June 12: Tinubu leading Nigeria to diarchy?

Unbeknown to many Nigerians, some governance circumstances of June 12, 2025 may have set the tone for the establishment of diarchy system of government in the country, courtesy of the megalomanic tendencies of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

Diarchy is a system of government in which two lines of authority rule a single political entity. For Nigeria, the two lines of authority are the constitutionally elected civilian authority and the military high command.

Led by either self-interest or shortsightedness, President Bola Tinubu may be wittingly or otherwise returning Nigeria to another stint of military intervention in the governance of the country, with Rivers State as the starting point. This is just as the zero hour for takeover of the entire country by elements in the military establishment is beyond any body’s guess.

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At over 70 years of age, with working experience in both public and private media establishments, this author has seen enough of the country’s political shenanigans to sound an alarm when necessary. Beside the foregoing, whoever is in doubt should revisit the trend of events in recent times, along with the president’s oration at the joint address to the two chambers of the National Assembly, which largely suffered a non-committal appreciation by the legislative establishment but for Senator Seriake Dickson of Bayelsa State who spoke to save the country’s democracy.    

Nigeria just marked on June 12, 2025, this year’s ‘Democracy Day’ with an address by President Bola Tinubu to the joint session of the Senate and House of Representatives of the National Assembly, among other activities. 

Designated ‘Democracy Day’ in 2018 by former President Muhamadu Buhari, the day is in commemoration of the circumstances of June 12, 1993 when results from the popular presidential election of that year which featured late Moshood Abiola as winner, were annulled by the military administration of General Ibrahim Babangida in pursuit of an agenda for installing diarchy, which as described earlier, is a system of sharing power between the military and civilian authorities.

In the contemplation of the military authorities then, the states were to be administered by elected civilian governors, while the entire country would be under the military leadership in one form or another. However, when by the play-out of the politics of the day, billionaire Moshood Abiola won the election, the military establishment saw power slipping off their fingers; hence they annulled the results. Just as well, the scenario set up a backlash that reverberated into a series of crises, which eventually led to the exit of the military in 1999 and commencement of the current spate of 26 years of unbroken civil democratic rule. This is the same dispensation which Nigerians, including himself, fought against 32 years ago that President Bola Tinubu is toying with.

In his address to the National Assembly, Tinubu had, among other pronouncements, defined the ideals of ‘June 12’ dispensation as “freedom, transparent and accountable government, social justice, active citizen participation and a just society where no one is oppressed.”

Against the backdrop of such pronouncement by him, and on a more reflective note lies the question of how far the ideals of ‘June 12’ are being actualised during his tenure now in its second year and midterm.

This is where the president’s address to the National Assembly qualifies more as a charade, being an attempt to hoodwink the entire country with sweet talk that hides a darker motive of crass megalomania.

It is on record that at the mark of two years of Tinubu, Nigerians have tasted of the scant premium placed on the ideals of ‘June 12’ by him with respect to their living conditions. Under him, Nigerians have tasted significant highhandedness, repression of protests against debilitating hunger and starvation, as well as an embrace of the return by the military to governance, as in Rivers State where he acted beyond the constitution by suspending an elected governor and appointed a sole administrator with sweeping powers to replace the democratic institutions of governance.

Ordinarily, the constitution provides the guideline and boundaries for safeguarding democracy in the country, with the legislature acting as gatekeeper for the people. However, given the loud silence and fawning acquiescence of the National Assembly to the excesses of the president, Nigerians are out on a limb.    

Just as well, given the close association of Bola Tinubu with the dynamics of the June 12 1993 dispensation, it remains a valid expectation of Nigerians that his tenure should uphold its ideals, especially as he stated in his words cited earlier. 

However, against the backdrop of some of his more pronounced unconstitutional proclivities in governance, one would wonder if such could be attributed to one of the vaunted icons of the struggle for democracy as Tinubu. Lofty and inspiring as Tinubu’s pronouncements may be, they are nevertheless yet to be matched with action by him, just as has been the case with some of his predecessors. 

With a measure of veracity, not a few observers have associated the current dip in the country’s economic fortunes with the ascendancy of the administration of Muhamadu Buhari, whose style failed to lift the country beyond the successes of the Jonathan era. Even President Bola Tinubu, uncharitably, often cites how he inherited a collapsed economy from his predecessor, Buhari. This he does to justify the adoption of draconian measures to twist the country according to his parochial fancies, with the claim of righting the system, even as he may be leading the country down the road to diarchy.

 In the final analysis, if at two years in office all that Nigerians are getting from President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is this growing freedom of restricting civil liberties of the citizenry, along with a progression towards diarchy, it is left to the imagination what the future holds for the country under him.  God, save Nigeria.