PRESS STATEMENT

20th of November, 2025

TINUBU’S SHADOW POLITICS, WIKE’S OVERGROWN AMBITION, AND THE NIGERIA POLICE: A NEW ERA OF POWER INTOXICATION

Nigeria is witnessing a dangerous mutation of power—an unholy convergence of presidential influence, ministerial recklessness, and a police force increasingly weaponized for political errands. What we see today is not accidental; it is the outcome of a deliberate strategy of infiltrating, weakening, and destabilizing the opposition, particularly the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), through proxy actors and institutional intimidation.

While President Bola Ahmed Tinubu may publicly maintain political distance, the political architecture around him—especially through the enabling excesses of Nyesom Wike and the convenient silence of the Nigeria Police hierarchy—tells a different story. Wike has become the face of an aggressive, authoritarian brand of politics that thrives on fear, confrontation, and institutional overreach. His unchecked behaviour conveniently aligns with a broader agenda: fracture the PDP, suppress dissent, and shrink the democratic space.

This is not governance.
This is power intoxication.

Under the PDP’s long stretch in the central, Nigeria witnessed the most opposition-friendly environment in our democratic history. Opposition figures spoke freely. Parties held rallies without fear. Protesters were not treated as enemies of the state. Despite its flaws, the PDP presided over a political climate where dissent was not criminalised.

Today, the contrast is painful.

The same Nigeria Police that once protected democratic expression is now perceived as an extension of executive ego and vendetta politics. From selective arrests to overzealous interventions in civil matters, the message is clear: democracy is being policed into silence.

Nyesom Wike, emboldened by proximity to presidential power, has become the loud battering ram against his own party—openly tearing down the PDP structure while serving in an APC-led government. His actions do not occur in a vacuum. They thrive because a higher political power benefits from the fragmentation of the opposition.

This is the anonymous responsibility—subtle, indirect, unspoken, yet unmistakable.

Nigeria’s democracy is becoming hostage to individuals who treat power as personal property and institutions as instruments of intimidation. The opposition space is shrinking, not by superior ideas, but through coercion, fear, and political infiltration.

But history teaches one truth:
No democracy survives when rulers fear opposition more than they fear the loss of national stability.

The PDP, once the stabilising centre of Nigeria’s multi-party system, must now rise to defend itself—and the country—from the creeping authoritarianism taking root.

The era of silence is over.

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Signed:
Tolulope Ogunbiyi
Human Rights Activist and Concerned Citizen