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OPINION: Every democracy ‘Murders Itself’

Published

1 month ago

September 22, 2025

Editor

By Lasisi Olagunju

In ‘Jokes and Targets’ by Christie Davies, a Soviet journalist interviews a Chukchi man:

“Could you tell us briefly how you lived before the October revolution?”

“Hungry and cold.”

“How do you live now?”

“Hungry, cold, and with a feeling of deep gratitude.”

This sounds like Nigeria’s malaria victims thanking mosquitoes for their love and care. Between democracy and its opposite, reality has blurred the lines.

Last week, a group of White House pool reporters travelled with President Donald Trump on Air Force One as he returned from his U.K. state visit. At the beginning of the journey, actor Trump sauntered into the rear section of the plane, the traditional part for the press. He granted an interview and ended it with a morbid wish: “Fly safely. You know why I say that? Because I’m on the flight. I want to get home. Otherwise I wouldn’t care.”

Ten years ago, if a US president said what Trump told those poor reporters, his presidency would suffer immediate cardiac arrest. But this is Colin Crouch’s post-democracy era: the leader, whether in the US or in Nigeria, in Africa or elsewhere, is the law; whatever he does or says, we bow in gratitude.

I live in a Nigeria of gratitude and surrender. In the North-West and the North-East, traumatised communities are grateful to bandits and their enablers. They invite them to the negotiation table and thank the murderous gunmen for honouring the invitation. A grateful nation anoints and weeps at the feet of terrorists. In emergency-weaned Rivers State, its remorseful governor is effusive in appreciation of a second chance. The reinstated is ever thankful for the favours of a six-month suspension. From the North to the South, on bad roads and in death-wracked hospital wards, sonorous hymns of appreciation for big mercies ooze. The legislature and the judiciary, even the fourth estate, are all in congregation, singing songs of praise of the benevolent executive. Is this still a democracy?

American political scientists, Suzanne Mettler and Robert C. Lieberman in 2020 wrote ‘The Fragile Republic’ for The Foreign Affairs. In that essay, they list four symptoms of democratic backsliding. Prime among the four are economic inequality and excessive executive power. “Excessive executive power” is a three-word synonym for autocratization of democracy. It is a by-word for a democracy hanging itself.

The second president of the United States of America, John Adams, saw today; he warned of democracy decaying and dying: “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” Adams was not alone. There was also William Blake, 18th/19th century English poet, who said “if men were wise, the most arbitrary princes could not hurt them. If they are not wise, the freest government is compelled to be a tyranny.” This reads like it was written today and here. If you disagree, I ask: Is it wise (and normal) for the tormented to thank the tormentor?

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Listening to what Trump wished the reporters, we could see that big brother America now leads in democratic ‘erantship’, the Third World merely follows. An enormous country, strong enough to appropriate the name of an entire continent, America, in 2025, is blessed with a strongman that is armed with a licence to rule as it pleases his whim; a president who does what he likes and says what he likes or ‘jokes’ about it without consequences. The result is an imperial presidency that has redefined democracy across the world.

We say here that the yam of the one who is vigilant never gets burnt. The American system used to be very resilient in providing a leash on presidential excesses. It still does, although under a very difficult situation. Donald Trump, in his first term between 2017 and 2021, signed 220 Executive Orders. In his ongoing second term that began in January 2025, he has, as of September 18, 2025, already signed 204 Executive Orders upturning this balance, rupturing that tendon. An American friend told me that he could no longer recognise his country. But the good news is that those who should talk and act are not surrendering their country to Trump and his faction of the populace. Because it is America (and not Nigeria), there are over 300 lawsuits challenging Trump’s executive orders or policies in his second term.

