How political actors manipulate democratic competition while preserving the appearance of choice
John Onyeukwu |
There is a peculiar feature of Nigerian politics that existing political vocabulary does not adequately capture. It is not simply authoritarianism, electoral fraud, violence, vote buying, ethnic mobilisation or propaganda, although it can contain elements of all of them. It is the manipulation of the conditions under which political competition takes place while preserving the formal appearance that competition remains open.
This is where the Nigerian political lexicon offers a potentially useful concept: Iberiberism.
Former Imo State Governor Rochas Okorocha coined the term from the Igbo word Iberibe, commonly associated with foolishness or foolery. But the concept can be extended beyond its original usage to describe a particular pathology of Nigerian democracy: the politics of manipulating the conditions of democratic competition while preserving its formal appearance.
A political system may have elections, parties, campaign rallies, courts and electoral laws, yet competition can still be distorted. Opposition candidates may technically be free to campaign but face administrative obstacles that incumbents do not. Citizens may be free to vote but subjected to misinformation, emotional manipulation and identity-based fear. Candidates may be free to speak but find that the public spaces and security arrangements necessary to reach voters are controlled by political authorities. The door remains open, but someone increasingly controls who can get through it.
Closing Political Space Without Banning Opposition
Democracy requires more than the legal existence of political parties; it requires a political environment in which candidates can communicate with citizens, organise supporters, hold rallies and compete for public attention without arbitrary interference. Section 91 of Nigeria’s Electoral Act 2022 provides protections for political rallies and processions and assigns the police responsibility for supporting their peaceful conduct. The underlying principle is that the state should facilitate political competition, not determine who benefits from it.
The controversy over campaign advertising fees announced in Abia State in July 2026 illustrates the tension between legitimate regulation and political exclusion. The state advertising agency announced a fee of ₦200 million for presidential candidates seeking campaign billboard and poster permits. Although governments have legitimate reasons to regulate outdoor advertising, the democratic question is whether such charges are proportionate to the regulatory purpose or create financial barriers that undermine meaningful competition. A fee may apply equally on paper while disproportionately disadvantaging candidates and parties with fewer resources. Formal equality does not necessarily guarantee substantive fairness.
Similar concerns arise when access to public venues, campaign permits or security depends on administrative discretion. During the 2023 presidential campaign, the Rivers State Government withdrew and subsequently re-issued approval for the PDP presidential candidate to use the Adokiye Amiesimaka Stadium, citing security concerns. Such concerns may be genuine, but transparent criteria and impartial oversight are necessary to distinguish legitimate security decisions from restrictions that could advantage one political actor over another. Section 95(2) of the Electoral Act prohibits the use of state apparatus to advantage or disadvantage a political party or candidate. Iberiberism emerges when political participation remains legally permissible but becomes practically more difficult for selected competitors.
Political Gaslighting: Manipulating what Citizens Believe
Iberiberism operates not only through control of physical political space but also through the manipulation of the information environment. Misinformation seeks to make citizens believe something false; political gaslighting goes further by undermining their confidence in their own understanding of political reality. It occurs when political actors repeatedly deny demonstrable failures, dismiss legitimate criticism as sabotage, portray demands for accountability as hostility, or insist that citizens are misreading problems they experience daily. Rather than explain reality, they attempt to redefine it to protect their political interests.
Nigeria’s 2023 elections illustrated the scale of the challenge. The Nigerian Fact-checkers’ Coalition recorded 127 fact-checked claims during the general elections, including 83 relating to the presidential and National Assembly elections. Of these 83 claims, 52 were found to be incorrect. Although political communication inevitably involves persuasion and selective presentation, the democratic danger emerges when deliberate falsehoods become a strategy for dominating public discourse and obscuring the distinction between evidence and fabrication. Social media has accelerated the circulation of misleading claims, manipulated images and videos, while artificial intelligence is making fabricated audio and visual content increasingly convincing.
The consequences extend beyond individual falsehoods. When every criticism is dismissed as partisan hostility and every policy failure is blamed on hidden enemies, citizens are encouraged to abandon independent judgment in favour of the political actor’s preferred narrative. Confusion becomes a political resource, weakening citizens’ ability to evaluate performance, demand accountability and make informed electoral choices. Political gaslighting therefore does more than distort public debate; it undermines the very capacity for independent judgment on which democratic accountability depends. The objective is not simply to win an argument, but to make citizens less confident in their ability to determine whether the argument is true.
Nigeria’s ethnic and religious diversity is not, in itself, a democratic problem. The danger arises when political actors transform identity into an instrument for determining who belongs, who deserves political power and who should be regarded as a threat. In a plural society, identity can provide a legitimate basis for cultural expression, representation and solidarity. Iberiberism begins when these attachments are deliberately manipulated to narrow political choice, manufacture fear or portray electoral competition as a struggle for the survival of one community against another.
Section 42 of the Nigerian Constitution prohibits discrimination on grounds including ethnic group, place of origin, religion and political opinion. Section 92 of the Electoral Act 2022 addresses campaign language that appeals to religious, ethnic, tribal or sectional feelings in ways prohibited by the law, including language likely to provoke violence. These safeguards recognise that political communication does not merely describe an election; it can shape the conditions under which citizens participate in it. When politicians frame electoral contests as existential battles between religious or ethnic communities, the central question shifts from which candidate can govern competently to which candidate can supposedly protect “people like us” from “people like them.”
