By Bukar Mohammed
Sometimes, you look around and ask: How did we get here?
Nigeria—the so-called Giant of Africa—has become a place where anything goes, and nothing shocks us anymore. Outrage has been replaced with resignation. Even the most troubling events barely stir national conversation. We’ve been conditioned to expect the worst… and accept it in silence.
Take, for instance, the recent political upheaval: a sitting governor removed, not by the people, not through constitutional processes, but by someone with no clear legal mandate to do so. Just like that. No protests. No debates. No collective outrage. In fact, some applauded—because they saw it as a win for their side.
But this isn’t about one governor. It’s about the soul of our democracy.
If we accept that an elected leader can be removed without due process, what’s to stop it from happening again? What happens when it’s a president next? Or a senator? Or your own vote that’s nullified—your own voice silenced?
This is how democracy dies in Nigeria: not with tanks or decrees, but with silence. With indifference. With citizens who shrug and say, “It’s not my business.”
Let’s not be fooled. Power in Nigeria rotates. Today it’s happening to someone you don’t care about. Tomorrow, it could be the North. Next, it might be the South. One day, a governor in Lagos could be removed without due process. Will the silence continue then?
We must understand this: antecedents matter. Dangerous precedents don’t fade—they fester. They spread. And eventually, they arrive at your doorstep. Injustice doesn’t care about geography or party loyalty. It thrives wherever people cheer its arrival, forgetting that it never leaves the way it came.
That’s the frightening truth.
We are witnessing the slow erosion of our democracy—not through coups, but through quiet, subtle dismantling. Through normalization of the abnormal. Through dangerous indifference.
So I ask again: How much longer can we keep looking away?
If we don’t speak up now, if we don’t challenge these creeping threats, one day we’ll wake up to find that our democracy is gone. And we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves.
Because when a president is one day removed without due process and the country does nothing, just remember:
It started with a governor.
And we said nothing.
