Nigeria’s descent into perpetual emergency exposes the bankruptcy of its political elite, who recycle declarations of reform while presiding over a hollowed-out state.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation and its supposed continental powerhouse, now staggers under the weight of yet another nationwide security emergency.
President Bola Tinubu’s declaration comes in the wake of mass kidnappings, brazen terrorist assaults and the assassination of senior military officers, symptoms of a state unravelling before the eyes of its citizens but behind the official rhetoric of “emergency” lies a deeper rot: a military stripped of dignity, soldiers underpaid, under-equipped and under-valued, forced to fight battles without the tools of victory.
This is not simply a crisis of insecurity; it is a crisis of legitimacy. A nation that cannot protect its citizens forfeits its moral authority to govern. Nigeria’s descent into perpetual emergency exposes the bankruptcy of its political elite, who recycle declarations of reform while presiding over a hollowed-out state.
The so-called giant of Africa is bleeding from within, its institutions corroded, its civic trust shattered and its sovereignty mortgaged to incompetence and corruption. What is unfolding is not the defence of a nation but the slow-motion implosion of its legitimacy, a collapse that threatens to destabilise not only Nigeria but the entire African continent.
Tinubu’s Presidency
President Tinubu’s tenure has become a theatre of contradictions, marked not by vision or reform but by failures that expose the hollowness of his leadership. Insecurity festers under his watch, with kidnappings escalating to the abduction of 25 schoolgirls in Kebbi and the killing of Brigadier General Musa Uba in Borno; events that have fuelled calls for his resignation. The irony is damning. In 2014, Tinubu demanded that Goodluck Jonathan resign over insecurity, yet today he presides over a nation where violence has metastasised and his silence reeks of hypocrisy.
While Nigeria bleeds, Tinubu’s gaze drifts abroad. His foreign trips to South Africa and Angola, staged as diplomatic triumphs, are read at home as a dereliction of duty, a leader more concerned with optics than with the urgent crises consuming his citizens.
Worse still, his controversial pardon of 175 individuals, including drug traffickers, kidnappers, and coup plotters, has shredded the credibility of the justice system, emboldened criminality and mocked the sacrifices of those who fight to uphold the rule of law.
The rot extends to governance itself. Regional favouritism in appointments and infrastructure projects has deepened resentment, triggering protests from marginalised regions and reinforcing the perception of a presidency that governs by division rather than inclusion. His mid-term boasts of economic growth collapse under scrutiny, exposed by fact-checkers as political spin designed to mask stagnation and hardship. Even his pronouncements on judicial integrity, warning that “justice must never be for sale”, ring hollow in the absence of systemic reforms, reduced to empty rhetoric in a system where justice is routinely commodified.
This is not a presidency of vision, discipline, or reform. It is a presidency obsessed with political survival, addicted to the consolidation of power and indifferent to the welfare of its citizens and soldiers. Tinubu’s Nigeria is a nation adrift, where leadership has abandoned responsibility and the ball has not merely been dropped; it has been kicked deliberately into the abyss.
The curse of emergency politics
Nigeria’s political history is littered with the wreckage of emergency declarations that masquerade as solutions but function as accelerants of dysfunction. Time and again, leaders have reached for the blunt instrument of “emergency powers” as a shortcut to legitimacy, projecting strength while masking incapacity, yet the pattern is unmistakable: these declarations suspend civil liberties, entrench military dominance and leave the structural rot of governance untouched. What emerges is not stability but a deeper crisis, citizens alienated, institutions weakened and insecurity metastasising under the veneer of martial law.
Tinubu’s declaration risks becoming another chapter in this destructive cycle. Rather than confronting the roots of Nigeria’s insecurity, corruption in the security sector, poor intelligence capacity, neglected soldier welfare and the collapse of local governance, he reaches for the same tired reflex of emergency politics. A state of emergency should be the last line of defence for civilian governments, deployed only when all other instruments of governance have failed. Instead, in Nigeria, it has become a convenient mask for failure, a political theatre that sacrifices democratic legitimacy for the illusion of control.
