Nigeria’s democracy does not only rise or fall on election day. It rises or falls in the months after elections, when political elites decide whether they will play the long game of constitutionalism or the short game of sabotage.
In moments when coup rumors, the real test is not only whether security agencies can detect and deter subversion. The deeper test is whether the political class and opinion leaders across the federation have the maturity to lower the temperature, isolate extremists, rally around the constitutional centre and demonstrate that Nigeria is one.
The latest wave of reporting on an alleged coup plot to overthrow the present administration leaves a bad taste in our national political memory. More worrying is how quickly such security controversies can be interpreted through a regional lens and weaponised as political ammunition, giving the names of the suspects and their region. That tendency is dangerous, not because any region is a single mind, but because Nigeria’s politics has a history of turning the conduct of a few into collective suspicion, and then turning suspicion into a permanent national mood.
This is why the most strategic response to coup allegations, whether substantiated or exaggerated, is a visible, cross regional recommitment to democratic continuity. The point is not to treat any part of Nigeria as suspect, or to demand political loyalty as penance. The point is to make it harder for anti democratic actors to sell their message, and easier for the state to govern without operating under a cloud of existential instability.
In that spirit, the country must make a clearer national choice. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration, having emerged through the constitutional process, must be supported to govern without sabotage or manufactured paralysis, and must be allowed to run its full course. This is not because any leader is beyond criticism, but because Nigeria must never reward the doctrine that an elected government can be destabilised whenever some interests feel impatient, uncomfortable, or politically displaced.
Tinubu’s government, whatever one’s partisan preference, represents the constitutional centre today. The responsibility of serious political leadership is to protect that centre while contesting policy choices through lawful and democratic means. The alternative is to create a nation where power is no longer secured by persuasion and votes, but by pressure and fear. That is how countries slide from democracy into permanent uncertainty, and Nigeria cannot afford that regression.
For Northern Nigeria in particular, there is a uniquely constructive role to play as an act of statesmanship. The North’s mainstream political, traditional, religious, and business leadership carries historic weight in elite bargaining and national mood setting. When that leadership signals clearly that constitutional rule is non negotiable, that coups and coup talk are unacceptable, and that President Tinubu and the south must be allowed to run his tenure, it does more than calm markets and reassure investors.
It shrinks the political space in which strongman fantasies thrive. It tells would be adventurists that there will be no social licence, no elite cover, and no romanticisation. It also tells the rest of the country that unity is not a slogan, it is a practice.
Nigeria has repeatedly suffered from the anxiety that each election is a life and death struggle over regional survival. One of the most stabilising ways to reduce this toxic pressure is to deepen the culture of democratic patience and constitutional sequence.
Let the South complete its constitutionally won tenure under President Tinubu, including a second term if voters renew the mandate, and then let political competition return to the North through the ballot, not through unhealthy agitation, coercive pressure, or elite brinkmanship.
Constructive engagement is not blind support. It is strategic participation. It is the choice to influence policy by entering the arena rather than by throwing stones from outside. It is the decision to insist on results and accountability while still protecting the constitutional order.
In a federation as diverse as Nigeria, this is how national bargains endure. Regions do not become one by pretending they have no disagreements. They become one by agreeing that disagreements must be settled by ballots, courts, and institutions, not by coercion, threats, or destabilisation.
The opportunity in this moment is therefore bigger than any single report. It is an opportunity to model democratic maturity and to reduce the temperature of regional suspicion. For the North, the signal can be especially potent. A clear, repeated, and practical commitment to national stability, a firm rejection of anti democratic currents, and an intentional decision to stand with the constitutional order by supporting President Tinubu to complete his tenure, including a second term if that is the people’s choice, will strengthen the federation, stabilise governance, and reduce the incentive for reckless actors to experiment with chaos.
In the end, Nigeria does not need compulsory loyalty. It needs credible unity and democratic patience. And credible unity is built when all regions, and the leaders who shape public mood, choose constitutional politics over brinkmanship, cooperation over combustible narratives, and the discipline of elections over the temptation of sabotage. That is how Nigeria is one stops being a slogan and becomes a strategy.
Pelumi Olajengbesi is a Legal Practitioner and writes from Abuja.
Pelumi@lawcorridor.org
28/01/2026.
