Democracy, it has often been said, is not merely the counting of ballots or the periodic swearing-in of leaders. It is the solemn covenant between the governed and those entrusted with power; a fragile bond that must be shielded from expediency, defended in moments of crisis, and respected even when the winds of politics blow violently against it. For once the sanctity of the people’s mandate is tampered with under the guise of emergency, the very foundation of liberty begins to crumble, and the people’s voice becomes an echo drowned by executive decree.
In my this week column I want to examine the political earthquake that shook Rivers State with the imposition and eventual lifting of emergency rule, and what it reveals about Nigeria’s federalism, democracy, and the perennial temptation of power to sacrifice principle at the altar of convenience.
On March 18, 2025, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu announced that Rivers State would be placed under emergency rule. For six months, one of Nigeria’s most strategic regions, oil-rich, politically turbulent, and economically indispensable, was stripped of its elected leadership and handed over to a retired naval officer, Vice Admiral Ibok-Ete Ibas, as sole administrator. Governor Siminalayi Fubara, his deputy, and the state legislature were suspended as though they were minor irritations to be brushed aside. Tinubu justified this extraordinary move by citing political paralysis, insecurity, and sabotage of oil facilities. But the real cost of his action was not in barrels of oil or lost revenues. It was in the dignity of democracy itself.
The Nigerian Constitution is not ambiguous. Section 305 empowers the President to declare a state of emergency when public safety is threatened, but nowhere does it license the wholesale suspension of elected authority. Section 188 provides a clear path for removing a governor through impeachment, not presidential proclamation. By nullifying both the executive and legislature of Rivers State, Tinubu did not merely stretch constitutional language, he tore out its spirit. Even though the National Assembly endorsed his proclamation, legislative applause cannot sanctify constitutional breach. Democracy is not defended by silencing the very officials chosen by the people; it is desecrated.
We have walked this troubling path before. In 2004, President Olusegun Obasanjo imposed emergency rule in Plateau State, though the legislature remained intact. In 2006, Ekiti endured a similar fate. But the Rivers precedent went further, as both the executive and legislature were erased in one sweep. It was not a constitutional cure, it was a political coup dressed up in the garments of legality.
The echoes are global. Indira Gandhi in 1975 invoked emergency powers in India, jailing opponents and extinguishing civil liberties for two dark years. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, after the 2016 coup attempt, transformed emergency powers into instruments of authoritarian permanence. Even in the United States, the Patriot Act passed after 9/11 became a lightning rod for its erosion of civil liberties under the banner of national security. The lesson is universal. Once leaders discover that emergencies can be weaponized to override democratic institutions, the temptation lingers and the line between necessity and abuse fades. Tinubu’s intervention in Rivers must be read in that global register of democratic fragility.
Crucially, the people themselves were not deceived. A survey by the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development found that nearly seven in ten residents of Rivers opposed the emergency rule. Market women lamented dwindling patronage, traders complained of suffocating taxation, oil companies spoke of shaken investor confidence, and labour unions muttered threats of strikes. The administrator ruled, but the citizens endured. Democracy is not measured by the efficiency of order but by the legitimacy of consent, and in Rivers, consent was suspended.
Tinubu’s defenders argue that Rivers was ungovernable, that the governor and assembly were locked in bitter combat, the state budget stalled, and security concerns rising. But democracies are built precisely to manage conflict through lawful mechanisms such as negotiation, judicial resolution, and, if necessary, impeachment. To bypass these mechanisms is to declare that the democratic system itself is inadequate and that only the President’s fiat can preserve order. That logic is perilous. If tolerated in Rivers, it may tomorrow be applied in any state that displeases the centre. Today Port Harcourt, tomorrow Kano, Enugu, or Kaduna.
The consequences are wider than Rivers. As Nigeria prepares for the 2027 elections, the memory of this episode will shadow the campaign. Opposition parties will wield it as proof that Tinubu is willing to subvert democracy when convenient. Investors, already wary, will see in it evidence of institutional weakness in Africa’s largest democracy. And internationally, Nigeria’s moral authority to condemn military juntas in Mali, Niger, or Burkina Faso is fatally compromised. What credibility does Abuja retain when it suspends civilian rule within its own borders by executive decree?
Here lies the deepest tragedy. Tinubu could have chosen a higher path. He could have summoned a national dialogue to mediate Rivers’ crisis, encouraged judicial intervention, or pressured the feuding factions toward reconciliation. He could have been remembered as the president who, faced with chaos, insisted on the supremacy of the Constitution. Instead, he reached instinctively for the blunt instrument of emergency, a reflex that belongs not to a democrat but to a strongman.
The lifting of the emergency on September 17 does not erase the wound. Rivers remains scarred, its institutions weakened, its citizens distrustful. But the greater scar is on Nigeria’s federalism itself. For what we call a federation increasingly resembles a unitary state masquerading under federal attire. States appear autonomous only until Abuja deems them otherwise. And when the sanctity of elections can be undone by presidential ink, democracy is reduced to ritual.
The lesson of Rivers must be heeded. Nigeria cannot afford to normalize emergency rule as a political solution. Democracy requires patience, adherence to due process, and respect for the limits of power. Emergencies should be rare exceptions, not convenient tools. For once the ballot becomes negotiable, the Constitution malleable, and state sovereignty disposable, the republic slides silently toward authoritarianism.
In Rivers, politics became war and democracy became collateral damage. The question that must haunt Nigeria is stark: if the cure for political crisis is the suspension of the people’s will, then what manner of democracy do we practice, and how long before the covenant itself collapses?
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