The lesson is brutal but clear: emergency politics is not governance, it is abdication. Until Nigerian leaders abandon this authoritarian reflex and confront the structural rot at the heart of the state, insecurity will not be resolved, it will be reproduced, recycled and reinforced under the banner of “extraordinary measures”.
In May 2013, President Jonathan declared a sweeping state of emergency in Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa states, ostensibly to confront the escalating violence of Boko Haram. His televised address promised extraordinary measures, troop deployments, suspension of civil liberties and the assertion of federal authority, yet the declaration revealed more about the bankruptcy of Nigeria’s crisis management than about its resolve.
The temporary surge in military presence did little to stem the insurgency; instead, it unleashed a wave of human rights abuses, extrajudicial killings and mass detentions that alienated the very citizens the state claimed to protect. Jonathan’s emergency powers became indistinguishable from martial law, eroding trust between the people and the government. The lesson is stark: declarations of emergency without addressing root causes, soldier welfare, intelligence capacity and systemic governance failures do not resolve instability; they deepen it, institutionalising repression while leaving insecurity intact.
Nearly a decade earlier, in May 2004, President Olusegun Obasanjo declared a state of emergency in Plateau State after communal violence spiralled into mass killings.
His intervention was dramatic: Governor Joshua Dariye was sacked, the legislature dissolved, and retired General Chris Ali was installed as interim administrator. Obasanjo justified this as necessary to halt what he described as “near mutual genocide.” Yet beneath the rhetoric lay a dangerous precedent, the sidelining of democratic institutions in favour of military-style administration.
What was framed as decisive action was an authoritarian reflex that blurred the line between civilian governance and martial law. The impact was corrosive: it entrenched the perception that Nigerian leaders default to coercion when confronted with crises, weakening democratic culture and reinforcing the fragility of constitutional rule. Both Jonathan’s and Obasanjo’s emergencies reveal a consistent pathology in Nigerian governance: crises are met not with structural reform or institutional strengthening but with authoritarian shortcuts that sacrifice legitimacy for the illusion of control.
Emergency powers become political theatre, projecting strength while masking incapacity. The result is predictable: citizens lose trust, institutions lose credibility and instability becomes self-perpetuating.
Sovereignty in question
Nigeria’s urban centres are collapsing under the weight of insecurity yet the state clings stubbornly to hollow rhetoric, mistaking speeches for governance and slogans for strategy. The contrast with East Africa is damning. Rwanda, however securitised, has imposed a disciplined urban order that, whether one admires or fears it, delivers stability.
Kenya and Uganda, despite their own democratic and institutional flaws, have not permitted their militaries to rot into underpaid, demoralised, and directionless units. Nigeria’s descent, therefore, is not destiny; it is the consequence of deliberate neglect, of a political class that has chosen patronage over planning, corruption over competence and survival over sovereignty.
What we witness is not an inevitable African tragedy but a uniquely Nigerian betrayal: a state that abdicates its responsibility to secure its cities, protect its citizens and maintain the dignity of its armed forces. Sovereignty here is not defended; it is squandered, traded away in the marketplace of dysfunction, leaving Nigeria exposed as a nation that has surrendered stability for the convenience of elite self-preservation.
The real problem
Nigeria’s crisis is not simply insecurity; it is the rot of governance itself, a decay so profound that the state has become complicit in its own collapse. Under Tinubu’s stewardship, conditions have not merely deteriorated; they have been deliberately sacrificed at the altar of political expediency. Soldiers, the very backbone of national defence, have been abandoned to poverty wages, inadequate equipment and chronic underfunding. Their welfare has been traded for patronage politics, leaving the armed forces demoralised, underpaid, and vulnerable to corruption. This is not mismanagement; it is sabotage by neglect, a calculated choice to prioritise elite survival over institutional strength.
The consequences are predictable and devastating: fertile ground for anarchy, insurrection, and the erosion of discipline within the ranks. A military stripped of dignity cannot defend sovereignty; a government consumed by the politics of survival cannot secure its citizens. Tinubu’s presidency has not kept its eyes on the ball; it has been hijacked by the obsession with entrenchment and consolidation of power. What masquerades as leadership is in fact a cynical project of self-preservation, where governance is reduced to a bargaining chip and national security is collateral damage. Nigeria’s greatest threat is not the insurgents with a gun but the government that has abandoned its duty to govern. Until leadership confronts this rot, insecurity will remain not an external menace but an internal inevitability.
