By Richard Ikiebe

Some politicians depend on massive turnout to win, while others thrive when citizens are too afraid to leave their homes to vote. The recent stream of videos from Benin City, of attacks on politicians and the vandalism of a party state secretariat, reprises a familiar script in Nigeria’s fear-based politics.

They are harrowing reminders that this second logic is still an active strategy.

In political theory, “politics of fear” refers to the deliberate production and amplification of fear to secure power, shape opinion and justify the measures. In a landscape already saturated by insecurity and weak institutions, violence against segments of the electorate and opposition figures is a cheap and effective way to intimidate, exhaust and demobilise the opposition.

The goal is not to win the argument before the people. It scares enough people off the path to the polling booth so that a small group of loyalists remains. Those forced to abdicate their civic role reconsider and say, “Politics no concern me.” Thus, indifference becomes the first layer.

The next layer is cautious observation. This involves citizens who still watch, talk, and complain. They “sidon look,” attentive but disengaged. They have not entirely abandoned the system they no longer believe in; fear hardens their posture into resignation.

Stories of past electoral violence, thuggery at polling units, ballot snatching, and clashes with security forces add to the mix. Stay away begins to appear quite reasonable and justifiable: nothing will change, they will rig it anyway, and you might get hurt trying. At that point, “sidon look” turns fear and private cynicism into self-preservation and public silence.

Political fear is largely manufactured, crafted and transmitted through headlines, rumour and threats. Around every election, gruesome violence stories multiply about “unknown gunmen,” and neighbourhoods that had been “taught a lesson.” The discreet advice: today is not the day to move around.

With thugs and “area boys” at polling centres, masked security officers with uncertain loyalties, every citizen walking towards the polling unit is forced to ask themselves: is my single vote worth this risk? And the absence of credible protection reinforces the feeling. For many, even the determined, the answer is no. The result is low, skewed turnout, a quiet victory for the architects of fear.

In Nigeria’s patron-client landscape, fear largely travels through intermediaries. Traditional rulers, market leaders, transport union bosses and community gatekeepers sit between political elites and ordinary citizens, wielding mostly economic authority. In a healthy democracy, they would mobilise people to participate freely and defend their rights.

In our reality, these intermediaries “advise” citizens on which candidates must win to “deliver” results, and which parties must not gain a foothold in the community. The pressure for them ranges from loss of access to removal from office, or worse – physical harm. Under such conditions, their instructions become menacing signals not to come out at all. Bloc voting and mass apathy are the unlikely twins, the result of organised fear.

Fear-based politics has a simple electoral logic. High turnout creates uncertainty and genuine possibilities for change; low, selective turnout protects those already in control. When urban youth, minorities, or disillusioned swing voters decide it is safer to stay home, the electorate is filtered.

Those who remain are loyalists, dependants in patronage networks, or people mobilised by local intermediaries who can guarantee safety in return for forced obedience. In that narrower Nigeria, a winner need not be broadly popular. Fear has already structured the electorate in their favour.

As the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) releases the timetable for next year’s elections, fear-based politics risks hardening into the system’s default setting. Voters betrayed or endangered in 2015 and 2023 are already inclined to withdraw. Every election cycle that rewards intimidation and demobilisation tells politicians, this works, do more of it.

If this continues, elections will rest on the consent of a shrinking, skewed slice of the population, and state legitimacy will continue to erode steadily. Over time, a culture of learned helplessness takes root; the people assume that “they” will always rig elections, and the alternative begins to feel impossible. And democracy is devoid of popular choice.

Breaking this cycle requires justified outrage and a deliberate effort to change both the emotional climate of elections and the structures that make fear politically profitable. First, physical risks must be visibly reduced. Election security cannot be an afterthought or a mere show of force; it must credibly guarantee that voters can come and go unharmed, and that perpetrators and sponsors of violence face real consequences.

Second, intermediaries must be protected. Traditional rulers, religious leaders, and market associations will stay influential, while law and public scrutiny must limit how their authority is coerced or weaponised.

Third, fear narrative must shift through counterstrokes of courage, solidarity and efficacy. Civic and political education must speak directly to fear and “sidon look,” helping citizens recognise demobilisation tactics and see abstention as a costly choice, and not neutral self-protection.