The active legal challenges view the Trump orders either as unconstitutional, exceeding statutory power, or violating rights. And the courts are also doing their job as they should. A 2025 study found some 150 judicial decisions concerning these orders. Some are preliminary injunctions, others are full rulings. President Bola Tinubu last week acknowledged the existence of “over 40 cases in the courts in Abuja, Port Harcourt, and Yenagoa, to invalidate” his Rivers State emergency order. Our courts, especially the Supreme Court, are yet to acknowledge any of the cases with trials, rulings and orders.

It is easy for presidents with unrestrained executive powers to assume imperial airs. In the past, when they did, they feared losing their link with the people and a fall from power. Today, they are on very solid ground, no matter what they do with their people. Midway into his term as US president, an increasingly unpopular Jimmy Carter reassessed himself, and in lamentation told Washington Post’s David Broder that he (Carter) had “fallen into the trap of being ‘head of the government’ rather than ‘leader of the people.’” Today is not that yesterday of sin and punishment. We have surrendered to the point of giving ourselves away. Today’s leaders know that what they need is the government, its power and privileges, certainly not the people. And they keep working hard at it such that America has Trump, and is not the only country that has a Trump. There are Trumps everywhere. We have them in Africa, from the north to the coast.

What democracy suffers in America it suffers more in Africa. Former President Goodluck Jonathan said at the weekend that “democracy in the African continent is going through a period of strain and risk of collapse unless stakeholders come together to rethink and reform it.” He said politicians manipulate the electoral system to perpetuate themselves in office even when the people don’t want them. “Our people want to enjoy their freedom. They want their votes to count during elections. They want equitable representation and inclusivity. They want good education. Our people want security. They want access to good healthcare. They want jobs. They want dignity. When leaders fail to meet these basic needs, the people become disillusioned.” That is from Jonathan who was our president for six years. Did he say these new things because he wants to come back?

Democracy is like water; a wrong dose turns it to poison. If disillusionment has a home, it is in Africa. It is the reason why the youths of the continent are bailing out for succour, and the reason for Trump’s $100,000 fee on work visas.

In The North American Review of November 1910, Samuel J. Kornhauser reproduced a quotation that contains warnings of what threat a people could constitute to their own freedom: “The same tendencies to wanton abuse of power which exist in a despot or a ruling oligarchy may be expected in a democracy from the ruling majority, because they are tendencies incidental to human nature.” The solution was “a free people setting limitations upon the exercise of their own will” so that they would not “turn democracy into a curse instead of a blessing.”

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In his 1904 essay, ‘The Relation of the Executive to the Legislative Power’, James T. Young, observed a dramatic shift in American governance: while Woodrow Wilson had earlier warned of “Congressional supremacy,” Young argued that “we now live under a system of executive supremacy,” showing how the traditional checks and balances had failed to maintain equilibrium among the branches. That was in 1904, a hundred and twenty one years ago.

Someone said a leader’s ability to lead a society successfully is dependent on their capacity to govern themselves. It is that self-governing capacity that is lacking in our power circles. Plus the leaders don’t think they owe history anything. “From the errors of others, a wise man corrects himself…The wise man sees in the misfortune of others what he should avoid.” Publilius Syrus (85–43 BC), the Roman writer credited with uttering those nuggets, was a master of proverbs and apophthegm. We don’t listen to such words; we don’t mind being tripped by the same stone, and it does not matter falling into the same pit.

A democracy can enthrone emperors and kings but it is not that easy to ask them to dismount the high horse of the state without huge costs. We elect leaders and for unsalutory reasons, we let them roam freely with our lives, our safety and our comfort. We promote and defend them with our freedom. I hope we know the full import (and consequences) of the seed we are planting today. A Pharaoh will come who won’t remember that there was ever a Joseph.

A Roman emperor called Caligula reigned from 16 March, 37 AD until he was put to sleep on 24 January, 41 AD. ‘Caligula’ was not the name his parents gave him; it was an alias, “a joke of the troops” which trumped his real identity: He was named after popular Julius Caesar.

