By OLARINRE SALAKO
THE situation in Nigeria today is concerning. On one side is a wave of insecurity tearing communities apart and claiming innocent lives. On the other is a political project weakening the opposition and risking a slide into de facto one-party rule. These crises reinforce each other. A nation struggling to protect its citizens cannot, at the same time, dismantle the checks and balances that keep power accountable.
This is a warning to the political class to tread carefully. We are living through a time when insecurity has become so routine that fresh attacks rarely shock. Twenty-five schoolgirls were abducted from their hostel at dawn in Kebbi State and the vice principal murdered — a painful echo of the Chibok girls’ abduction over a decade ago. Days later, gunmen stormed St. Mary’s Catholic School in Papiri, Niger State, carrying off dozens of children and staff in yet another mass kidnapping. In Kwara, a widely circulated video from Eruku showed Islamist attackers invading a Christ Apostolic Church (CAC), killing worshippers in the middle of worship.
Nigeria is witnessing unabated killings of Christians and non-violent Muslims by armed Islamist extremists such as Boko Haram and ISWAP. Many of the victims of banditry and mass kidnapping in the North-West are themselves Muslims, and not every attack is ideologically driven. But in Christian-dominated regions, the pattern increasingly resembles targeted persecution of Christian communities — and the state’s failure to respond with moral clarity and urgency is no longer acceptable.
Some Nigerians now quietly ask whether jihadist militias feel more emboldened under a Muslim–Muslim presidency. Whether or not this is true, the President has a duty to dispel that perception through decisive and even-handed action.
Nowhere feels safe anymore. Even the South-West, once relatively peaceful, has been pierced by terrorist incursions into Kwara. All of this makes it imperative for the President to deploy the full weight of Nigeria’s security and military assets against these terrorists.
The new PDP National Chairman, Dr. Kabiru Tanimu Turaki (SAN) — himself from Kebbi, where the schoolgirls were taken — warned after the Wadata Plaza disruption, in an appeal to US President Donald Trump, that Nigeria now faces not only “genocidal” attacks on Christians but also a direct assault on democracy itself. Foreign assistance may be useful, but if we are truly a sovereign and governable nation, we must lead the effort to secure our own homeland and organise ourselves politically.
The crisis inside the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) reached a crescendo on Tuesday, November 18, 2025, when two rival factions tried to hold parallel meetings at the Wadata national secretariat and were dispersed with tear gas by the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) police. By the next day, armed police had sealed the secretariat with barbed wire and barricaded the gates, turning the headquarters of Nigeria’s main opposition into a fortified zone.
This is a red flag in any democracy. The PDP’s crisis did not appear overnight; it was steadily hollowed out by internal sabotage, much of it driven by Mr. Nyesom Wike — former Governor of Rivers State — who, until his expulsion at the Ibadan convention, operated as a senior PDP figure while also serving as Minister of the FCT in President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s All Progressives Congress (APC) government. He has publicly vowed to support President Tinubu’s second term while holding a PDP membership card. Many argue his expulsion was long overdue.
None of this absolves the PDP of its own long-standing internal divisions and failures of leadership. Observers are now watching to see what PDP leaders do next. Will they regroup, possibly through a broader opposition coalition such as the African Democratic Congress (ADC), whose activities have remained surprisingly muted in the face of these crises? Or will more of them continue to defect to the ruling APC — accelerating the slide toward a one-party state?
What is unfolding appears to align with a political desire President Tinubu expressed openly in the National Assembly complex during a joint session on Democracy Day. Looking directly at PDP and Labour Party members, he declared that: “It is a pleasure to see you in such disarray.” He then praised defectors leaving the PDP for the APC as “wise people abandoning a sinking ship without a life jacket,” proudly adding that he was “happy to receive them”, while majority of lawmakers chorused his political anthem, “On your mandate we shall stand” in the People’s House!
These were triumphant statements from a president and his supporters, openly rejoicing in the opposition’s weakness — like a market woman dancing over the misfortune of her fellow trader. Yet Tinubu is no stranger to the value of opposition. He once embodied it. As governor of Lagos between 1999 and 2007, he refused to be swept away when President Obasanjo’s PDP overran other Alliance for Democracy (AD) states in the South-West in 2003.
He helped build the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and became a key architect of the merger that produced the APC, which eventually defeated the ruling PDP in 2015 — making him a symbol of resistance to one-party dominance and centralised abuse of power.
That is precisely why his current posture is troubling. The same man who once defended opposition structures now appears willing to use state resources to dismantle them. While he was in opposition, it would have been unthinkable for him to embrace an AD or ACN chieftain who remained in a PDP cabinet while openly undermining his own party. Yet today, under his presidency, Nyesom Wike has been allowed to do exactly that inside the PDP while serving as a powerful minister in an APC government.
In Rivers State, 25 of the 27 PDP lawmakers loyal to Wike have already defected to the APC, while he remains formally outside the ruling party, continuing a strategy that is steadily ripping the PDP apart from within. In serious democracies, a former Democratic governor cannot sit in a Republican president’s cabinet while openly sabotaging the Democratic Party from within, just as a Labour Party heavyweight cannot serve as a senior minister under a Conservative prime minister while tearing down Labour structures.
In parliamentary systems, such cross-party arrangements occur only in formal governments of national unity, not as private political tools.
It would be unthinkable in Washington, London, Berlin or Ottawa for an immediate past governor to remain in the opposition party, hold a powerful federal portfolio, campaign for the president’s re-election and simultaneously wage war against his own party’s leadership — yet this is exactly what the president has allowed with Nyesom Wike.
Wike’s altercations with security personnel in Abuja, his feud with Governor Siminalayi Fubara in Rivers State and his theatrical media parleys — where he sits elevated like a monarch surrounded by subjects — all speak to a style of politics that is imperial rather than democratic.
If President Tinubu truly believes in multiparty democracy, he must recognise that this arrangement is not a symbol of inclusiveness. It is a weapon aimed at the heart of the opposition — and one he himself has already admitted gives him “pleasure.”
Those defecting to the ruling APC are also active accomplices in destroying political pluralism. They know Tinubu’s own story proves that disciplined, organised opposition can one day defeat a dominant ruling party. Yet, they treat party platforms like disposable wrappers, crossing over at the first hint of pressure or personal inconvenience, or simply for comfort and pleasure. These are not mere career moves; they are acts of betrayal against voters who wanted a real opposition, not a queue of politicians scrambling for crumbs at the winner’s table.
Nigerian democracy cannot withstand both escalating insecurity and deliberate political sabotage. Together, they form a deadly combination. The first duty of the state is to protect life. President Tinubu must treat the fight against Islamist insurgents, particularly Boko Haram and ISWAP, as well as bandits and kidnappers, as a true national emergency — one that demands clear communication, a coherent strategy and disciplined, professional security operations.
Dr. Salako writes in from Texas, US