If fear remains a most reliable political instrument, each election will become another expression of a paper-thin democracy that evaporates at the polling unit. The challenge is to move from rule by fear to rule by consent, from a politics defined by who stays away to one genuinely shaped by who dares to show up.

Dr Richard Ikiebe is a Media and Management Consultant and Teacher.

By Deji Olatoye

In late 2025, an unusual consensus on the need for decentralised policing emerged. Driven by the twin pressures of rampant internal violence and a damaging US designation of Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern,” functionaries from President Bola Tinubu to the Governors’ Forums of both the southern and northern states all agreed to it, employing the familiar language of “state police.

” Yet beneath this elite consensus, public scepticism remains audible.

Many are asking, almost rhetorically, “won’t governors simply turn state police into enforcers of thirty-six political fiefdoms?” Such doubts, while understandable, risk obscuring a basic truth: the current system has severely underserved citizens, a failure rooted in a fundamental design flaw that now demands correction.

Yet, this public caution is our most valuable asset. It compels us to see that the goal is not decentralisation for its own sake, but the creation of a functional system. At the heart of the current dysfunction lies a flawed constitutional framework.

Section 11(2) of the 1999 constitution empowers the Houses of Assembly of the states to make laws for the maintenance and securing of public safety and public order in their respective states, similar to the powers of the National Assembly with respect to the federation in Section 11(1). Yet, item 45 of the Exclusive Legislative List in the same constitution reserves policing exclusively to the Federal Government. In fact, securing supplies and services – essentially personnel and materiel – for the actualisation of the powers under Section 11(2) has to be specifically designated by the National Assembly.

This contradiction puts a lie to the popular designation of governors as the chief security officers of their states. It creates a security architecture in which two critical gears grind at odds. The emerging consensus hears the noise. The task is to reengineer the machine carefully.

For years, Nigerians accepted this flawed design as a necessary, if clumsy, compromise for national unity – a post-civil-war necessity. But the evidence of failure is now overwhelming. The 2023 World Internal Security & Police Index ranks Nigeria 124th out of 125 countries. The lived experience of citizens confirms the statistic.

Between 2020 and 2024, the North-West accounted for 59.6 per cent of all kidnappings (driven by banditry), while the North-Central suffered 72.3 per cent of farmer-herder conflict fatalities (Nextier’s Nigeria Violent Conflicts Database, 2025).

The South-East grapples with syndicated kidnapping and secessionist violence, the South-South with cultism and oil theft, while the South-West contends with diverse crimes. One distant, centralised gear cannot mesh with or resolve these fundamentally divergent local crises.

This grinding contradiction has now produced a grey zone of legality to which states respond either through desperate innovation or brazen exploitation, creating outfits of widely varying legitimacy and effectiveness. Regulated experiments exist – Lagos State Neighbourhood Safety Corps and Security Trust Fund – but so do problematic mandates, such as Hisbah in Kano, which at times cram down on constitutionally guaranteed rights.

From the Civilian Joint Task Force in the North-East to Amotekun in the South-West and Ebube Agu in the South-East, the country has become a patchwork of ad-hoc arrangements. The same contradiction sets the pretext for the opaque “security votes.”

In 2025 alone twenty-one states allocated ₦133 billion through this mechanism, with no standardised audit linking expenditure to tangible security outcomes. Formally decentralising policing powers offer an opportunity to close current loopholes by bringing the assorted initiatives under a common, minimum standards.

The fact is that Nigeria stands out of step with the guiding principle for the efficient design of policing structures globally: subsidiarity, by which the policing authority should reside at the lowest effective level of government. Federal systems like the United States and Switzerland constitutionally reserve general policing to their states and cantons.

Unitary states like the UK devolve via legislation to municipalities under the supervision of locally elected officials, while Spain cedes it to autonomous regions. India’s hybrid structure blends state control with a national officers corps. Each nation has engineered a mechanism that suits its peculiarities.

South Africa offers a cautionary tale. On the face of it, a federal system that operates a single police structure, yet the country has merely taken a different tack to subsidiarity – significant privatisation of policing services. A 2025 estimate puts the private security industry, the world’s largest, at 600,000 officers – far outnumbering public police and the military combined.

An Apartheid-era legacy, the historical separation of population groups and deep economic inequality make it possible to apportion police auspices to corporations and gated communities that are able to outsource security to private providers.

