-Bulus Y. Atsen, fsi
In the 1980s, the late Claude Ake, a renowned political scientist, lamented that the Nigerian people had been rendered politically passive by the culture of “supplicatory docility”—a condition where the masses, battered by colonial subjugation and postcolonial betrayal, knelt before their rulers rather than demand accountability. In Ake’s view, this docility was not the absence of political consciousness, but a conditioned silence born of fear, futility and survival.
Today, four decades later, we are witnessing a dramatic shift in that posture. The Nigerian people are standing again—angry, defiant and unafraid. They are speaking not through parties, parliaments or policy papers, but through digital voices and messianic figures who claim no institutional loyalty. This is not mere resistance; it is the death cry of public trust and the emergence of a new political theology, one that elevates messianic dissenters above decrepit state institutions.
The Collapse of Trust
Nigeria’s institutions have suffered a long and painful decline. The pillars of democracy, the Executive, Legislature and Judiciary are perceived by the public to stand as monuments to elite self-interest.
Lawmaking is reduced to a self-serving ritual. Courtrooms are manufacturers of conflicting judgments. The Executive, across all levels, seems bent on extracting value from a withering population. Elections—once thought to be the sacred rituals of democratic renewal—have degenerated into transactional contests lubricated by personal and corporate greed.
This is not new. It echoes to a time in our colonial past when warrant chiefs supplanted traditional rulers, and indirect rule corrupted communal governance. The Colonial State ruled through coercion and compromise, and post-independence Nigeria inherited that legacy.
Just as colonial authorities demanded obedience without legitimacy, today’s political class demands loyalty without service. The people, long betrayed by both foreign and local rulers, have turned their gaze elsewhere.
The Old Messiahs: Conscience and Culture as Resistance
In times past, when institutions failed, the Nigerian conscience found expression in the voices of lone dissenters—men and women who refused to bow to power.
In 1928, the Warrant Chiefs, through the Native Revenue (Amendment) Ordinance of 1928, sought to impose tax assessments and administrative controls alien to local traditions, extending direct taxation to women among other things. The law sparked the mass protest in 1929, now known as the Aba Women’s Riot, where the people protested the arbitrary use and abuse of power. The people resisted then, just as they are resisting now.
Chief Gani Fawehinmi, the “People’s Lawyer,” spent his life in courts and prisons fighting for rights and reason. In 1989, Fawehinmi single-handedly sued the Federal Government over the arbitrary banning of the Newswatch Magazine under Decree No. 4, a repressive media law that unconstitutionally tried to stifle press freedom. Will today’s Judiciary stand with the people when the elite unconstitutionally try to stifle social media?
Fela Aníkúlápó Kuti, Premier of Kalakuta Republic, sang truth to power. He was not deterred when his home was raided by soldiers in 1977 for criticising the military government in his album “Zombie,”. During the raid, soldiers threw Mrs. Ransome-Kuti, Fela’s mother, out of a window. Fela did not relent.
These men and women did not wait for the people to choose them; they chose the people. Their resistance was steeped in ideology, sacrifice and cultural symbolism.
Professor Chidi Odinkalu follows in this tradition—an intellectual par excellence whose eloquence is matched only by his unyielding commitment to human dignity. His dissent is rooted in law and history, not hysteria. In other polities, such personalities would be called upon to lead institutions; in Nigeria, they stand apart, precisely because those institutions are broken.
The New Messiahs: Viral Voices in a Virtual Republic
Today, the world is a global village. A new breed of social critics has emerged—not from the Ivory Towers or Bar Association, but from the new town square: Social Media. These critics use Instagram, X (Twitter) and YouTube to channel public rage at a disconnected elite through raw and unfiltered expressions. The new messiah is exemplified in the form of VeryDarkMan (VDM), a polarising figure with an enigmatic past who speaks for a youth demographic that has never known a functional Nigeria.
These new messiahs are not polished; they are not ideologues. But they are trusted—because they speak the language of pain and impatience. They do not merely criticise the government, they embody protest. In them, the poor find a voice, the betrayed find vengeance and the disillusioned find something to believe in.
In precolonial Nigeria, griots, town criers, and masquerades performed the role of social critics through songs, satire and symbols. In today’s digital age, memes have replaced masquerades and tweets have replaced town criers. But the message remains the same: the king is naked, and the people are watching.
Why the State Fears Them
Messianic dissenters rise where institutions fail— they thrive because institutions have failed. They expose the myth of state legitimacy. Where they cannot be co-opted by contracts or silenced by patronage, the State meets them with coercion. Like Fawehinmi and Fela, VDM and Sowore have been arrested, humiliated and vilified. But these methods no longer deter—they embolden.
Nigeria’s political elite, schooled in suppression, have yet to learn that dissent in the digital age multiplies under pressure. A viral post cannot be suffocated with a teargas canister. A hashtag is harder to arrest than a protester. The state’s old tools no longer work.
From Docility to Defiance
Claude Ake warned us that docility was not eternal. And now, across Nigeria’s social terrain—from the campuses to the ghettos—the docile are rising. They are armed not with guns but with cameras, satire, solidarity and hashtags. They are impatient with incrementalism. They do not ask for reform; they demand revolution.
Whether this movement will mature into structured change or spiral into chaos depends on the trajectory the government proceeds. The age of supplicatory docility is over. The messiahs have risen—not from churches or palaces, but from timelines and trenches.
They can only be quietened by good governance and empirical development, not by statistics.
The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.
