On Friday, 29 May 2026, Nigeria’s Fourth Republic turned twenty-seven. But what happened a couple of months back still gnaws at my conscience.
In the fluorescent-drenched jungle of electoral sloganeering and sesquipedalian grandstanding, where democracy is served piping hot in branded polythene bags, one man stood defiant.
Clad in a faded T-shirt that had survived three changes of guard and fuelled by a spirit of pious fatigue, he raised his voice. It was not a call to the barricades, but a liturgical confession:
“I want to die for Nigeria!”
This was neither the dark ideation of the clinically depressed nor the dry wit of the satirist. It was patriotism distilled into a potent, psychedelic mirage.
In this beloved enclave, where promises arrive with the velocity of light and vanish with the frequency of the national grid, leaders ascend to power on the prayer points of the very people they are destined to dispossess.
Our election seasons have become more vibrant than a masquerade festival, and at twenty-seven, the Republic has entered its most promiscuous phase yet.
We have witnessed a new genre of political alchemy: Judicial Jenga.
We watch as the Federal High Courts play musical chairs with election timetables, shifting dates with the nonchalance of a landlord adjusting rent after a heavy night of drinking.
The law has become a bespoke garment, nipped and tucked by “learned silks” to fit the protruding bellies of the highest bidders.
When the calendar doesn’t suit the caucus, a gavel falls, and time itself is commanded to stand still, proving that in Nigeria, the sun must seek a court injunction before it dares to set in the West.
Then there is the masterclass in political necromancy – the “Resurrected Waiver.” We saw the man from Otuoke, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, being wooed and “waived” back into the fray by the Tanimu Turaki-led PDP faction, while the Nyesom Wike sector of the party stands arms akimbo.
It is a spectacle of washing a retired masquerade, attempting to exhume a legacy once buried with a collective sigh of relief, only to find that in the PDP, “repentance” is a commodity traded in the backrooms of Abuja.
It seems the umbrella has become so porous that it now requires a ghost to hold the handle, granting an automatic ticket to a man who once surrendered it, while the living scramble for the crumbs of his return.
The Great Flag-Scramble has turned the opposition space into a ribald theatre of the absurd.
The argy-bargy between the heavyweights, the Amaechis and the Atikus, has become a spectator sport of high-stakes hubris.
Having fled their former nests, they now wrestle for the soul of the ADC like two ageing gladiators fighting over a tattered loincloth.
Amaechi taunts Atiku about his “electability,” reminding the Waziri that winning a primary is not the same as winning a country, while Atiku smiles with the serenity of a man who has bought the house and the furniture before the guests arrive.
Yet, Mohammed Hayatu-deen’s stranger-than-fiction poise on the outcome of the primaries leaves one askance. They all barter for the Number One spot, with no one willing to settle for the role of running mate; they haggle like traders at a midnight cattle market, looking for “loyalists” who are willing to be seen but not heard, or heard but not felt.
The “Third Way” offers its own brand of risible comedy. In the corner of the newly minted NDC (Nigeria Democratic Congress), we see the uneasy tango of Obi and Kwankwaso – the “OK Movement.”
They are two suitors trying to decide who gets to wear the white gown and who gets to carry the bouquet, having fled the “toxic” fumes of the ADC for the sanctuary of Seriake Dickson’s manor.
Their “marriage of convenience” has the stability of a tripod with two legs, yet they invite the diaspora to a feast where the menu hasn’t even been printed.
Meanwhile, the ADC itself has transformed into a house of many mansions and even more locks.
Dumebi Kachikwu, already endorsed by one faction, stands at the window while another faction prepares the guillotine.
It is a party where the certificate of return is treated like a shared WhatsApp status – visible to all, but owned by none.
And what of the “Landlord Candidates”? Omoyele Sowore has the AAC ticket reserved like a VIP table at a lounge, forever the agitator waiting for a revolution that seems permanently stuck in Lagos traffic.
Adewole Adebayo has “cornered” the SDP, turning a historic party into a personal fiefdom, proving that if you can’t win the crowd, you can at least own the stage.
Once the ink dries on the ballot, our politicians perform a vanishing act that would leave Harry Houdini questioning his life’s work.
We recall Ijapa the Tortoise and his legendary trek to the feast in the sky. You remember the tale: Ijapa, possessing no wings, persuaded the birds to lend him their feathers. Upon reaching the celestial banquet, he craftily took the name “All of You.”
When the hosts served the ambrosia for “all of you,” the Tortoise feasted until his shell strained, while the birds, the actual proprietors of the feathers, starved in the corner.
