Fire, Folklore and False Equivalence: A Reply to Monday Lines
The Lagos State Chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has read Monday Lines by Lasisi Olagunju with keen interest. While we respect the columnist’s literary depth and rich deployment of folklore, metaphor, and intertextual allusions, we must firmly state that poetry, however elegant, must never be mistaken for political accuracy or historical honesty.
The attempt to equate Nigeria’s constitutional democracy under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu with the brutal military dictatorship of Sani Abacha is not only intellectually lazy but historically indefensible. It is an exercise in false equivalence that sacrifices truth on the altar of rhetorical flourish.
Abacha ruled by decrees, proscribed political parties, detained journalists, silenced labour unions, and governed without elections. President Tinubu governs under a Constitution freely adopted by Nigerians, was elected through a competitive multi-party process, and remains subject to judicial review, legislative oversight, and the verdict of the electorate. To conflate the two is to trivialise the suffering Nigerians endured under military rule and insult the intelligence of a politically conscious populace.
The columnist laments alleged fractures within opposition parties and hastily attributes them to some imagined inferno lit by the ruling party. This conveniently ignores a basic democratic principle: political parties are voluntary associations governed by their own constitutions. Internal disputes, factionalism, and leadership crises are not new phenomena, nor are they exclusive to Nigeria or to this administration. To blame the APC for the chronic ideological emptiness, weak internal democracy, and perennial litigation that plague opposition parties is to outsource responsibility where introspection is required.
Democracy does not guarantee the survival of opposition parties; it guarantees their freedom to organise, contest, win or lose. The APC neither appoints opposition leaders nor drafts their constitutions. Political failure should not be laundered as victimhood.
We find it curious that the article invokes scholars like Samuel Huntington while ignoring the central thesis of The Third Wave: that democratic consolidation is strengthened not by sentimental alarmism but by institutions, elections, and civic responsibility. Nigeria today has functioning courts that routinely rule against government, a National Assembly that debates and amends executive proposals, and a media landscape that publishes some of the harshest critiques of government without fear of midnight knocks. These are not the features of dictatorship, no matter how attractively wrapped in metaphor.
The recurring obsession with “one-party state” rhetoric is equally misplaced. Nigeria has over a dozen registered political parties, opposition governors, opposition lawmakers, and opposition-controlled states. That some governors or politicians choose to align with the ruling party is not evidence of coercion; it is evidence of political choice – often driven by performance, pragmatism, or survival instincts shaped by voter expectations. Defections are not coups.
We also reject the insinuation that national consensus around leadership or reform automatically translates to tyranny. In moments of economic transition and structural reform, broad elite convergence is not unusual. It happened in post-war Europe; it happened in emerging Asian democracies. Consensus is not dictatorship; it is sometimes the price of stability.
The Lagos APC acknowledges that democracy thrives on robust opposition, constructive dissent, and constant vigilance. However, dissent must be grounded in facts, not fear; in analysis, not apocalyptic projections. Nigeria’s democracy is not perfect – no democracy is – but it is neither suspended nor on life support.
History teaches us many lessons, but one stands out clearly: democracies are weakened not only by authoritarian overreach, but also by reckless rhetoric that delegitimises institutions and erodes public confidence without evidence. When everything is described as tyranny, nothing is.
Nigeria did not fight military rule to romanticise it in hindsight. Abacha is not alive in 2026. What is alive is a democracy is still finding its rhythm – noisy, imperfect, contested, but constitutional.
And that distinction matters.
Mogaji (Hon.) Seye Oladejo
Spokesman, Lagos State APC.
29/01/26.
