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Democracy does not always die with the explosion of gunfire or the drama of tanks entering public squares. More often, it is quietly undermined – by rulings, memos, selective interpretations, procedural maneuvers, manipulations, and institutions that begin to forget the moral purpose of their powers.
This is why the current crisis surrounding the African Democratic Congress (ADC) is so alarming and sinister.
On 31 March 2026, the Independent National Electoral Commission announced that it would cease to recognize the David Mark-led ADC and the Rafiu Bala faction of the ADC after reviewing an order from the Court of Appeal.
On April 3, INEC president Joash Amupitan defended the move as an act of obedience to the court’s directive to maintain the status quo ante bellum. Yet whatever the legal formulation, the political effect was unmistakable: an opposition platform that had suddenly become nationally important was brought to paralysis.
The implications of this politically engineered crisis are immediate and far-reaching. By ceasing to recognize the leadership of the ADC and Rafiu Bala’s faction, refusing to accept their correspondence, and suspending monitoring of party meetings, congresses and conventions, INEC has created the conditions for operational paralysis at the very moment when political organizing for 2027 is expected to deepen. A prolonged leadership vacuum of this kind can undermine crucial decisions, complicate congressional and primary elections, and weaken the party’s ability to mount a credible national challenge. As the ADC has become the most visible rallying platform for major opposition figures, any uncertainty over its legal and organizational status threatens to fracture the broader coalition around it, making defections, confusion, and parallel structures more likely.
Even more damaging is the broader institutional message that the crisis sends. Once a significant opposition platform is seen to be immobilized by administrative interpretation and political manipulation rather than defeated in open competition, public trust in the neutrality of the electoral process begins to erode.
This is already evident in the ADC’s scathing response, including its accusation that INEC’s handling of the matter makes a credible election dubious, while INEC itself insists it is merely complying with the court’s directive.
If this stalemate continues, the danger is not only that one party could be weakened, but that the legitimacy of the 2027 election itself could be called into question long before polling day. A credible democracy depends not only on votes, but on citizens’ belief that parties are free to organize, compete and offer real alternatives.
The danger lies not only in the action itself, but in what it signals. In July 2025, the main opposition leaders presented a coalition on the platform of the ADC and openly declared their aim to prevent Nigeria from sliding into one-party rule.
This became evident when it became clear that the PDP was on a path of induced self-destruction. Around the same time, the APC formally backed President Bola Tinubu for a second term in 2027, even as government defections and a fragmented opposition were strengthening the ruling party.
Tinubu has publicly denied any plans to turn Nigeria into a one-party state, and that denial should be taken into account. But democracies are not judged only on the basis of presidential declarations. They are judged on whether institutions create or limit conditions for fair competition. When the opposition’s most visible vehicle is immobilized at a decisive political moment, suspicion becomes inevitable.
This is why the expression “attempt to eliminate democracy” is not an exaggeration. Democracy can be canceled without being formally abolished. A party does not need to be deregistered to be disabled. If its leadership is left in limbo, if its correspondence is no longer received, if its meetings go unrecognized, and if its primaries are put in the shadows before the election season has fully matured, then a viable democratic alternative is dwindling before citizens even reach the polls.
Pluralism remains, but the substance begins to crumble. This is the real threat of bureaucratic strangulation: it leaves the vocabulary of democracy intact while silently draining democracy of competition, uncertainty and hope.
Historical examples abound.
The Roman Republic did not collapse in one spectacular moment. The normalization of the use of force against rivals first poisoned it. After the civil war, Lucius Cornelius Sulla marched on Rome, was appointed dictator without the traditional term limit, and began the Proscriptions, a reign of terror in which hundreds of his enemies were killed without trial and their property seized. What was presented as the restoration of order became the institutionalization of fear.
Once a republic begins to treat the opposition not as a competitor to be defeated in elections but as an enemy to be eliminated, it begins to write its own elegy. The lesson of Rome is lasting. When power stops tolerating rivalry, it may gain temporary control, but it loses the habits that make republican life possible.