Roman historian, Claudius Suetonius, records in his ‘The Lives of the Caesars’ that Caligula became emperor after his father’s death and then “full and absolute power was at once put into his hands by the unanimous consent of the senate and of the mob, which forced its way into the House.” The new leader came popular with a lot of the people’s hope invested in him. Suetonius says the young man “assumed various surnames (for he was called ‘Pious,’ ‘Child of the Camp,’ ‘Father of the Armies,’ and ‘Greatest and Best of Caesars’). Soon the fawning appellations entered his head and he became the opposite of what his people wanted in their leader. One day, Emperor Caligula chanced “to overhear some kings who had come to Rome to pay their respects to him” doing what Yoruba kings love doing: He found them arguing at dinner about whose throne, among them, was the greatest and the highest in nobility. The emperor heard them and cried: “Let there be one Lord, one King.” He called them to order and from that point, it was clear to everyone that republican Rome now had one Lord, one king, and that was Caligula.

The man said and did things that frightened even the heartless. At a point during his reign, Caligula saw a mass of Roman people, the rabble, applauding some nobles whom he detested. He voiced his hatred for what the people did and said what he thought should be their punishment: “I wish the Roman people had but a single neck so I could cut it through at one blow.” That statement became a quote which has, through centuries, defined his place in history.
It would appear that 79-year old Donald Trump defined himself for history last week with his “fly safely…because I’m on the flight” statement. A leader, a father and grandfather said he did not care if a plane-load of young men and women perished (without him) in a crash. And he told them so.

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A Twi proverb suggests that “the chief feels the heat only when his own roof is on fire.” Trump’s unfortunate remark is said to be a joke. Even as a joke, what the US president said sits in a long tradition of expensive jokes. Trump’s cruel ‘jest’ couldn’t be funny to any people even if they were under the spell of the leader. History and literature are full of such costly quips that come light from the tongue but which reveal something raw about power and rulers: power does not agree that all human beings possess equal worth, equal dignity, and equal rights. Power talks, and whenever it talks, it sets itself apart.
King Louis XV of France is remembered for uttering the line: “Après moi, le déluge (After me, the flood).” Some commentators say it was a joke, some others say it was a shrug. History interpreted what Louis XV said as the king not caring a hoot whatever might happen to France after he was gone. That statement is a sound bite that has clung to him forever as Abraham Lincoln’s mother’s prayer clung to her son.

When Louis XV said it, no one saw what the king said as a prophecy, grim and ghastly. I am not sure he also knew the full import of what he said. But it was prescient; fifteen years after his reign, the “flood” came furious with the 1789 revolution culminating in the effective abolition of the French monarchy by the proclamation of the First Republic on September 21, 1792.

Emperor Nero of Rome is remembered forever for playing the fiddle while Rome was burning. In William Shakespeare’s Henry VI, we read a verse that ends with “Nero, Play(ing) on the lute, beholding the towns burn.” What is remembered of Nero is the image of a leader who ‘enjoyed the life of his head’ while his empire got destroyed by fire set at it by the enemy. But did the emperor really do that? Read this from the Encyclopaedia Britannica: “So, did Nero fiddle while Rome burned? No. Sort of. Maybe. More likely, he strummed a proto-guitar while dreaming of the new city that he hoped would arise in the fire’s ashes. That isn’t quite the same thing as doing nothing, but it isn’t the sort of decisive leadership one might hope for either.”

I have roamed from imperial Rome to medieval France, to democratic America and its Nigerian side-kick. What is next here is to go back, and salute John Adams with this his dispraise of democracy: “It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy.” A system or a country becomes a joke when its leaders toy with its destiny; when they make light of the fears of their people.