However, this has merely produced tiered security outcomes: 60 per cent of whites are able to access private protection, compared with only 5 per cent of blacks, in a 2003–2017 survey. The result is the third worst security outcomes globally on the WISPI index. This speaks to the occasional call – typically by well-heeled Nigerians – for the broader legalisation of firearms. Nigeria’s model must prioritise equity and broad access, not elite privilege.

The emerging elite consensus must evolve into a solution focused on a distinctly Nigerian design. Decentralisation invites thoughtful consideration of the opportunities. Aligning responsibility with authority allows us to reengineer the disjointed elements which, borrowing from the engine metaphor, include operational gearing, fiscal fuel lines, and accountability gauges.

What if we reimagine policing through cooperative federalism? By tailoring our subsidiarity, we could assign general policing powers to subnationals – perhaps states or regions – via constitutional amendment or legislative devolution.

Operational gearing would clearly delineate federal and subnational functions while establishing nationwide minimum standards. Fiscal fuel lines must be rerouted transparently, closing the current spending leakages through accountable channels and realigning revenue distribution to match new responsibilities. Most critically, accountability gauges – tiered independent oversight bodies, community review panels, national regulatory standards – must be embedded from the beginning, not bolted on as an afterthought.

The elite consensus has, at last, acknowledged the terrible grinding noise. The lesson of public scepticism is that opening up the bad engine no longer requires courage, as much as it does wisdom. As the National Assembly deliberates the path forward, we must painstakingly consider the operational, fiscal and accountability factors of a decentralised police against Nigeria’s peculiarities. This we propose to do, at some depth, in the next three articles.

Deji Olatoye is a partner at The Lodt Law Offices, Lagos.

By David Ugwunta

At the National Traditional and Religious Leaders Summit on Health held in Abuja on 17th February, attended by President Tinubu, an unexpected institutional fault line surfaced as an Enugu monarch and the Ooni of Ife openly disputed the existence of the Southern Nigeria Traditional Rulers Council.

Speaking at the health summit, the revered Eze Ogbunaechendo 1 of Ezema Olo in Ezeagu Local Government Area of Enugu State, a former Chairman of the Enugu State and South-East Council of Traditional Rulers, seasoned diplomat, and elder statesman, challenged references to a Southern Nigeria Traditional Rulers Council.

He stated: “Now again, they were talking about the Southern Traditional Rulers Committee on Health, and the eminent Professor Pate was saying that this will be an annual event – what we are doing today – if I heard him correctly.

” “The truth of the matter is that there is nothing like a Southern Traditional Rulers Council. If you come here and give money to people on that basis, it is not correct.” “The South is not the North. We have our systems. We need unity in diversity.” “So, if you want to deal with us, deal with us in the South East.” “If you have resources for us, give it to us. Don’t give it to people who come and say they represent a traditional rulers’ council.” “Democracy is a representative government, and anybody who goes to present himself without his people is not democratic or traditional. So, get it right.”

The interposition was not casual, it was categorical, yet it stands in sharp contrast to what occurred barely eighteen months earlier, when on 30th July 2024, the inauguration of Southern Monarchs’ Council occurred. The event hosted by Governor Hope Uzodinma, was presided over by President Tinubu, represented by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, George Akume, as monarchs and political dignitaries gathered under the banner of southern regional cohesion.

Months later, a harder question emerged: Does the Council exist beyond ceremony? It was inaugurated with political and symbolic weight; does it exist institutionally? Public inauguration grants visibility; collective consent grants legitimacy.

The dissent exposes the Council’s core vulnerability. When a former South-East Council Chairman declares that “there is nothing like a Southern Traditional Rulers Council,” the matter shifts from organisational to existential.

Membership is very optional, Ooni professed. If membership is optional, can unity or regional cohesion, by definition, be optional?

Southern Traditional Rulers Council

The inauguration in July, 2024 saw the respected Ooni of Ife, Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi, appointed as chairman, with Cletus Ilomuanya and Jaja of Opobo as co-chairmen, and Benjamin Ikenchuku Keagboreku as secretary. The intent was unmistakable: To create a coordinated Southern platform comparable, though not identical, to the more centralised structures historically associated with Northern traditional leadership.