The youth and the culture of resignation
Nigeria’s tragedy is not only the rot of its leadership but the complacency of its youth, a generation that has too often accepted dysfunction as normal and surrendered outrage for survival. This passivity compounds the arrogance of a ruling class addicted to power, a political elite that clings to office with the desperation of drowning men clutching driftwood. Across Africa, resignation in the face of failure is treated as weakness, when in truth it should be the highest demonstration of integrity. Presidents who preside over collapse rarely step aside; they entrench themselves, weaponise patronage and mistake stubbornness for strength. Honourable discharge must become part of our political culture, not as surrender but as a declaration that leadership is service, not ownership. Leaders who fail must step down, not cling to office at all costs, because clinging to power amid failure is not resilience; it is parasitism. Until resignation is normalised as a mark of dignity rather than disgrace, Africa will remain trapped in a cycle where incompetence is rewarded with tenure and failure is perpetuated as tradition.
A continental crisis of leadership
Africa’s fundamental problem is not simply insecurity; it is the rot of governance, a crisis of leadership that has stalked the continent since the dawn of independence in Ghana in 1957 and metastasised across its countries and cities. For decades, leaders have substituted rhetoric for responsibility, patronage for policy and survival for service. The result is a destructive pattern where institutions are hollowed out, accountability is evaded and power is clung to as private property rather than exercised as public trust. This pathology has produced states that are perpetually reactive, incapable of long-term planning and addicted to short-term bargains that enrich elites while impoverishing citizens.
The cycle must end. Africa cannot progress while leadership remains a theatre of dysfunction, where resignation is treated as weakness, corruption as inevitability, and incompetence as tradition. What is required is nothing less than a cultural revolution in leadership accountability, a shift that makes integrity, transparency, and responsibility the norm rather than the exception. Without this transformation, insecurity will remain the symptom, governance rot the disease, and progress an illusion. Africa’s future hinges not on resources or rhetoric but on whether its leaders can finally abandon the destructive habits of the past and embrace accountability as the foundation of sovereignty and development.
Nigeria’s promise must be realised
Nigeria stands as Africa’s most populous nation, endowed with vast oil reserves, immense human capital and a Diaspora whose remittances sustain economies across the continent, yet this potential has been squandered, leaving the so-called “giant of Africa” staggering on the feet of clay. The tragedy is not in Nigeria’s lack of resources but in its failure to translate abundance into power, prosperity and progress. A nation with such demographic weight and economic leverage should be shaping continental destiny, not perpetually negotiating its own survival. The promise of Nigeria cannot remain deferred, postponed to another decade, another administration, another excuse. It must be seized now, urgently, unapologetically and with the discipline of a state that understands its role as the engine of Africa’s transformation. Anything less is betrayal: betrayal of its citizens, betrayal of its Diaspora and betrayal of the continent that looks to Nigeria for leadership. The time for rhetoric has expired; the time for realisation is immediate.
The path forward
Africa will never chart a progressive future unless it confronts, with ruthless honesty, the crisis of leadership that has disfigured its politics for decades. The continent’s malaise is not accidental; it is the product of leaders who mistake power for entitlement and governance for patronage. Nigeria’s current emergency is not merely about insecurity; it is the naked failure of governance, the collapse of responsibility at the highest levels of the state. Sovereignty, in this context, is reduced to a hollow slogan, invoked in speeches but absent in practice.
The path forward demands a cultural revolution in accountability. Leaders who fail must resign in honour, not cling to office like parasites feeding on the carcass of the state. Youth must abandon complacency and demand accountability with the urgency of a generation that refuses to inherit dysfunction as destiny. The continent itself must break free from its destructive cycle of authoritarian reflexes, short-term bargains and institutional decay. Without this rupture, Africa will remain trapped in a theatre of chaos, rich in rhetoric, poor in results and condemned to watch sovereignty erode into irrelevance.