Nigeria's Opposition Wounds Democracy More Than the Government, Analyst Claims

Democracy's essence lies not in the ballot box but in the free contest of ideas, where power can be questioned and challenged, according to Marindoti Oludare. He argues that Nigeria's opposition, by failing to effectively challenge the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), is inflicting greater damage on the nation's democracy than the government itself. The author posits that a robust opposition is the institutional embodiment of the people's right to dissent, serving as a crucial check on those in power.

Drawing on political philosophy, Oludare invokes John Locke's concept of government resting on the consent of the governed and Montesquieu's emphasis on the separation of powers. He asserts that when the opposition is hollow, fractured, or self-absorbed, the governed's consent can devolve into submission, as the incumbent knows they cannot be replaced. While acknowledging the APC's "offences" in power, Oludare frames them as predictable behavior for an unchecked authority. The "deeper sickness," he contends, is an opposition too weak to provide the necessary antibody of accountability.

This past week, events in Ondo State served as a stark illustration of this failure, the author writes. Oludare describes how party members and politicians campaigned for votes in primaries. When incumbents, perceived as unresponsive amid the country's harshest economic period in a generation, were voted out, the opposition's response was notably absent. This inaction, in Oludare's view, represents the "open dismantling" of the mechanism of consent, a critical function the opposition failed to fulfill.