Modern history offers its cautionary examples. In Venezuela, Hugo Chávez did not initially abolish electoral politics; instead, his movement gradually came to dominate the dominant institutions of the state. Chávez and his coalition came to control the National Assembly, the Supreme Court, the Department of Justice, and the National Electoral Council, while opponents had little legal recourse and were often subject to state-sponsored harassment. Elections were still taking place, but the field was no longer truly level. The lesson is not that Nigeria is Venezuela. The fact is that once a decision-making formation gains too much influence over the referee, the courts and the arena, the opposition ceases to be an equal participant and becomes a tolerated inconvenience.
Hungary under Viktor Orbán shows the same model in a different register. Since taking power in 2010, Fidesz has promoted constitutional and legal changes that have allowed it to consolidate control over Hungary’s independent institutions. Elections continued, parliaments met, and formal democratic procedures survived; yet the balance of the system constantly tipped towards the incumbent. The broader point is sobering: Democratic decline in the twenty-first century rarely comes while wearing a military uniform. It comes in the form of legal amendments, administrative leverage, partisan institutional takeover, and a slow re-engineering of the playing field. By the time the public realizes how steep the terrain has become, the slope is already difficult to reverse. Once again, the pattern is familiar: what is done in the name of law, order or anti-corruption can, in practice, work to restrict political choice. When the state repeatedly subjects its strongest rivals to disabling pressure, the public does not see procedural hygiene; sees the fear of competition.
Nigeria is not Rome, Venezuela or Hungary. But this is precisely why sobriety is necessary now. Democracies do not become illiberal in one leap; they slip into it through tolerated excesses and rationalized exaggerations.
Every generation likes to believe that democratic collapse will announce itself unequivocally. History suggests otherwise. Decline often comes in installments. It is tolerated because each step can be defended as technical, temporary or legal. But when these steps all move in one direction – against competition, against dissent, against viable alternatives – the cumulative effect becomes unmistakable. This is why perception matters so profoundly in democratic politics. Once citizens conclude that institutions are no longer impartial arbiters but instruments of political advantage, legitimacy begins to corrode from within.
At the heart of this crisis is a truth that governments often underestimate: democracy’s greatest gift is the preservation of alternatives. The knowledge that power can be challenged, that those in power can be defeated, and that another path remains open is what keeps democratic societies psychologically stable. When people begin to suspect that all credible alternatives will be blocked, boxed in, fragmented, or administratively limited before elections even take place, disillusionment turns into something more combustible. Citizens can bear hardship more easily than they can bear despair. They can survive unpopular reforms better than they can survive the feeling that no meaningful electoral remedy remains. A country can still hold elections under such conditions, but the moral energy of democracy begins to fade.
This is why government must be smarter than power. If the ruling party honestly believed in its own achievements, it should welcome strong competition and not take advantage of its administrative weakening. If he is confident that his reforms, policies and management will convince Nigerians, then he has no reason to fear coherent opposition. Victory achieved after the field has been narrowed may satisfy legal formalities, but diminishes moral legitimacy. A true democrat does not seek applause in an empty room. Seek revenge in a crowded competition. The moment power begins to prefer the management of alternatives to the persuasion of citizens, it begins to confuse domination with legitimacy.
The burden, therefore, falls on every democratic actor. INEC must recognize that in a fragile climate procedural neutrality is not enough; it must also act in a way that visibly preserves competitive equity. The judiciary must resolve the substantive dispute with urgency and clarity because delayed justice in electoral matters can turn into a disguised deprivation of civil rights. Political leaders, including those in power, must understand that stifling alternatives can yield short-term tactical advantage while sowing long-term resentment against the democratic order itself. And citizens must remain vigilant, because the health of democracy depends not only on constitutions and commissions, but on a public culture that refuses to normalize the reduction of choices.
The road to 2027 is therefore about much more than the next presidential election. The question is whether Nigeria will remain recognizably committed to competitive democracy or slide into a hollowed-out system in which the forms survive while the spirit is stifled.
The ADC crisis may yet be resolved. The courts could restore clarity. Institutions can find their balance again. But the alarm has already been raised.
Democracies aren’t just overthrown; they are also administratively modified, downsized, and diminished until citizens wake up and discover that what remains is no longer exactly what they thought they had.
If Nigeria fails to heed this warning, 2027 may yet produce a winner, but the nation may lose something far greater: public confidence that power can still be contested fairly, openly and fearlessly.
*Dakuku Peterside is the author of Leading in a Storm and Beneath the Surface.
