AmanaOnline

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is a most fortunate man. Not because his policies have
eased suffering, nor because his governance has inspired confidence, but because he
governs a country where endorsement has been elevated above evidence. In other
democracies, leaders anxiously await verdicts from voters. In Nigeria, leaders are
spared this inconvenience. They are endorsed in advance, in bulk, and on credit.

Since assuming office, the president has enjoyed a flourishing endorsement economy.
Hardly a week passes without a delegation discovering that national salvation depends
on his continuation in office. Associations of this, caucuses of that, councils nobody
remembers electing, and bodies that appear to have been assembled specifically for the
purpose – all rush forward to insist that Nigeria must not be “distracted” by alternatives.
The implication is clear: democracy is most stable when choices are removed.
What makes these endorsements especially admirable is their independence from
material conditions. Inflation may rise, wages may collapse, the naira may wander like a
lost pilgrim, but endorsement remains rock solid. Hunger, it turns out, is no barrier to
loyalty – provided one is not hungry. The poor are invited to admire sacrifice from a
distance, while those endorsing continuity do so from air-conditioned rooms, well
insulated from the reforms they praise.

The speed of this adoration is also instructive. No administration in modern Nigerian
history has been so vigorously endorsed so early and so often, suggesting either
unprecedented success or unprecedented anxiety. Since success is harder to
demonstrate, anxiety has wisely been endorsed instead. Campaigning has become a
full-time occupation of governance, a necessary distraction from the tedious work of
fixing refineries, stabilising food prices, or explaining why reform always seems to hurt
the same people.

Every endorsement follows a familiar script. A convener speaks of “national interest.” A
spokesperson warns against “going backwards.” Someone invokes history, sacrifice,
and destiny. Then, usually after photographs have been taken, a few members quietly
disassociate themselves, reminding the country that even within staged consensus,
conscience sometimes refuses to clap on cue. These dissenters are tolerated briefly,
then forgotten. Endorsement, like power, does not require unanimity – only volume.

The most impressive achievement of this endorsement republic is the successful
marginalisation of the electorate. Voters, after all, are unreliable. They ask impolite
questions about food, fuel, rent, and school fees. They insist on connecting policy to
lived experience. It is far safer to build legitimacy from retired politicians, defecting
governors, and transactional elites who understand that ideology is temporary but
access is eternal. Thus, while every conceivable group has endorsed the president, the one group constitutionally empowered to do so – the electorate – has been politely ignored.

This exclusion is not accidental; it is strategic. The electorate does not issue
communiqués. It does not attend hotel conferences. It cannot be mobilised with
transport allowances or persuaded with promises of relevance. The electorate waits,
suffers, remembers. And this, in elite political culture, is considered dangerous
behaviour.

Meanwhile, the ruling party expands like a political sponge, absorbing governors and
legislators at a rate that suggests not popularity but precaution. Opposition dissolves not
through persuasion, but through exhaustion and inducement. Institutions that should
referee democracy rehearse their neutrality with studied silence. The country is gently
guided toward a one-choice election, carefully marketed as national unity.

At this point, satire must apologise to reality for lagging behind. Hardship is now
described as discipline, protest as ingratitude, and survival as evidence of progress.
Nigerians are told they are feeling pain because reform is working, and that the proof of
success lies in how much suffering can be endured without complaint. Endorsements
serve as supporting evidence: if important people are happy, the country must be
improving.

Yet there remains an inconvenient flaw in this otherwise elegant system: elections.
Endorsements, no matter how numerous, cannot vote. Press statements do not line up
at polling units. Coalitions of the willing cannot thumbprint ballots. On election day, all
the applause, choreography, and elite consensus dissolve into a simple arithmetic that
no amount of endorsement can rig out of existence.

And so, while the president may appear lucky today—buoyed by declarations of loyalty
and orchestrated affection – his greatest risk is also quietly growing. The electorate,
unendorsing and unendorsed, is watching. It has not issued statements. It has not
convened conferences. It has merely taken note.

History, unlike endorsement groups, does not clap. It records. And when the day comes,
it will not ask who endorsed whom, but who suffered, who benefited, and who was
ignored. On that day, Nigeria will discover that the most dangerous group in politics is
not the loudest – but the one that waited patiently for its turn to speak.

And when that day arrives, the architects of this endorsement republic may discover –
too late – that legitimacy cannot be inherited, rented, or choreographed. The electorate,
long treated as background noise in elite negotiations, will step forward not as a mob
but as an accountant, calmly auditing years of pain against years of promises. No
convoy will escort this verdict, no communiqué will soften it, and no last-minute
endorsement will negotiate its terms. In that quiet moment, power will learn the lesson it

tried hardest to forget: that in a democracy, the people do not endorse leaders for
comfort – they remove them for contempt.