The ADC has started well. It defied INEC and held its national convention. But it needs more guts.
It is fighting a carnivorous ruling party that has turned public institutions into servile instruments of power. The opposition must therefore be ready to dare the courts, which now appear betrothed to the whims of a capricious presidency.
If the opposition coalition embraces dovishness and slavish adherence to stage-managed law instead of defiance, the country will slip into a one-party state. The president has corralled nearly all the governors into one party. Federal legislators have become happy lackeys in the emerging feudalism. Noble men now wear hats emblazoned with the president’s emblem and sing his anthem of allegiance with teenage enthusiasm. The country already looks like a zombie colony. The opposition cannot afford to be tame.
Defiance is necessary when institutions are captured. Some argue that pure, open-ended defiance—refusing to partake in sham electoral and judicial processes in the name of rule of law—carries its own poison, that when both sides abandon the referee the field descends into brawl, not contest. But what if the referee is openly partisan , playing for one side? Should he still always be respected? Yes, the strongest check on executive overreach remains relentless, coordinated pressure inside the system: airtight legal challenges, unified candidate selection, and public messaging that ties hunger and insecurity directly to governance failure. Yet this opposition cannot be a docile pony. It must keep that fighting spirit or watch the country slide into a one-party reality dressed up in democratic clothing.
The opposition cannot expect a level playing field from Tinubu’s wily men. The administration has adopted Wike’s Rivers politics manual. This will be a dirty contest. The maddening difficulty the coalition faced in securing a convention venue was only the tip of the iceberg. It cannot scale the many judicial hurdles and booby-traps without showing a capacity for madness. The opposition must be fleet-footed, resilient and rugged. It’s crucial time.
A government that yanked an elected governor off his seat for political convenience, arranged parliament to rubber-stamp the act through a dubious voice vote while the courts feigned laziness, can do anything.
Tinubu has already announced that he had a rough time coming to power but, having arrived and seized control of the process, the next election is a foregone conclusion. It sounded like a joke. It was not. It was a message to law enforcement and INEC: the president expects nothing short of a smooth ride, regardless of what the electorate feels. He intends to translate incumbency into an insurmountable advantage. Only the naïve will underestimate his words and body language. The opposition coalition must stand and resist the ongoing and imminent abuses of process and institutions.
The president says he is not a calabash. He cannot be one. The only other Nigerian leader who had the audacity to seek the unification of all political diversity under his feet was Abacha. This president is not just a tough nut. Surrounded by Wike, Akpabio and more than thirty governors, and willing to wield state power predatorily against opponents, he must be regarded as a sit-tight dictator in the making. Tinubu knows the streets are tormented by hunger and insecurity. His best chance is to render the opposition impotent and present the people with a fait accompli—the Paul Biya method. Given the incestuous relationship between the executive and the judiciary, the opposition must expect absurd judicial pronouncements procured by the masterminds of its liquidation. It must expect arrests, prosecutions and persecution. The only way to curb such nuisance is masterful proactivity: anticipate every problem, leave no loose ends, dare the system when it churns out brazen rogue decisions, and refuse to bow.
In the end, if the government is determined to stage a walk-over, the opposition should not lend it credibility by participating in sham electoral and judicial processes in the name of rule of law and democracy. A total boycott is a veritable democratic tool too.
The unity of the executive, judiciary, INEC and law enforcement is stark and dangerous. When all these arms move in lockstep, the opposition faces a rigged pitch. But it is not only warped laws and knavish judgments; the omissions are equally perfidious. After Sunday Igboho, a Yoruba militant, openly threatened to slaughter opposition supporters in the South-West, nothing happened. The failure of law enforcement and INEC to act against Tinubu’s men who threaten mayhem has emboldened the thugs and dampened the electorate’s enthusiasm. It is part of the script. The opposition should expect more intimidation and must devise a strategy to weaponise these threats so they boomerang. Tinubu does not have the monopoly of mad dogs. He has nationalised the Rivers template, hoping the country will succumb like Rivers State. But he is unlikely to want chaos, especially in the politically flammable North. The opposition must therefore ensure every threat by Igboho and others reverberates as a threat to national unity. Every region has its own mad men. It is not in Tinubu’s interest for trouble-makers elsewhere—particularly in the North—to adopt the Igboho tactic.
Daring Tinubu is good strategy. Anticipating and countering his every guile will help. But the opposition must also woo the public with new ideas. It must incite the imagination of a people tired of politicians. First, it must find cohesion by choosing the most electable and capable candidate to lead the coalition. That will be a daunting task. Factional egos have historically torpedoed Nigerian opposition alliances. So, in whatever it does, the opposition must remember that preventing the nation’s slide into a one-party state is of utmost significance.
The party must stand for truth and justice on all issues. Winning will only be a bonus because the most important national service the opposition can render now is to present itself as an electable alternative and hold Tinubu accountable.
The opposition is not a house of saints. Nigeria need some saints in opposition, but more importantly, it needs survivors who will refuse to be domesticated. The nation needs a moral rebirth, but without political freedom that dream is far-fetched. Purity is good, but if the opposition cowers, if it fiddles, if it bickers and wrangles internally, the country will fall over the cliff into the dark valley of a one-party state.
The country is watching whether the opposition will match its rhetoric with vision, astute planning and the capacity for madness. History will judge not just Tinubu’s power grab and greed, but whether the opposition had the guts, unity and imagination to stop it.