The Akan of Ghana warn that if you sit on comfortable rotten wood to eat pawpaw, your bottom gets wet and your mouth also gets wet. This is to say that there are consequences for choices made. A kabiyesi democracy is an autocratic monarchy. And what does that feel like? I read of a king who joked to his courtiers during famine: “Hunger has no teeth sharp enough to bite me in my palace.” It was a careless statement of a monarchy that has found its way into the mouth of our democracy. I saw it where I read it that the ‘joke’ “was remembered bitterly by the starving commoners who later sang satirical songs about the unfeeling king.” Some jokes outlive their laughter.

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I’ll Support Trump To Fight Terrorism In Nigeria If… – Wike

Published

3 hours ago

November 3, 2025

Editor

The Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, has said that he would support US President Donald Trump if he provides technology to combat terrorism in Nigeria.

Wike stated this on Monday while responding to questions in an interview on Politics Today, a programme on Channels Television monitored by DAILY POST.

His comment comes in the wake of the Christian genocide allegation in Nigeria made by Trump.

It will be recalled that Trump recently designated Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern” over the same allegation.

The US President also said that he had asked the Defence Department to prepare for possible military action in Nigeria if the Nigerian government “continues to allow the killing of Christians”.

Responding, Wike said, “It is not enough for me to capitalise that people are dying in Plateau, Benue and other places.

“I have said that I will support Trump in providing and supporting Nigeria with technology in the fight against terrorism. I will also support any country that wants to proffer solutions in tackling terrorism in Nigeria.”

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OPINION: Trump’s Wrath Of Oedipus

Published

5 hours ago

November 3, 2025

Editor

By Lasisi Olagunju

Mr Donald Trump and his Generals are buckling their armour to wipe out terrorists who kill Christians in Nigeria. “I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action. If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet…” the American president tweeted yesterday. Nigerians who heard Trump probably wondered where he is going to start from. People abducting people, people killing people are everywhere in Nigeria: North-East, North-West, North-Central, the South – everywhere. The forests are deeply infested; the cities have them thick behind seedy walls. How do you kill terrorists in a terror territory without killing everyone?

I risk this question: Who is the real killer here?

What is killing Nigerian Christians, indeed, what is killing Nigerians of all faiths, is not just religion or religionists. The true assassin is the Nigerian structure; an abnormality sculpted with the cold chisel of Mr. Trump’s America and its complicit allies. As Tacitus once wrote of Rome, “They make a desert and call it peace.” Nigeria is a malformed republic calcified by those who pretend to defend it. The Nigerian structure empowers extremism and fetters the law. It enjoys the backing of the West.

Now, Trump says he is coming. Some saviours come to compound calamities. In Ola Rotimi’s ‘The Gods Are Not to Blame’, the Nigerian adaptation of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, Odewale is the celebrated liberator who becomes king. There is Baba Fakunle, the old, blind diviner of Kutuje. When the king, Odewale (the Oedipus figure), summons the seer to help identify the cause of the kingdom’s troubles, Baba Fakunle immediately sees the king himself as the source of the curse afflicting the land: “You are the murderer you seek”, the blind tells the king. He proceeds to even call him “bed sharer.” But the hot-tempered king thinks the prophet subversive, a coupist.

Tiresias in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, like Ola Rotimi’s Baba, is the blind who perceives what the sighted king cannot see. The blind reveals that the sickness of the city flows from King Oedipus himself. He is the murderer. Oedipus, who vows to cleanse Thebes, is the source of the plague and “pollution” of Thebes. Today’s world has Oedipuses; it has no Tiresias. The truth bearer exists neither in America and its allies nor in their viceroys, defenders of peace who switch off rights in search of freedom.

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Donald Trump described Nigeria as “a disgraced country.” It is surprising that Nigeria has had no word to reply to that insult. His threats are directed at the bad children in the forests of the north. There is not a whimper from the ACF and the Northern Elders Forum. Where is their usual courage? Where is the Federal Government? If I would be cynical, I wouid ask: Why not invoke our efficient Cybercrime Act to deal with this? In case the government missed the assault, it is there in Trump’s tweet on Truth Social:

“If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing,’ to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities. I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action. If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians! WARNING: THE NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT BETTER MOVE FAST!”

