When the referee freezes the game, by Dakuku Peterside

Democracy rarely dies in one dramatic moment. It is more often weakened quietly by technical rulings, administrative decisions, and institutions that begin to forget why their powers exist in the first place. That is why the imbroglio between the African Democratic Congress and the Independent National Electoral Commission deserves to worry every Nigerian, regardless of party. INEC’s decision to stop accepting correspondence from both David Mark’s led ADC and the opposing faction and justifying that move as compliance with a Court of Appeal order is arbitrary and punitive. But politics is judged not only by formal explanation; it is judged by real-world effect. And the effect here is unmistakable: an opposition platform that had become central to the 2027 conversation has been thrust into paralysis. 

That is what makes this moment dangerous. In July 2025, leading opposition figures unveiled a coalition on the ADC platform, presenting it as a vehicle to challenge the ruling APC in 2027 and, in David Mark’s words, to stop Nigeria from drifting toward a one-party state. This became apparent when it was clear that the PDP was on a path of self-induced destruction. At the same time, the APC had already endorsed President Bola Tinubu for a second term, while opposition defections to APC, especially that of the governors, were strengthening the ruling party. The president has publicly denied any desire for a one-party state, and fairness requires that this denial be acknowledged. But democratic anxiety does not arise only from speeches; it arises from patterns. Once the strongest visible opposition vehicle becomes entangled in institutional limbo, suspicion naturally grows. 

The deeper issue is not whether one faction or another has the better internal claim. It is whether the country’s democratic space can be narrowed through administrative interpretation. Nigeria’s Constitution protects freedom of association, including political association, while the Electoral Act 2026 requires parties to give notice of conventions, congresses, and candidate-selection meetings and empowers INEC to keep records of party activities. Those provisions exist to preserve competition, order, and transparency. They were not designed to create a vacuum around a viable opposition force at the most politically sensitive moment. A democracy may survive fierce party quarrels; what it cannot survive indefinitely is the perception that the umpire’s actions consistently leave one side unable to breathe. 

This is where history becomes instructive. The Roman Republic did not collapse because one man simply announced its end. It decayed when rivalry stopped being managed through republican contest and began to be settled by force and elimination. After civil war, Sulla entered Rome, became dictator, and launched the proscriptions, a reign of terror in which hundreds of enemies were killed without trial and their property seized. What was defended as the restoration of order instead normalised political erasure. Once a republic begins to treat opposition not as a competitor to be defeated but as a problem to be extinguished, it starts sawing through the very beams that hold up constitutional life. Rome’s lesson is not ancient trivia. It is a warning that when power becomes intolerant of rivalry, institutional decline usually follows. 

Modern democracies offer the same warning in a more polished form. In Hungary, Freedom House says Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz used constitutional and legal changes to consolidate control over independent institutions while preserving the outward form of elections. These examples matter because they show how democratic backsliding now works. It no longer always arrives with soldiers in the streets. It often arrives clothed in legality, administrative discretion, and state institutions acting in ways that steadily tilt the field. By the time citizens realise the contest is no longer fair, the machinery of imbalance is already entrenched. 

Nigeria is not yet Rome, or Hungary. But that is precisely why wisdom is required now. Democracies are not only destroyed by coups; they are also hollowed out by tolerated overreach. A party does not need to be formally deregistered to be disabled. If its leadership is left in limbo, if its correspondence is no longer recognised, if its congresses are clouded, and if its preparations for a major election are slowed by institutional ambiguity, then the electorate’s range of meaningful choice is already being reduced. That is the true implication of the ADC–INEC imbroglio. It is not just a quarrel over party paperwork. It is a test of whether Nigerians will still have a political system in which alternatives are allowed to organise, mature, and compete credibly. 

One of democracy’s greatest gifts is the assurance of alternative. Citizens can endure hardship more easily than they can endure hopelessness. They can survive unpopular policies better than they can survive the suspicion that no real electoral remedy remains open to them. Once people begin to feel that all viable alternatives will be boxed in, fractured, or procedurally strangled before they can reach the ballot, public frustration deepens into alienation. Elections may still be held in such an atmosphere, but legitimacy begins to rot before the first vote is cast. That is why this moment calls for caution from INEC, restraint from those in power, urgency from the courts, and vigilance from citizens. 

The road to 2027 is therefore about more than who wins the next presidential election. It is about whether Nigeria will remain a genuinely competitive democracy or slide into a system where the forms survive while the substance is steadily thinned out. If institutions appear to freeze the game before the whistle, the eventual winner may claim victory, but the republic itself will suffer a deeper loss. A democracy without credible alternatives is not strong. It is simply afraid.

•Dakuku Peterside is the author of two best-selling books, Leading in a Storm and Beneath the Surface. 

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