In our modern bestiary, the Tortoise has company. We have witnessed the mystical prowess of the “Fiscal Serpent” – that legendary snake which allegedly slithered into a cashier’s safe and swallowed millions of naira in cash.
It is a peculiar Nigerian biology where reptiles develop a taste for banknotes and primates develop an appetite for agricultural grants. When the budget is passed for “The Masses,” these creatures – both the two-legged and the slinking varieties – consume it with rapacious fervour.
Our judicial theatre provides even more entertainment. We have mastered the art of the “Sabbatical Sentence.”
We watch as “convicted” leaders either get sentenced in absentia or spend their jail terms in the comfort of hospitals or VIP wings, only to be granted a full pardon and a clean slate by the brotherhood of power.
It seems the only thing more malleable than our constitution is the conscience of a leader seeking a state pardon.
For the Nigerian Governor, the Senate is no longer a legislative house; it is a gilded retirement home.
After eight years of “service,” they migrate to the Red Chamber to slumber through sessions, while their home states pay for the privilege.
These governors have signed into law colossal retirement packages that would make a Silicon Valley CEO weep with envy: stately mansions in the state capital and Abuja, a fleet of armoured SUVs replaced every three years, and life salaries for a mere eight-year stint.
Contrast this with the “humanitarian reality” of the street.
While the ex-governor relaxes in his Abuja villa, the civil servant who gave thirty-five years of sweat remains unpaid.
We see our fathers and mothers, the builders of the nation, reduced to “Verification Martyrs.”
They stand in ten-hour queues under an implacable rain and scorching sun, clutching faded files to prove they are still alive, just to receive a pension that barely covers a bag of salt.
At twenty-seven, the Fourth Republic is old enough to have a mortgage and a midlife crisis, yet it still insists on playing with matches. Irony is our national anthem.
We export world-class surgeons while our local clinics bleed out for want of bandages. We are a nation of geniuses trapped in a script written by clowns.
It was in those same queues, the endless verification lines, the humiliating scrambles for subsistence, that the patriot’s vow found its cruel fulfilment.
Sallah in a few days, and family members have no hope, except for the “bag” promised by a benevolent Senator.
The patriot, tormented by the plight of kidnapped schoolchildren, still in captivity after two weeks, contacted the local councillor.
He was helpless. He pleaded with Sunday Igboho for help, no way. Instead, he found a man more interested in pressuring the President to s’igun (declare war) for him, behaving like an Ilari Oloyo of unsung memory.
Our patriot, or is he a compatriot, approached Mr Governor, the Chief Security Officer of the State, who passed the buck to Abuja, more inclined to supplant the President than protect his people.
His mother’s kinsman, who governs the neighbouring state to his south, and the other Governor to the north were embroiled in their senatorial quests, more interested in consensus and photo opportunities with Jagaban than lending a hand. Exasperated, he still found reason to go after the rice.
Our patriot, the man who wanted to die for his country, finally achieved his grim ambition.
He expired while standing in a ten-hour queue for a five-kilogramme bag of “Mercy Rice.”
As he collapsed, he did not mutter a curse. He whispered to the bystanders: “Tell my children… to vote with their heads… or just find the nearest international airport.”
He had hoped to celebrate Sallah with his family, a festival of mercy and renewal that, by cosmic coincidence, was observed this year on May 27, universally acknowledged as Children’s Day.
His whispered message to his children was not a curse but an instruction, a paternal benediction in the shadow of despair.
Yet he did not live to witness the political fanfare of the Republic’s 27th anniversary, a democracy he had laboured for with blood, sweat, and hope. It is so sad that a man who dreamed of mercy found only queues, and a nation that promised renewal delivered only repetition.
Yesterday, he was interred near an uncompleted “Youth Innovation Hub” that had been commissioned four times by three different administrations. His epitaph, carved by a cynical local mason, reads: “Here lies a man who waited for the Tortoise to share the meat. He died of a broken heart and a profoundly empty stomach.”
Nigeria’s politics is a folktale told by tricksters to an audience that desperately wants to believe in magic.
The Tortoise still schemes, the Snake is still counting the cash, the courts are still tailoring the calendars, and the Governor is already picking out the wallpaper for his Abuja retirement palace. Yet, we still clap. We still hope.
The Fourth Republic is twenty-seven. It is old enough to know better, but young enough to still pretend it doesn’t. Dying for Nigeria is easy – the government facilitates that on a daily basis.
The real challenge, the true act of defiance, is finding a reason to live for it.