America’s Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, with a “Yes sir” replied Trump with ‘automatic alacrity’. He said his boots were “preparing for action” on the soil of Nigeria. He posted on X:

“Yes sir. The killing of innocent Christians in Nigeria — and anywhere — must end immediately. The Department of War is preparing for action. Either the Nigerian Government protects Christians, or we will kill the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities.”

Greek historian and Athenian General, Thucydides, underlined the causes of war: power, fear, and ambition. He warned that “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” Secretary Pete Hegseth’s words are a salute, and a promise of death wrapped in benevolence. He and his boss spoke as relievers of the besieged of Nigeria. We thank them for their interest. But where are they going to start from?

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“They can start from anywhere,” a voice replied me.

“Where is anywhere?”

It is cool to read Trump’s promise of reprieve; we’ve seen too much not to embrace any messiah who comes around. Too many have died with their blood calling for vengeance. But this Trump rain, if it ever falls, won’t fall on one roof. Oedipus comes into Thebes, kills their terror and for that is made king. Years later, the saviour’s coming becomes bad, mass death.

I read online many who are happy that Bola Tinubu’s government is facing fire from America. Some of these are even from the Muslim North. Ancient Romans would see this and intone: “Amicus meus, inimicus inimici mei” (my friend, the enemy of my enemy). Mathematical sociologists would dust up Frank Harary’s formalisation of the Balance Theory; they would trace their signed graphs, and point to Fritz Heider’s insight that a pair of friends with a common enemy forms a balanced triangle: A friend of my friend is my friend (+ × + × + = +). A friend of my enemy is my enemy (+ × – × – = +). An enemy of my enemy is my friend (– × – × + = +). Politics!

It is strange that a government that has conquered everyone is now being conquered from a strange angle. “History shows that there are no invincible armies and never have been” (Josef Stalin).

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I would have joined in the celebrations to welcome Trump but for the fact that history shows me the strong disguising ambition with the language of virtue; I hear the powerful invoking justice and faith while pursuing dominance. If I asked the Greek to use human history and experience to analyse Mr. Trump’s threat of a war to end all terrorist wars in Nigeria, Thucydides would likely have viewed Trump’s threat with cold, unsentimental realism. To him, the tough-talk would not be an act of moral outrage but a performance of power. He would see in Trump’s posture not compassion for the Nigerian victim of terror; the historian would see the timeless logic of empire: using other people’s tragedy to affirm strength and moral superiority.

As Thucydides might have put it, “War is not so much a matter of right as of necessity.” From history to literature, we find that those who claim to fight for justice are often merely fighting for influence. In the eyes of experience, America’s preparation “for action” would be less about saving faith, limbs and lives; it will be more about staging yet another play in the endless drama of power.

So, I ask: Is the noise from the US truly targetted at the Nigerian Wall of Jericho? We wait to see.

We are a complicated country with complex problems. If Trump kills all today’s terrorists tomorrow, how about the next generation of killers that will come out the day after? The hatchery is not tired of making them.

So, where is the way? Donald Trump’s message of war? It cannot be the way. One thing is certain, this crisis and the response to it echo a tragic pattern: leaders are chasing false targets; messiahs will end up as wrathful Oedipuses whose presence will poison the land. These healers, they will spread plague.

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OPINION: Saluting Our Permanent Patriarchs

Published

5 hours ago

November 3, 2025

Editor

By Lasisi Olagunju

Respect old age. A “strictly by invitation” conclave of Yoruba cardinals sat for two days last week, not in the traditional capital, Ibadan, but in aged Akure, Ondo State. They took the masquerade to the eastern ancestral grove and had it costumed there. If your masquerade was not there, it is because your buttocks were deemed too small for the gilded stools there. And by not being there, you just missed balls of àkàrà made specially in frying pans of honey. The cardinals sat and chose for the whole race and decreed that “we must speak with one voice.” Their Holinesses danced to African pop singer, Angélique Kidjo’s ‘Agolo’ in their own sacred way and ordered that the waist-beads of their Olajumoke must remain where it is. Who are we to say the mouth of the elder stinks? That is the judgment of age, the decree from the ancestors’ gavel. Coourt!

