The founding National Secretary of the Alliance for Democracy, Prof. Udenta Udenta, has accused President Bola Tinubu of dismantling democratic values and using both the judiciary and the 1999 Constitution (as amended) as political weapons against Nigerians.
Speaking on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Thursday, Prof. Udenta, a Distinguished Fellow of the Abuja School of Social and Political Thought, criticized the suspension of Governor Siminalayi Fubara of Rivers State, describing it as a deliberate effort by the Tinubu administration to erode democratic institutions.
“The system that should protect democratic governance, you are weaponising them; the judiciary, the apparatus of the state, you are distorting, diluting, and transmogrifying them in a way and manner that is shutting down democratic conversations.
“That is what you find as the legacy of the Bola Tinubu president and his political agents,” Prof. Udenta said.
According to him, undermining democracy does not require military force but rather the misuse of democratic institutions such as the constitution and the judiciary.
“When you abandon the foundational norms of democracy and then you begin to use instruments you acquired in power to dismantle the guardrails that govern the democratic system, then democracy dies.
“It is not by firing a shot that democracy dies or crumbles, it is leveraging the guardrails like the constitution, like what was done in Rivers State, to abort democratic rules,” he stated.
Prof. Udenta also accused Rivers State Sole Administrator, Vice Admiral Ibok-Ete Ibas (retd), of weakening democratic structures by suspending all political appointees in the state.
“You find the sole administrator strutting around Port Harcourt, dismantling democratic infrastructure,” he remarked.
The political scholar described the situation in Rivers State as a “hybrid regime” that reflects “competitive authoritarianism”—a strategy, he argued, aimed at crippling the democratic framework at all levels, including labour unions, media houses, political parties, and civil society organizations.
He further expressed concern over the deteriorating quality of life in Nigeria under the Tinubu administration, citing rising hunger, poverty, and inflation as key indicators of the country’s declining welfare.
“There is poverty in the land, there is hunger everywhere, inflation is soaring, criminality and terrorism and all manners of insecurity pervade the nation, and the government is bemused like this current one,” Prof. Udenta lamented.
