The Tyrant and the Con in Nigerian Politics

Democracy is humanity’s most ambitious wager. The notion that ordinary people, given a voice and a vote, can govern themselves better than kings or self-appointed saviors is still revolutionary. But democracy has always had a major weakness: it is an open door. The same system that can elevate reformers can also admit predators.

Two of the most formidable are tyrants and cons. The former oppresses a country, while the latter steals it. The tyrant believes he alone is entitled to rule, and the con sees public office as a private vault. Nigeria today is a case study in what happens when both arrive at once.

As the country heads toward the 2027 general elections, the headlines read like a catalogue of democratic decay: a former Central Bank governor standing trial over $4.5 billion in alleged fraud; a former attorney-general facing charges tied to N8.7 billion in money laundering; a former Kogi governor accused of looting N80 billion from a state that still cannot pay teachers on time. Meanwhile, in Rivers State, a governor faces impeachment not because of policy failure, but because a political godfather has decided he must go.

Meanwhile in Kaduna, former Governor Mallam Nasir El-Rufai finds himself ensnared in legal proceedings that critics widely regard as politically motivated. And across the National Assembly, lawmakers allegedly demand bribes of up to ₦3 million just to present motions on the floor of the House.

Yet, amid this landscape of institutional rot and democratic backsliding, the Tinubu-led administration appears more invested in propaganda than in substance. Rather than confronting the escalating crises of banditry and kidnapping that have turned highways into death traps and rural communities into ghost towns, the government has opted for a public relations strategy designed to distract and conceal.

Security briefings have been replaced by orchestrated media narratives and grim statistics are buried beneath polished press releases. The same machinery of state that cannot protect schoolchildren from abduction is being mobilized not for reform, but for re-election—quietly scheming to engineer a second term for a presidency that has yet to earn its first.

This is not abstract theory. This is Nigeria today.

Nigeria has seen its share of tyrants—from Sani Abacha’s iron-fisted rule to the military juntas that preceded the Fourth Republic. But the threat has shifted. Today, the greater danger is the con: the leader who wears the mask of democracy while treating the treasury as a personal estate.

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, whose administration has been marked by budget manipulation, opaque oil-sector accounting, and the weaponization of anti-corruption agencies against political opponents, fits this pattern with disturbing precision. Where Abacha ruled by decree, Tinubu rules by deception—preserving democratic forms while hollowing out their substance.

The Tyrant: A Creature of Delusion

The tyrant’s central delusion is indispensability. He does not merely desire power; he imagines himself identical with the nation, conflating himself with the citizen collective. In this world, opposition becomes treason, criticism becomes sabotage, and institutions are obstacles to be bent with impunity. Total dominion is the point.

Ferdinand Marcos offers the classic pattern. Elected in the Philippines in 1965 as a reformer, he used democratic legitimacy as a ladder to autocracy. In 1972 he declared martial law, suspended the constitution, and ruled by decree for fourteen years. His family’s plunder—estimated as high as $5 billion—was immense, but it was not the whole crime. Marcos hollowed out courts, crushed dissent, and converted the state into an instrument of personal authority.

Across Africa, the tyrant’s playbook is depressingly familiar. From Idi Amin’s Uganda to Mobutu Sese Seko’s Zaire, from Sani Abacha’s Nigeria to today’s military juntas in the Sahel, the pattern repeats: democratic forms are retained just long enough to provide cover, then unilaterally discarded when they become inconvenient.

The Con: Deliberate and Calculating

The con is a bit different. He may enjoy power, but he does not confuse himself with destiny. He sees the state primarily as an acquisition target. Where the tyrant wants obedience, the con wants assets. His ideal government is not necessarily a dictatorship; it is a system in which legality and influence make theft look like administration.

The scale can be staggering. World Bank estimates placed Suharto’s embezzlement from Indonesia between $15 billion and $35 billion. Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire and Sani Abacha in Nigeria looted fortunes from societies that desperately needed schools, hospitals, roads, and basic institutions. This is not ordinary corruption. It is state capture in which public authority is reorganized around private or familial enrichment.

Nigeria knows this species intimately. The 2022 Auditor-General’s report, published only in September 2025, revealed that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited failed to account for ₦22.3 billion, $49.7 million, £14.3 million and €5.2 million. The power sector allegedly misappropriated ₦128 billion even as the national grid suffered repeated collapses. And watchdog group BudgIT found that ₦6.93 trillion in questionable projects were allegedly inserted into the 2025 national budget by the National Assembly itself.

Here, the con’s genius is subtlety. He need not abolish elections if campaign money, captured regulators, pliant courts, and partisan media can guarantee that nothing changes. The press is not banned; it is bought. The opposition is not outlawed; it is outspent and cowed. The judiciary is not dissolved; it is quietly stacked in his favor.

The Deadly Synergy

These two figures often reinforce each other. A tyrant’s assault on checks and balances creates space for looters, while a con’s corruption breeds the cynicism and desperation that authoritarians exploit to their own benefit. Sometimes they are the same person. More often, they are partners in predation, one crushing accountability from above while the other drains the public wealth below.

In Nigeria, this erosion is measurable. Transparency International’s 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index kept the country frozen at a score of 26 out of 100—the same stagnant rating that signals deep structural failure. Eighty-six attacks on journalists and media organizations were recorded in 2025 alone. And as the 2027 elections approach, the opposition is weakening, defections are rising, and resistance to electoral reforms—including mandatory electronic transmission of results—is hardening.

The Defense of Democracy

This is why the defense of democracy must be both institutional and civic. Sustainable democracies need term limits, independent courts, a free and unwavering press, transparent campaign finance, professional civil services, and nonpartisan anti-corruption enforcement. But structures alone are not enough. Citizens must recognize when ‘law and order’ means impunity for the powerful, and when talk of prosperity masks deliberate and well-organized looting.

History offers proof that popular mobilization can halt even the most entrenched predators. In the Philippines, the 1986 People Power Revolution toppled Ferdinand Marcos after two decades of martial law and kleptocracy, restoring democratic institutions through sustained civil disobedience. In Indonesia, the Reformasi movement of 1998 forced Suharto’s resignation after thirty-two years of authoritarian looting, triggered by mass protests that the military ultimately refused to crush.

Closer to home, Nigeria’s own June 12 struggle demonstrated that a mobilized citizenry could delegitimize stolen mandates and compel political reckoning. These moments share a common thread: they succeeded not because institutions were strong, but because ordinary people—students, workers, market women, professionals—refused to accept the normalization of theft and oppression. The tyrant and the con rely on public resignation; their greatest vulnerability is a citizenry that organizes, protests, and votes with conviction.

The tyrant and the con will always test our resolve. Democracy cannot prevent their emergence, but it can provide the means to expose and remove them before their roots grow too deep. The tyrant oppresses a country. The con steals it. But the most important lesson throughout history is that a vigilant people can stop both, in Nigeria and elsewhere.

Mohammed Salihu Shaba is a Nigerian businessman, entrepreneur, and political strategist committed to advancing innovation and transformative leadership across Africa.