When Power Cuts Corners: Tinubu, Elite Impunity, and Nigeria’s Democratic Dilemma
By Babayola M. Toungo
Nigeria’s democratic experience is not merely an institutional transition from military rule to civilian governance, but an ongoing ideological struggle over the very meaning of democracy itself. The façade of electoral politics often conceals a deeper contest – is democracy in Nigeria an emancipatory project that subordinates power to the will of the people, or a sophisticated mechanism for perpetuating elite dominance under the guise of popular sovereignty? The administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has brought this ideological tension into sharp relief, not through abstract debate, but through controversies that have exposed the persistent structures of impunity and the limits of Nigeria’s democratic imagination.
The controversy surrounding President Tinubu’s academic credentials is not simply a matter of personal biography or legal technicalities; it is emblematic of a broader ideological crisis. In a truly democratic society, legitimacy is anchored in the public’s right to truth and transparency. When the political elite shield themselves from scrutiny and accountability, democracy is hollowed out, reduced to a stage-managed process that recycles power among a privileged few. The persistent ambiguity, evasions, and resistance to independent verification of Tinubu’s credentials signal a refusal to submit elite power to the same standards imposed on ordinary citizens. This is not a new phenomenon. The Babangida era institutionalized opacity as a political strategy, elevating ambiguity to the status of statecraft and treating the truth as a negotiable commodity.
The allegations that legislative texts and budgetary laws have been altered before receiving presidential assent point to a deeper ideological continuity with Nigeria’s authoritarian past. The presidency’s dismissal of these claims as mere errors belies the underlying issue – the survival of a governing logic in which law is not a constraint on power, but a flexible tool to serve executive convenience. Under military rule, decrees replaced democratic deliberation; laws were rewritten at will, and public consent was rendered irrelevant. Today, the worry is not about tanks in the streets, but about the civilian presidency reproducing the same authoritarian logic – transforming the National Assembly into a ceremonial body while sovereignty subtly migrates to the executive branch. The ideological heart of democracy is the subordination of rulers to rules; when laws become provisional and procedures negotiable, democracy is emptied of its radical promise.
Budgetary processes, in theory, are among the clearest expressions of democratic will—collective priorities negotiated in the open, codified in law, and implemented for the public good. Yet, in practice, Nigeria’s appropriation laws too often remain aspirational, with projects stalling and funds unreleased. The gap between legislative assent and executive implementation is not just bureaucratic inefficiency – it is an ideological injury that transforms law into theater and democracy into performance. The civilian era was supposed to mark an ideological break from these practices, but the persistence of elite impunity raises the question: has democracy changed the substance of power, or merely its language?
Contemporary fiscal policies – subsidy removal, increased taxation, rising public debt – are justified in the name of economic reform. Yet, the lived reality for most Nigerians is deepening hardship, with little evidence of improved services or transparent allocation of sacrifices. This recalls the era of structural adjustment, when technocratic rationales for austerity masked the reality of elite insulation from pain. The ideological debate is clear – is economic reform a process of democratic empowerment, or a mechanism for elite extraction? Radical democratic theory insists that genuine reform must be anchored in popular control and accountability, not imposed from above in ways that perpetuate inequality and silence dissent.
The cumulative effect of these controversies is an ideological pattern that transcends individual administrations. The negotiability of truth, the flexibility of procedure, and the instrumentalisation of law represent a governing culture that survived colonialism, flourished under military rule, and adapted itself to civilian democracy. Elections may have changed the rhetoric, but the substance of power – the insulation of the elite from meaningful accountability – remains largely intact. Nigeria’s democratic crises are rarely dramatic; instead, they involve the slow erosion of legitimacy through normalized impunity and the withdrawal of public faith. When citizens see the powerful as unbound by rules, cynicism becomes rational, and participation loses purpose. This is how democratic systems decay ideologically, not through coups, but through the hardening of authority and the dissolution of legitimacy.
President Tinubu’s administration stands at a pivotal ideological juncture. It can break with Nigeria’s long tradition of elite impunity by embracing radical transparency, submitting executive power to genuine oversight, and treating law as inviolable. Or it can reproduce the familiar logic that democracy serves to legitimize pre-existing power structures. The ideological lesson of Nigeria’s history is that democratic institutions alone do not guarantee popular sovereignty; only a deep transformation in the relationship between rulers and ruled – a commitment to truth, accountability, and radical equality – can fulfill the promise of democracy. The future depends on whether Nigeria’s leaders and citizens are willing to confront and transcend the ideological patterns that have long undermined the nation’s democratic aspirations.