It is an African thing. Of what use is age if you can’t use it to dominate the youth? Àgbà kò níí tán l’órí ilè is a daily prayer in Yoruba land. It simply means “may elders not be extinct in our land.” What the Akure papacy wants is already being done in other parts of Africa. The results have been phenomenal. I am moving from Cameroon to Côte d’Ivoire, then Tanzania, and, then other places where age is prized far higher than rubies.

They say wisdom comes with age. If that is true, no matter how “disgraced” Donald Trump says we are, East and West, Nigeria has pearls of ancestral wisdom. To our immediate East, we have Paul Biya of Cameroon; a little far west, there is Alassane Ouattara of Côte d’Ivoire. They are the current champions. Our immediate western neighbour, Benin Republic, has just banned the main opposition candidate and his party from the next presidential poll. These and many more enjoy the nod of the lords who created these countries.

I have ‘data’ people, young persons around me. They flirt into my fort and speak grammar and literature. First, they talk “gerontocracy”; then I hear “heart-cutting paradox” of Africa being the world’s youngest continent by median age, “yet it is being governed by some of the oldest leaders on earth.” Talk is cheap. What do they know? What an elder sees while seated, a child in space can’t see.

Indeed, Africa, this moment, has the wisest gathering of aged priests of power ever assembled.

In the North, there sits Abdelmadjid Tebboune of Algeria (80), Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt (71), and Kais Saied of Tunisia (67 — just under seventy, but invested with self-made powers broad enough to last him till eternity).

In West Africa, the procession of patriarchs includes Bola Ahmed Tinubu of Nigeria (73), Joseph Boakai of Liberia (80), and Alassane Ouattara of Côte d’Ivoire (83). Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo of Ghana, now 81, bowed out, leaving the stage in January 2025 for his old rival, John Dramani Mahama, 66, to steer the ship once again.

In Central Africa, Mother Africa is still blessed with the grandest of elders: Paul Biya of Cameroon (92), Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea (83), and Denis Sassou-Nguesso of the Republic of the Congo (81).

In Eastern and Southern Africa, the grey reign continues: Yoweri Museveni of Uganda (81), Isaias Afwerki of Eritrea (79), Emmerson Mnangagwa of Zimbabwe (83), and Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa (73). Hage Geingob of Namibia passed away on 4 February 2024 at the age of 82. He was succeeded by 84-year-old Nangolo Mbumba, who served until the March 2025 election that brought Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, 73, to power — the country’s first female president.

Farther east, Djibouti’s parliament has just erased the age barrier that once capped presidential ambition, clearing the path for 77-year-old Ismaïl Omar Guelleh to seek a sixth term in 2026. And on the Ethiopian plateau, President Taye Atske Selassie will turn 70 next year.

We respect and value age; that is why Africa remains forever at the top. We are the continent where wisdom and endurance sit enthroned in power.

President Alassane Ouattara of Côte d’Ivoire is 83. He has just clinched a fourth term with the ease of a man ordering breakfast. Cast your gaze eastward to Cameroon, 92-year-old Paul Biya is there. BBC last week described him as “the leader who never loses.” He has kindly agreed to remain in office after only 43 years of national service – or should I simply call his reign ‘uninterrupted power supply’? Forty-three years in some democracies would be called eternity; here in Africa, from the Mediterranean to the Cape of Good Hope, it is continuity.