During the inauguration, Governor Uzodinma explicitly urged collaboration with northern counterparts, and support for President Tinubu, while George Akume reaffirmed the president’s respect for traditional rulers as custodians of Nigeria’s heritage. The Ooni of Ife, Ogunwusi framed it as a new era of unity across the Southern protectorate of the country.

Yet, at inauguration, while some southern governors were represented, the absence of several others raised quiet questions about the breadth of consensus underpinning the initiative. Absences could be linked to limited consultation, concerns over the council’s inclusivity, and sub-regional balance. Similarly, the absence of notable traditional rulers reflected reservations about process, political perceptions, and representation.

Institutions are sustained by consent and validated by acceptance. What appeared, in July 2024, as a historic consolidation was, in February 2026, openly contested. The public rejection by an elder statesman, Igwe Ambassador LOC Agubuzu, whose career reflects a rare fusion of ancestral authority and modern diplomacy, did not merely contradict a claim. It punctured the presumption of collective mandate, shifting the issue from symbolism to structure.

The Import of Agubuzu’s Interposition

Igwe Agubuzu’s remarks deserve serious engagement, not dismissal. When he warned against individuals presenting themselves as representatives of Southern traditional rulers without broad consent, he was not merely contesting nomenclature. He was defending legitimacy; emphasising that the South is not the North, that its strength lies in diversity, and that democracy, whether traditional or modern, rests on representation grounded in the people.

These are not trivial concerns. They echo long-standing anxieties about the centralisation of traditional institutions and sub-regional dominance. They reflect a historical wariness of imposed structures masquerading as consensus.

Yet, diversity without coordination does not automatically produce strength. When respected monarchs deny the existence of a Council inaugurated by the President of the Republic before him, the issue is not opposition, but rather, structural ambiguity. Such a council cannot function in a state of suspended definition.

Why Optional Membership Undermines the Council

First, authority cannot be selective. A council that some of the most prominent traditional rulers feel free to ignore will never command national, let alone international respect, particularly in a political environment where access and voice matter.

Second, legitimacy requires completeness. Governments engage more seriously with institutions that demonstrably represent the full spectrum of leadership. Optional membership creates parallel voices, rival claims, and confusion over representation.

Third, conflict resolution demands comprehensiveness. Traditional rulers remain critical actors in mediating identity tensions. A partial council lacks the moral authority to intervene across sub-regions.

Fourth, cultural preservation is collective work. No single monarch or bloc can safeguard Southern Nigeria’s diverse traditions alone. A coordinated platform prevents selective recognition and marginalisation.

Finally, legacy matters. Institutions endure only when they are cohesive. A voluntary council risks becoming ceremonial, useful for optics, politics and symbolism; but fragile in substance and importance.

Politics, Acknowledged, But Not Determinative

It would be naïve to ignore the political undertones surrounding the Council’s formation. Governor Hope Uzodinma played a central role in the inauguration, signalling alignment with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the ruling All Progressives Congress. The presence of Dapo Abiodun, chairman of the Southern Nigeria Governors’ Forum, and Mai Mala Buni, underscored the inauguration event’s political weight. However, institutions of consequence must outlive political moments.

If the Southern Traditional Rulers Council is perceived primarily as a political artefact, it will wither with shifting alignments. If, however, it evolves into a rule-bound, inclusive, and representative institution, it can transcend its origins.

The burden now rests with the appointed chairman, the Ooni of Ife. His role is both symbolic and strategic. The surrounding contestation demands engagement, not assumption; persuasion, not proclamation. Direct dialogue with dissenting voices is essential. So is a formal charter defining representation, decision-making, membership obligations, rotational leadership, sub-regional balance, and structured joint programmes.

The Southern Nigeria Traditional Rulers Council was inaugurated with promise. However, promise does not create unity. Structure does. The public denial of its existence by a respected monarch is not merely opposition; it is a warning about the cost of optional unity. Legitimacy cannot be assumed. It must be earned through inclusivity, clarity, and shared commitment.

If Southern Nigeria is to speak with authority in Nigeria’s evolving governance architecture, its most revered institutions (traditional) must be binding as well as symbolic, representative as well as ceremonial. Unity cannot be optional. It must be institutional.

David Okelue Ugwunta, a public policy and economic planning specialist, is a senior adviser with Thoughts & Mace Advisory.