The strongest men fear a storm that starts with a whisper. It is in this whisper that history often finds its loudest echoes, subtle warnings of approaching tempests that the arrogant and complacent ignore. Nigeria stands at such a crossroads, its democratic balance teetering dangerously toward a one-party state. And if you listen closely, the winds are already shifting.
For all the praise showered on President Bola Tinubu as a political strategist, what we are witnessing is not brilliance in democratic statecraft but the crude efficiency of an old playbook: machine politics recycled from a past where loyalty was bought, not earned, where governance took a backseat to the consolidation of power. In the United States, machine politics thrived in cities like Chicago and New York, producing political bosses whose influence stretched into every bureaucratic crevice. But over time, it collapsed under its own weight. Machine politics is a sandcastle built too close to the tide of democratic awakening. It withers in the face of performance-based governance and collapses when civil institutions begin to breathe. My first proposition is that elite loyalty is transactional, not ideological, which has always shaped Nigeria’s opposition’s fate.
This is where elite theory must enter the room. It posits that real power is always concentrated in the hands of a few, regardless of democratic trappings. The troubling reality in Nigeria today is that this elite class, across party lines, has coalesced not around ideology, not even around competence, but around self-preservation. The opposition cannot bite because too many governors have full mouths. President Tinubu is betting on elite inertia and transactional politics to silence resistance. But history has a lesson for him: the storm always starts small. Even in elite circles, the moment one of their own becomes a threat, the knives come out. President Tinubu would do well to remember: the palace that cheers you today may host your downfall tomorrow.
Let us also be honest with ourselves. No political party in Nigeria can play the role of opposition unless the sitting President allows it, constitutionally and politically. The only President who allowed genuine opposition to breathe was Goodluck Jonathan. Under his watch, opposition parties grew bold not because they were structurally superior, but because Jonathan himself declined to weaponise the institutions of the state against them. His predecessor, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, was cut short by illness, but his early signals, like congratulating opposition parties when they won, suggested a democratic spirit. And yet, under Obasanjo, opposition leaders were invited into the State House not for dialogue but for co-optation. AD’s Ahmed Abdulkadir and APP’s Mahmud Waziri were made Special Advisers. Sound familiar?
This is why we must reject the shallow idea that the Labour Party, with one governor, or even the PDP with 13 governors, has failed simply because they have not overthrown the APC’s media machine. The failure is deeper. It is institutional, ideological, and compounded by sabotage from within. If PDP were serious, it would use its 13 state governments as performance laboratories to outshine the APC and rebuild national credibility. But when one of your governors is serving in the cabinet of your opponent, and another is flirting with defection, what opposition structure are you building? When you cannot even keep your governors ideologically aligned, how do you expect voters to believe you are ready to lead again?
We must separate politicians from institutions to understand how a healthy opposition survives. A democracy cannot depend on the integrity of individuals alone. Institutions matter.
Yet, many of these institutions are no longer immune. The media, once a civic guard dog, now often wags its tail for political bones. Civil society, weakened by fatigue and funding cuts, rarely roars like it did during Occupy Nigeria.
The judiciary, too, has handed down rulings that make the average citizen wonder if justice still wears a blindfold. For instance, the same Supreme Court that ruled a governor cannot spend without appropriation looked the other way as a sole administrator spent without legislative approval in Rivers. This betrays not just legal inconsistency but a troubling pattern of selective enforcement.
Equally troubling is the erosion of party ideology. The idea of an ideologically grounded party system has been traded for auctioned nomination forms and godfather endorsements. This degradation leads to a painful truth: politicians and their parties are too beholden to power ambitions to be the heartbeat of any true opposition.
Indeed, party loyalty is too often a hollow chant. Politicians will defect to any party that can facilitate their aspirations. Buhari in 2007 ran for president with Chief Edwin Ume-Ezeoke, the All Nigeria Peoples Party chairman, as his running mate. That election was flawed, and Buhari went to court to challenge it.
But here is where it gets worse. Ume-Ezeoke dissociated his party from Buhari’s petition. He held a press conference and directed all party structures not to support the legal challenge. Soon after, ANPP chieftains began negotiating appointments under Yar’Adua.
That is how Governor Adamu Aliero became FCT Minister under Yar’Adua, just as Wike is now under President Tinubu. And in a final twist of irony, Chinemerem Ume-Ezeoke, the party chairman’s son, became special adviser on civil society relations to the PDP President.
