the same alacrity so that those who are about to die under the excruciating pains of the economic failures of his administration will have the strength to salute him. For now, on the new feat of signing Amended Electoral Act 2026 into law, we say:  Ave Tinubu, morituri salutamus te.

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