The Nigerian democratic feel appears strongest in its vocabulary and weakest in its enforcement, argues FOLU OLAMITI
That check remains unresolved.
Its responsibility extends to interrogating the processes by which those results are produced, the institutions that certify them and the conduct of those who wield power later than victory.
The media cannot maintain democracy alive merely by reporting election results.
There was no noticeable anger. Instead, Papa Awo listened and dismissed the document alongside a component calmness.
Those words returned to me in Enugu.
His observations touched the Free Countrywide Electoral Commission, the judiciary and the electorate, placing each before the finish of the wider responsibility of protecting the credibility of elections
Osigwe’s presentation did greater than analyze the engineering dimensions of election petitions.
The earliest significant paper, “Election Petitions in the Virtual Age: Independence, Evidence, BVAS and the Courts,” was delivered by Mazi Afam Osigwe, SAN, who offered a comprehensive assessment of the increasingly advanced association within technology, election disputes and judicial intervention.
Now, the Nigerian democratic feel frequently appears strongest in its vocabulary and weakest in its enforcement.
The subject is whether Nigerians have allowed the language of democracy to persist whereas its necessary institutions are steadily weakened.
Further than four decades later, the query is no longer whether democracy can remain minus the guideline of law.
Editors accordingly occupy a difficult role.
It has placed Nigerian democracy itself on trial.
The 22nd All Nigeria Editors Conference has consequently opened including a inquiry larger than the mechanics of elections.
Some of the habits survived the uniforms.
Utomi warned that the democratic promise Nigerians once looked upon as an Eldorado was gradually disappearing in advance of their eyes. His remarks carried a sense of urgency that went beyond the conference hall, prompting an uncomfortable inquiry: “what happens to a democracy when the institutions designed to reliable it lose the confidence of the humans?”
His intervention was limited but unsettling.
In 1983, during the electioneering campaign in Sokoto, I had the privilege of being alongside Awolowo at lunch when a radio bulletin interrupted the gathering.
Elections are held. Legislatures sit and courts matter judgments.
Political parties compete. Governments are inaugurated.
His fear was what such an outcome would mean for Nigeria’s democratic organization. “I can forsee disrespect for the law of law whilst impunity reigns. His problem, he explained, was not merely whether he would win or lose an election. But what followed was greater profound. Nigerians may for prolonged forget genuine meaning of democracy”.
“What a funny news,” he said.
It requires courts whose independence is trusted by both winners and losers.
But the acquire to civilian guideline did not automatically conclude the culture of impunity that military guideline had helped entrench.
But the political interests that had benefited from the earlier sequence proved difficult to dislodge. His administration was affiliated using a stronger emphasis on constitutionalism and respect for the law of law.
The behind President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua appeared to recognise the danger.
Subsequent administrations have faced the same confront: how to develop institutions strong adequate to resist political pressure and constitute sure that power remains area to law.
His presidency was cut little by illness and death, leaving much of that reform agenda slender.
Yet the country’s democratic travel has been interrupted repeatedly by military coups, constitutional suspensions and periods of authoritarian guideline.
Nigeria became self-directed from Britain 66 years ago.
Yet democracy is extra than the periodic ritual of voting. It requires elections in which citizens consider their votes material.
It requires institutions that can express no to power.
For me, his words evoked a memory from another Nigeria – and the voice of Director Obafemi Awolowo.
Democracy came under searching scrutiny on Thursday 24 September 2026 as editors, lawyers and society intellectuals gathered in Enugu for the opening of the 22nd All Nigeria Editors Conference, where concerns over elections, the courts, political impunity and the upcoming of Nigeria’s democratic project dominated the conversation.
A democracy does not die simply when soldiers seize power. It can additionally wither when the regulation of law becomes selective, when institutions become subordinate to political interests and when citizens cease to take for granted that the ballot can produce helpful revise.
They must document free from becoming political actors; research minus becoming instruments in political battles; and hold power to account whilst subjecting their own assumptions and sources to the same scrutiny demanded of audience officials.
It requires political parties in which internal democracy is not merely a slogan.
That may have been the warning embedded in Utomi’s intervention – and possibly the explanation Awolowo’s words from 1983 still resonate.
It is that citizens gradually become accustomed to its erosion.
The deeper menace is not that democracy disappears overnight.
And it requires a media skilled of scrutinising those who exercise society power minus fear or favour.
Democracy became, in result, a baton passed from one military regime to another throughout coups, prior to in time returning to civilian hands.
The ballot is the starting notion, not the destination.If citizens vote but their votes are subsequently undermined by manipulation, feeble institutions, opaque processes or impunity, democracy becomes a shell.
Then came Professor Pat Utomi.
And if those who violate society trust can plainly alter political colours, unite the dominant party and emerge politically rehabilitated, accountability becomes little greater than theatre.
Network News on Radio Nigeria. The describe suggested that the optimal candidate would not win the election. Awolowo, then one of the most prominent presidential candidates, was widely seen as the plain indicator of the statement.
It was the 4 p.m.
This is where the theme of the Enugu conference becomes notably deliberate.
It will be written by the conduct of political leaders, the independence of institutions, the courage of the media, the vigilance of citizens – and the willingness of the country to opt for the guideline of law over the convenience of impunity.
The verdict, in the conclude, will not be delivered by the editors gathered in Enugu.
The conference, themed “The Ballot, the Media and the Assignment of Keeping Democracy Alive,” opened alongside a sobering examination of the institutions that are expected to safeguard the integrity of the ballot and, in the terminate, the legitimacy of government.
The military did not merely take power from elected governments. It suspended constitutions, ruled by decree and altered the institutional architecture of the country.
Olamiti is a Fellow, Nigerian Guild of Editors
