Nigeria is not being governed; it is being managed like a private estate in which constitutional boundaries are treated as decorative suggestions. Under President Bola Tinubu, political brigandage has been elevated from a bad habit of the political class to the organizing principle of the state. What passes for governance today is a theatre of improvisation, opacity, and executive lawlessness; an increasingly baroque performance in which institutions are bent, budgets ignored, and legality treated as an inconvenience. The latest alarm bell comes not from opposition parties, but from a bipartisan group of lawmakers; men and women who ordinarily prefer the quiet rituals of legislative discretion. Their statement is remarkable not for its rhetoric but for its despair. Nigeria, they warn, is confronting “an alarming disregard for the rule of law, chronic budget under implementation, allegations of off budget expenditure, worsening economic hardship and an unacceptable security situation.” These are not the complaints of political losers; they are the symptoms of a democracy that is not working.
The most damning charge concerns off budget expenditure, a phrase that sounds technical but is, in fact, a polite euphemism for executive lawlessness. When a government spends trillions of naira outside duly enacted Appropriation Acts, it is not merely mismanaging funds; it is governing without consent. The International Monetary Fund reportedly identified public expenditure equivalent to two per cent of Nigeria’s GDP (₦8.83 trillion) missing from official budgets. In any functioning democracy, such a discrepancy would trigger resignations, prosecutions, and emergency parliamentary inquiries. In Nigeria, it triggers press releases. The lawmakers are correct: public funds cannot lawfully be spent outside the Appropriation Act, concealed under opaque accounting classifications, or omitted from fiscal information presented to the National Assembly. When the Executive Branch treats the budget as optional, it is not merely violating procedure; it is dismantling the architecture of constitutional government. A democracy in which the legislature appropriates funds and the executive spends whatever it pleases is not a democracy.
The rot runs deeper. Nigeria has now normalized chronic budget under implementation, with capital releases delayed, rolled over, or quietly abandoned. In 2025, only 30% of the capital budget was funded; 70% was carried forward into 2026. This is not fiscal prudence; it is administrative paralysis. As Senator Mohammed Monguno rightly observed, failure to implement an Appropriation Act is a breach of the law capable of amounting to an impeachable offence. Yet under Tinubu, such breaches are treated as routine. The consequences are not abstract. While the Presidential Air Fleet reportedly received ₦20.27 billion, the Nigerian Army received only a fraction of its allocation for security equipment. In a country where citizens are kidnapped, murdered, and displaced with numbing regularity, the message is unmistakable: the comfort of public officials is more important than the survival of the public. This is not governance. It is dereliction of duty for which the Nigerian people deserved an explanation.
The constitutional vandalism is equally brazen. The lawmakers recount how the National Assembly approved a state of emergency in Rivers State using a voice vote, despite the Constitution’s explicit requirement for a two thirds majority. More recently, the purported passage of the State Police Constitutional Alteration Bill relied on votes transmitted via WhatsApp by members who were not physically present. Nigeria has now achieved the dubious distinction of attempting to amend its Constitution through instant messaging. The lawmakers’ warning is stark: “The Constitution cannot be altered by presumption, improvisation or undisclosed voting arrangements.” Yet improvisation has become the governing philosophy of the Tinubu presidency. Legal safeguards are replaced by political shortcuts; constitutional procedures are treated as optional; institutions are weaponized or allowed to weaponize themselves.
This is the political climate Tinubu has created; one in which federal agencies behave like partisan militias, and the President, when caught, performs the role of the arsonist fire chief: setting the fire, then demanding applause for extinguishing it. His recent embarrassment over the EFCC’s freezing of Osun State’s accounts is a case in point. Tinubu insists he was unaware of the action, yet the EFCC operates within a political environment shaped by his administration’s contempt for institutional independence. When agencies learn that power is exercised through intimidation, they do not wait for instructions; they anticipate them. Nigeria’s democracy is not merely declining; it is being hollowed out from within. The legislature is treated as a rubber stamp, the budget as a suggestion, the Constitution as a prop, and public funds as a slush pool. The country is governed through opacity, improvisation, and coercion—an unholy trinity that corrodes public trust and undermines democratic stability.
The lawmakers’ call for an emergency session is not melodrama; it is triage. Nigeria cannot afford a legislature that remains away from plenary while constitutional violations, fiscal irregularities, and security failures pile up like uncollected refuse. The National Assembly is not an annex of the Presidency; it is an independent arm of government constitutionally empowered to defend the republic.
The Tinubu administration may insist that reforms are underway, that institutions are being strengthened, that democracy is being deepened. But the evidence tells a different story: budgets unimplemented, expenditures unrecorded, laws ignored, procedures violated, and institutions subordinated. This is not democratic consolidation; it is democratic decay. Nigeria deserves better than political brigandage masquerading as governance. It deserves a government that obeys its own laws, spends within its own budgets, and respects its own Constitution. It deserves institutions that serve the public, not the powerful. And it deserves a President who understands that leadership is not improvisation, but restraint.