ELECTIONS CAN WAIT: SAVING NIGERIA FROM COLLAPSE MUST COME FIRST

ELECTIONS CAN WAIT: SAVING NIGERIA FROM COLLAPSE MUST COME FIRST

By Jonathan Ishaku

The rush toward the 2027 general elections amid Nigeria’s worsening security crisis raises a fundamental question: what is the purpose of an election in a state that is progressively losing control over significant portions of its territory, struggling to protect its citizens, and increasingly unable to perform the most basic functions of governance?

This is an uncomfortable question in a country that has spent the last quarter century celebrating electoral democracy. Yet it is a question that must be asked if Nigeria is to avoid drifting toward national catastrophe. Elections are important.

Democracy is important. Constitutional government is important. But none of these can survive if the state itself collapses. The first duty of any government is not the conduct of elections; it is the preservation of the nation.

Today, Nigeria confronts a multifaceted security crisis whose cumulative impact has long surpassed the threshold of conventional warfare. The nation is simultaneously battling Boko Haram and ISWAP in the North-East, bandit terrorism in the North-West, genocidal and ethnic-cleansing violence in parts of the North-Central, separatist violence in the South-East, organized kidnapping networks across large sections of the federation, and various forms of criminal violence that continue to undermine public authority.

The statistics are sobering. Millions of Nigerians remain internally displaced. Thousands are killed annually. Entire communities have been emptied. Farmers abandon their fields for fear of attack.

Schools have been shut down. Rural economies have collapsed across vast areas. Millions of children remain out of school. Food insecurity continues to deepen. In many places, armed non-state actors impose taxes, regulate movement, dictate local affairs, and exercise more practical authority than the government itself.

Yet, amid this gathering storm, the political class appears consumed by preparations for the next election cycle.

Political alignments are being negotiated. Campaign structures are being assembled. Alliances are being forged and broken. Presumably, too, resources that ought to be directed toward the preservation of national security are increasingly diverted toward political calculations. The nation appears to be preparing for an election while simultaneously losing an existential war.

This contradiction is both dangerous and unsustainable.
History provides useful guidance. Nations facing existential threats have often suspended normal political processes in order to focus on survival. During the Second World War, the United Kingdom postponed the general election due in 1940.

Parliament repeatedly extended its mandate because national leaders understood a simple reality: there can be no meaningful democratic contest while the nation is engaged in a struggle for survival. The priority was victory, not politics.
More recently, Ukraine has postponed elections because of its war with Russia.

Although Ukraine’s situation differs significantly from Nigeria’s, the underlying principle remains the same. Elections, however desirable, must not be allowed to undermine national survival.

Indeed, there is a strong argument that the impact of Nigeria’s crisis on governance is, in some respects, more devastating than that of Ukraine’s war.

Ukraine faces a clearly defined external enemy. The war has strengthened national cohesion and mobilized society behind a common purpose. Despite enormous destruction, the Ukrainian state remains largely intact. Government institutions continue to function. National identity has been reinforced.

The population understands the nature of the threat.
Nigeria’s challenge is far more complex and arguably more corrosive. The threats are multiple, dispersed, decentralized, and deeply embedded within society’s divisions. There is no single battlefield. There is no single enemy. There is no unified national mobilization. Instead, violence gradually hollows out state authority from within.

Entire communities negotiate directly with bandits because they have lost confidence in state protection. Families sell assets to pay ransom. Farmers pay levies to armed groups to gain access to their own farmlands. Local governments become little more than administrative shells. Schools are abandoned. Health facilities cease functioning. Roads become unsafe. Economic activities shrink.

This is not merely insecurity. It is the progressive erosion of sovereignty.
For this reason, the argument that Nigeria is not technically at war misses the point entirely. War is not defined solely by the presence of foreign armies crossing national borders. The real test is the degree to which violence threatens the state’s monopoly of force, disrupts governance, destroys livelihoods, displaces populations, and undermines national stability.
By these measures, Nigeria has long crossed the threshold of a war-like situation.