All of these moments point to the same conclusion. They reveal not just elite betrayal, but how easily state power erodes party loyalty in the absence of institutional resistance.
Let us consider the prisoner’s dilemma, a foundational concept in game theory. When parties in a pact act in their self-interest without trust or coordination, they end up worse off. The President’s quiet coercion of opposition governors to defect may seem clever today, but in doing so, he is revealing his endgame too early. Those crafting a coalition can now identify their weakest flanks. In political warfare, there is no greater gift than watching your opponent show his hand before the table is even set. The same President who condemned military coups abroad is now presiding over a civilian dictatorship at home, strong-arming opposition states and engineering defections with the quiet ruthlessness of a military council in plain clothes.
Still, the most damning charge must be laid at the feet of the PDP governors. They have become spectators in their demise.
What kind of opposition turns up at a ruling party’s event and claps for policies that worsen the lives of their citizens? That is not loyalty to the people, it is complicity in their suffering.
Former Governor Okowa, who once positioned himself as a statesman, has now decamped to the ruling party, abandoning any pretence of principled opposition. His uninspiring successor has followed the same path, not with conviction, but with calculation. It is surrender dressed up as pragmatism.
Meanwhile, Governor Umo Eno of Akwa Ibom appears next in line to jump ship, seduced, perhaps, by the glamour of federal attention and political convenience. It is one thing to lose an election. That can happen to any party. But it is another thing entirely to lose your soul. What we are watching is not just a party in decline. It is the slow death of a political platform, brought about not because the people rejected it, but because its stewards surrendered without a fight.
And then there is Nyesom Wike, the man who would rather burn his party down than allow it to breathe without him. His vendetta has turned into a wrecking ball, smashing the PDP’s institutional structure to pieces from the inside. He now plays the role of court jester in a government he once opposed, gleefully undoing the machinery that made him. A one-man demolition crew dressed in an agbada. This is not party loyalty but feudalism, godfatherism masquerading as strategy, a political culture where personalities crush institutions.
Party institutionalism teaches us that strong parties are built not just on charismatic figures but on ideology, internal discipline, and continuity. Nigeria’s opposition lacks all three. Contrast this with how the APC, as a coalition of strange bedfellows, managed to project unity long enough to seize power. Today, it is fractured internally. But without a viable, coordinated opposition, even a divided ruling party can stagger forward.
And while the Labour Party has emerged as a symbolic counterweight, it remains structurally weak. One governor, a splintered leadership, and no ideological cohesion. It may have the moral high ground, but it lacks the machinery to capitalise on it. If it is only the governor who chooses silence, what else is left?
In all of this, we must remember that good opposition is not a guarantee of good governance, nor is bad opposition proof of unfitness to govern. The APC was a noisy opposition under Jonathan, but its governance record has been catastrophic. Meanwhile, the PDP’s 13 governors offer a mixed bag, but it is these performances that should form the basis of political judgment, not the silence of their party’s national executives.
Statecraft is not the same as power hoarding. The former requires legitimacy, trust, and results. The latter survives only on control. President Tinubu may feel secure now, but this sense of invincibility is fleeting. Power built on coercion, opportunism, and elite complicity always looks stable until it suddenly is not. The whispers are growing louder. No serious investor trusts a government where laws are bent for politics. Eroded institutions not only fail justice; they fail markets, they fail jobs, and they fail the economy.
So, who should be the opposition? Not just parties. The media, civil society, public intellectuals, and the people themselves must become the watchdogs. They must ask: Are we safer, freer, better fed? Are our children in school? Are our hospitals working? If not, then the illusion of control should fool no one.
From Obasanjo to Wike, from Ume-Ezeoke to Aliero, et al., Nigerian history shows one clear pattern: those who betray democratic ideals for access lose relevance the moment power shifts. The tragedy is not just theirs, it is ours, because institutions take longer to rebuild than egos take to inflate.
The strongest men fear a storm that starts with a whisper. And in Nigeria, the whisper is no longer faint. It is rising, gathering speed, wrapping itself around campuses, streets, marketplaces, and even among the disillusioned ranks of the elite. If the ruling class will not hear it, they may soon be forced to feel it.
Let us not forget: a graveyard of principles may look quiet, but it is filled with ghosts that never rest.
Charles Anjorin is a political scientist, commentator, and strategist
