President Bola Tinubu’s Democracy Day address was an exercise in a peculiar form of political optimism: the sort that flourishes most luxuriantly when reality is at its bleakest. One almost admired its audacity.
The address read more like a dispatch from a parallel republic, blissfully detached from the grim realities of the nation he governs. To praise twenty-seven years of unbroken civilian rule is a fine thing for history books, but it offers cold comfort to citizens who cannot afford bread. Nigeria is currently caught in a vice of worsening socio-economic misery and pervasive insecurity, making the president’s lofty rhetoric feel not just out of touch, but deeply offensive.
As schoolchildren languish in captivity, as retired generals die in the custody of bandits, as churches and mosques organize national prayers against insecurity, and as vast swathes of rural Nigeria remain subject to the whims of terrorists, kidnappers and armed gangs, the President invited Nigerians to celebrate “the enduring Nigerian spirit” and contemplate a nation moving “from uncertainty to stability”. The most striking failure of empathy in the address is the lecture directed at Nigeria’s youth. Tinubu urges them to “build here, code here, work here, and vote here,” scolding those who leave as “abandoning ship.” This is a rich demand from a political elite whose own children are routinely educated and housed abroad. Young Nigerians are not leaving out of a lack of patriotism. They are fleeing a system that actively stifles their talent, devalues their labor, and threatens their physical safety. To expect the youth to stay and fix a broken ship while the captains lounge in luxury is not leadership; it is rank hypocrisy that stinks to the high Heavens.
Democracy Day is, of course, a suitable occasion for reflection. The heroes of June 12 deserve remembrance. The struggle against military dictatorship remains one of the noblest chapters in Nigeria’s modern history. Yet the purpose of democracy is not merely to remember freedom; it is to exercise it. Citizens cannot meaningfully enjoy liberty when they are afraid to travel roads, cultivate farms, attend schools, or sleep in their homes. The President himself inadvertently acknowledged this contradiction when he declared that “democracy without security is a mirage.” Quite so. Democratic institutions are empty shells if they cannot provide basic human security. While Tinubu extols the virtues of resolving disagreements in courtrooms rather than through violence, millions of Nigerians face a different kind of daily violence. Wild inflation and a collapsing currency have made feeding a family an act of daily heroism. Bandits, kidnappers, and insurgent groups operate with terrifying freedom across vast swathes of the country. The state’s primary duty is to protect its people and their livelihoods. In this duty, the current administration is failing. Celebrating the “ballot” when the state cannot secure the “bourse” or the “boma” is a luxury only the ruling class can afford.
The difficulty is that this statement functions less as a defense of his administration than as its most devastating indictment. For if democracy without security is indeed a mirage, then millions of Nigerians are currently inhabiting precisely such a mirage. The President’s solution was familiar: statistics. Thirteen thousand terrorists neutralized. Terror-related deaths down. Thousands recruited into the police and military. Trillions allocated to defense. Governments facing difficult questions often retreat into arithmetic. Numbers possess an attractive quality. They cannot be interrupted. They do not ask follow-up questions. They create the impression of progress without the inconvenience of proving it. Yet Nigerians are not experiencing security through spreadsheets. They experience it through the inability to move freely across their own country. They experience it through ransom payments. They experience it through abandoned villages. They experience it through children kidnapped from schools. They experience it through the extraordinary fact that a retired Major General; a man who once stood near the apex of Nigeria’s security establishment could be abducted and die in captivity. If the state could not protect one of its former defenders, what reassurance does it offer everyone else?
There was something especially curious about the President’s plea that Nigerians should not “assign blame or point fingers.” In ordinary circumstances this might sound statesmanlike. In a democracy it sounds peculiar. Assigning responsibility is, after all, one of the principal functions of democratic government. Citizens elect leaders precisely so that someone may be held accountable when things go wrong. A President asking citizens not to assign blame for a worsening security crisis is rather like a football manager urging supporters not to discuss the scoreline. One suspects the request is made because the scoreline is unfavorable. The address was similarly optimistic about the economy. Reforms have restored credibility. Investment is returning. Revenues are rising. Stability is replacing uncertainty. Perhaps. But the true measure of an economy is not found in ministerial presentations or investment brochures. It is found in kitchens, markets and pay packets. There is a reason the administration repeatedly tells Nigerians that prosperity is coming. It is because prosperity has not yet arrived.
The political danger for Tinubu is not merely that Nigerians are suffering. Nations can endure hardship when they believe sacrifices are producing visible results. The greater danger is that citizens increasingly feel they are being asked to trust official narratives that bear little resemblance to their daily experience. The President spoke eloquently of hope. Hope is a valuable political commodity. But it is not an inexhaustible one. The tragedy of contemporary Nigeria is not that its leaders lack ambition. The speech was full of ambition. It was rich with plans, reforms, initiatives, task forces, strategies and promises. The tragedy is that these aspirations coexist with a mounting sense that the state is losing its monopoly on security in significant parts of the country.
A government may survive economic disappointment. It may survive political controversy. What it cannot indefinitely survive is the perception that it cannot perform the most elementary function of government: protecting citizens from violence. The most revealing line of the speech may not have been the celebration of democracy or the defense of reform. It was the President’s appeal to traditional rulers, faith leaders and community heads because “the government cannot do it alone.” That was intended as a call for national solidarity. It sounded, instead, like an admission. For governments are not elected merely to join collective efforts. They are elected to lead them. The heroes of June 12 fought so Nigerians could choose their leaders. They did not fight so that elected leaders could explain why they are unable to secure the republic entrusted to them.
The president invites criticism from the press and civil society, calling them the “guardrails of our republic.” Yet, these guardrails are being tested to the breaking point by economic mismanagement and official corruption. A democracy cannot be strengthened by speeches alone. It requires a government willing to cut its own waste, secure its borders, and create an environment where business can breathe. Until the Tinubu administration faces these harsh truths, Democracy Day will remain a celebration for the politicians, while the rest of Nigeria continues to suffer. Twenty-seven years after the restoration of democracy, Nigerians deserve more than commemorations of freedom. They deserve the substance of it. And until insecurity ceases to dominate national life, until children can attend school without fear, until citizens can travel without calculating ransom values, until communities no longer depend on prayer as a substitute for protection, the gap between official rhetoric and lived reality will continue to widen. Democracy Day was meant to celebrate how far Nigeria has come. Instead, it served as a reminder of how far it still has to go.