Nigeria has so much to learn especially from Cameroon where grey hair rules completely and totally. Cameroon has a council of elders whose word is law. I searched the World Wide Web, asking the oracle for the secret of that country’s success. It is the bent gait of the leaders and the age of their ideas. It is difficult to believe, but it is true, the elders list is real: To President Biya’s right is the President of the Constitutional Council, Clément Atangana; he is 84 years old. Atangana it was who oversaw the recent election and announced the results that are being celebrated with stones and bullets in the streets of the country. There is also René Claude Meka, the 86-year-old Chief of Defence Staff. He guards the guards in the name of democracy. The president of the senate is Marcel Niat Njifenji, 91 years old. With Cavayé Yéguié Djibril, the 85-year-old Speaker of the National Assembly, Njifenji sees that laws are made for the good governance of the republic. They make laws, and when they finish minting the laws, they pass them to 83-year-old Laurent Esso, the indefatigable Minister of Justice. He executes the law and its convicts. The job of this council of elders is to keep the grandfather in power and tell the young to wait for their time.

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We have done well with democracy in Africa. It is no longer about freedom and welfare, and good living and life more abundant. It is about endurance – like dull, painful sex.

Latecomer Nigeria does not (yet) have its own official elders council as Cameroon. It should quietly be taking notes; that is what the wise do. We should envy Cameroon; Cameroon deserves our envy.

In Bénin, the constitutional court on 27 October, 2025, ruled to exclude the principal opposition party, Les Démocrates, from participating in the upcoming 2026 presidential election. The coast is clear for democracy in that country and for the incumbent. In East Africa, Tanzania’s presidential election was held on Wednesday last week. But the gods of polls had cracked the palm kernel of victory for the incumbent before the election day. President Samia Suluhu Hassan stood (and stands) on terra firma. She won before winning. Her opponents, candidates of the two primary opposition parties, were removed from the ballot by the gods of democracy. Their supporters are outside, burning tyres and getting buried.

Nigeria will do better than Benin and Tanzania. If those ones had appreciated better intelligence, they would not run into the quicksand of protests harrying their hills. Instead of shutting the gate against opponents and running against themselves, how about those opposition candidates simply defecting into the ruling party? If you check the physics of politics, you will understand why politicians are ferromagnetic beings; they respond to the magnet of money and power. In Nigeria, nobody will be disqualified in the next elections. The magnet in the ruling party sucks them into the vortex of power, and that ends it. Never mind what an Abuja court said on defection last Friday. The defected should forfeit their seats. Who does that? The higher courts will correct the abnormal orders.

Yoruba ancestors are great scientists. There is this Yoruba spell that pulls whoever it wants into its bossom:

Gerere,

Àwọ̀n maa wo won bo,

Gerere…

(Swiftly/ Net, drag them here/ Swiftly).

People of depth who massed in Akure last week know how this magnetic net is woven. It works in Yoruba’s Lagos – it is working in Nigeria. The Tanzanian lady should have come to learn here.

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I read online about children of protest dreaming of Tanzania in Nigeria. No. It won’t happen. Where is the main opposition party, the PDP? By the time we reach 2027, no opposition contraption will be well enough to stagger out of the ICU. After that feat, we will move to the next. What is next? Third term?

‘Third term’ is scandalous; we don’t want that chain for the neck of our Olajumoke. The respectable career goal is to be so good as to be begged to become king.

Let the children of anger keep punching their tired tabs and overused phones. Someone told me that when they finally look up from those chinko phones and ask, “Who’s that old man on the ballot again?” the answer will definitely be: “The same man you voted for when you were in primary school.”

Africa is proof that democracy is tired of term limits. The British blessed us with permanent secretaries; why not bless ourselves with permanent councils of elders complete with a permanent presidency. Imagine the elegance in that alliteration: “permanent presidency.” Pulsating.

Even in America where we copied this democracy nonsense, they are already building a throne for their king and sewing very regal royal robes. They have a king.