The consequences extend far beyond the battlefield. Education has become one of the major casualties. Thousands of schools have been closed or rendered inaccessible by insecurity. Millions of children have been denied learning opportunities. Entire generations risk growing up with limited education, diminished prospects, and increased vulnerability to recruitment by criminal and extremist groups.

Agriculture, the backbone of rural livelihoods, has also suffered enormously. Large areas of fertile land are either inaccessible or cultivated under constant threat. Farmers are kidnapped, murdered, or forced to pay protection levies to armed groups. The resulting decline in agricultural productivity contributes directly to food shortages and rising prices, worsening poverty and hunger.

The economic implications are equally severe. Investors avoid insecure regions. Businesses close or relocate. Transport costs rise because of insecurity along major routes. Public funds that should support development are diverted toward emergency security operations.

Communities already struggling with poverty sink deeper into deprivation.
The governance implications are perhaps the most troubling. In many areas, the state is no longer perceived as the primary guarantor of security. Citizens increasingly rely on self-help arrangements, vigilante groups, traditional structures, or direct negotiations with armed actors. Whenever citizens lose confidence in the state’s ability to protect them, the legitimacy of the state itself begins to erode.

Against this backdrop, the insistence that elections must proceed according to schedule deserves closer scrutiny.
Those who advocate an unalterable electoral timetable often invoke democracy. However, elections and democracy are not identical concepts. Elections are merely one instrument of democratic governance. By themselves, they do not guarantee accountability, competence, security, development, or justice.

Nigeria’s experience since 1999 demonstrates this reality. The country has held multiple election cycles, yet insecurity has increasingly worsened, poverty has deepened, infrastructure remains inadequate, corruption persists, and public confidence in institutions continues to decline. Elections have become routine, but good governance remains a challenge.

The assumption that another election, conducted amid escalating insecurity, will somehow solve these problems is therefore highly questionable. Neither Peter Obi nor Atiku Abubakar has the magic wand.
On the contrary, there is reason to fear that the electoral process itself may become compromised. How can elections be considered fully credible when millions of citizens are displaced from their homes? How can voter registration be effectively conducted in areas under the influence of armed groups? How can election officials safely access vulnerable communities? How can citizens freely participate when fear dominates daily life?
More importantly, how can political leaders devote the necessary attention to national security when they are simultaneously engaged in an intense struggle for political survival?

The pursuit of power inevitably consumes time, energy, resources, and attention. Elections magnify these distractions. Instead of concentrating on defeating insurgents, dismantling kidnapping networks, restoring rural security, and rebuilding state authority, political elites become preoccupied with campaigns, alliances, nominations, endorsements, defections, and electoral arithmetic.

The nation cannot afford such a diversion at this critical moment.
What is required instead is a comprehensive national security emergency. The federal government should seriously consider suspending partisan political activities and declaring a state of emergency focused specifically on national security and state preservation. Such a measure must be constitutionally grounded (involving the National Assembly), time-bound (specific timeframe), and subject to oversight. Its purpose would not be to destroy democracy but to preserve the conditions necessary for democracy to survive.

The entire nation should be mobilized toward a single objective like all nations at war: restoring security and recovering state authority. National resources should be redirected toward intelligence gathering, border security, protection of critical infrastructure, rural stabilization, and support for conflict-ravaged communities. The military, police, intelligence agencies, traditional institutions, local communities, and civil society must be integrated into a coordinated national effort.

This is not an argument against democracy. It is an argument for saving democracy from the consequences of state failure.
A nation does not exist because it conducts elections. Rather, it conducts elections because it exists as a functioning state. When the existence of that state is under severe threat, preserving it becomes the highest democratic responsibility.

The lesson from Britain in 1940 and Ukraine today is not that elections are unimportant. It is that there are moments in the life of a nation when survival must take precedence over political competition.

Nigeria may have reached such a moment.
History will not judge President Bola Tinubu by whether he held an election on schedule. History will judge him by whether he still a nation left to hold that election.

Jonathan Ishaku wrote in from Plateau.

ELECTIONS CAN WAIT: SAVING NIGERIA FROM COLLAPSE MUST COME FIRST