I read Thomas E. Cronin’s ‘On the Origins and Invention of the Presidency’ and laughed at the folly in the wisdom of the past. Cronin, by “presidency” meant American presidency.” He wrote: “In 1787 fifty-five of America’s best educated and most experienced men assembled in Philadelphia. Their average age was 42, most were lawyers or businessmen. Two-thirds had served in the Congress at one time or another; nearly twenty had served in the Continental army. Seven had been governors in their states. It was a convention of the well-bred, well-fed, well-read and well-wed.” These were the people, the 55 wise men who invented America’s presidential democracy, the one we copied like that poor student who Rank-xeroxed his mate’s exam script, name, matric number, all.

The mandate of the American wise men, according to Cronin, was “to devise an executive office that would also be effective and safe; strong enough to command respect, to help maintain order, to help conduct effective diplomatic affairs, to provide for more efficient administration, yet not so strong as to threaten civil liberties, or in any way aggrandize power contrary to the welfare of the general public.” They did what they had to do and for 229 years, they thought they got it right. They were wrong. Trump, holding Muhammadu Buhari’s toothpick, is at this moment, laughing at their wisdom.

A permanent presidency – a king – is being considered by those around America’s Trump. Or where were you last week when former White House chief strategist, Stephen Bannon, told The Economist that President Donald Trump would serve a third term? Stephen Bannon described a third term for Trump as essential to the nation’s future, a “vehicle of divine providence”, an “instrument of divine will” and “the will of the American people.” We were very unfair to President Olusegun Obasanjo, a successful third term for him would have been a valuable part of contemporary America’s literature review.

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This is the age of the aged. We should tell William Shakespeare that he lied; that the poet lied in his claim that “All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,…”

Shakespeare says the drama of life always comes to an end for actors and for spectators. It is not so in Africa. Go to Togo, don’t they have Faure Gnassingbé there after Gnassingbé Eyadéma? Gnassingbé served as the president of Togo from 1967 until his death in 2005. Gnassingbé Eyadéma’s son, Faure, filled what would have been a gap immediately and has led Togo since then. What else is the meaning of immortality?

Nigeria can improve on this. One man can be president; his son governor; his brother minister; his grandchildren commissioners.

The president can even combine all those posts and positions if he wants. It will be answered prayers.

This is a satire, but sometimes words fail the satirist and his satire. Satire itself is a dangerous thing because sometimes it stops being seen for what it is. But on this, I double down and hiss on reason and good judgment. This is the age of wisdom, I cling to the tail of the elephant of the aged, he alone can take us up the mountain before us.

In ‘As You Like It’, Shakespeare’s Jaques delivers the locus classicus on the seven ages of man. Life, Shakespeare’s character says, unfolds in seven acts; he calls them “ages”. First comes the helpless infant, “mewling and puking” and crying in a nurse’s arms; then the reluctant schoolboy, weeping and creeping to class with a shining face. Next, the lover, scribbling and sighing over verses, love poems, to his beloved; followed by the fiery soldier, proud, quick to quarrel, chasing fleeting glory: “A soldier, / Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, / Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, / Seeking the bubble reputation /Even in the cannon’s mouth.” Then appears the wise judge, full of proverbs and dignity, his form rounded by comfort. Then age steals in, turning him into a thin, slippered old man, his once-bold voice now trembling and shrill. At last, the curtain falls on all, a return to infancy, “second childishness” and forgetfulness, bereft of sight, sound, taste, and self:

“Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion;

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”

For all enemies of age, I render, in modern English, the last stage in the passage above, Act II, Scene VII:

“The final stage of life

that ends this strange and eventful journey

is a return to childishness and complete forgetfulness;

without teeth, without eyes, without taste, without anything at all.”

The Shakespearean last stage is the age of nothing and nothingness. That is the age of our leaders. In nothing, nothing is bad. We love our own old age, we want it as long as it is Idi Bebere, the voluptuous, supple waist of Olajumoke.