This transformation weakens democratic accountability. The voter is no longer approached primarily as a citizen capable of assessing policies, competence and performance, but as a member of a bloc whose political allegiance is presumed to be determined by identity. A candidate can then evade scrutiny over insecurity, unemployment, public services or corruption by invoking group loyalty and portraying criticism as an attack on the community. In Nigeria, where political competition intersects with genuine anxieties about marginalisation, inequality, insecurity and access to public resources, such mobilisation can deepen existing divisions while concealing the institutional failures that affect citizens across communal boundaries.
The standard must be applied consistently. Religious incitement is dangerous regardless of the faith targeted; ethnic manipulation is corrosive regardless of who deploys it. Selective condemnation only reinforces the perception that identity-based intimidation is acceptable when it serves one’s own political interests. When identity becomes the principal currency of political competition, policy becomes secondary, accountability weakens, and citizens risk being mobilised as members of rival blocs rather than empowered as equal participants in a common democracy.
Intimidation, Inducement and the Politics of Fear
Political manipulation does not always require actual violence; the anticipation of violence can be sufficient to suppress participation. When citizens fear attacks at rallies, harassment for expressing dissent or consequences for supporting opposition candidates, their formal right to participate may remain intact while their practical freedom diminishes. The Electoral Act 2022 contains provisions addressing inflammatory campaign language and coercive political conduct, but the effectiveness of these safeguards depends on impartial enforcement. Where intimidation carries no credible consequences, fear becomes an informal instrument of political control.
Vote buying presents a related challenge. Section 121 of the Electoral Act criminalises bribery and certain forms of inducement intended to influence electoral choices. Yet vote buying is often treated as an isolated exchange between politicians and economically vulnerable citizens, obscuring its wider political economic consequences. When votes are purchased, citizens are treated as transactions rather than independent political actors. Politicians who incur substantial costs to secure office may subsequently seek to recover their investment through patronage, inflated contracts and privileged access to public resources. This creates a self-reinforcing cycle in which political spending secures power; power provides access to rents, and those rents help finance subsequent contests.
The problem, therefore, extends beyond individual misconduct to the incentives governing political competition. Intimidation raises the perceived cost of choosing freely, while inducement places a price on that choice. Both can weaken citizens’ capacity to hold political leaders accountable and encourage a system in which access to public office is valued less as a mandate for public service than as an investment in private accumulation. Although intimidation and inducement operate through different mechanisms, their democratic effect can be similar: they narrow the space for independent choice and turn electoral participation from an exercise of citizenship into an instrument of political control.
Why Peace Accords are not Enough
Nigeria’s National Peace Accord for the 2027 election cycle, signed in August 2026, reaffirmed political actors’ commitments to peaceful campaigns and opposition to violence, hate speech and other forms of electoral misconduct. Such agreements serve an important purpose: they establish public expectations, signal collective responsibility and provide a basis for scrutinising political conduct. However, their value ultimately depends on whether commitments translate into observable restraint and accountability.
A peace accord cannot substitute for effective institutions. Where political actors sign agreements against violence but subsequently encourage intimidation, deploy inflammatory rhetoric or tolerate attacks on opponents, the central question is not whether they endorsed the document, but whether credible consequences follow from violations. The same principle applies to misinformation, discriminatory campaign restrictions and the misuse of state resources to advantage incumbents or disadvantage challengers. Without impartial investigation, transparent enforcement and meaningful sanctions, peace accords risk becoming instruments of political public relations rather than mechanisms for protecting democratic competition.
The deeper institutional problem is that compliance cannot depend primarily on the goodwill of political actors whose interests are directly affected by the rules. Where the expected political benefit of violating an agreement exceeds the likely cost of punishment, declarations alone will have limited influence on behaviour. Electoral integrity therefore requires institutions capable of applying rules consistently, regardless of a politician’s office, party affiliation or influence. Declarations establish expectations; institutions must make compliance consequential.
The Institutional Incentives behind Iberiberism
Nigeria’s democratic vulnerabilities are often explained through the personalities of powerful governors, political godfathers and party leaders. Personalities matter, but they cannot fully explain why similar practices recur across different political parties, administrations and levels of government. The deeper question is why institutional arrangements sometimes allow political power to be converted into control over the conditions of democratic competition.
Consider the incentives at work. Where campaign permits and access to public facilities depend on discretionary administrative decisions, political participation becomes vulnerable to selective restriction. Where public media lack sufficient independence, access to information can be shaped by partisan interests. Where security agencies apply different standards to competing political actors, citizens cannot be confident that participation will be equally protected. And where electoral offences rarely produce credible consequences, manipulation may become a rational strategy for political actors seeking to preserve or acquire power.
This is fundamentally a political economy problem. Institutions do not merely establish rules; they shape the costs, benefits and risks associated with political behaviour. When the expected gains from manipulating competition exceed the likely costs of detection, sanctions or reputational damage, the incentive to manipulate persists regardless of who occupies public office. Individual conduct is therefore inseparable from the institutional environment that rewards, tolerates or discourages it.
The implication is that reform cannot stop at enacting additional laws or condemning particular politicians. It must change the conditions under which political power is exercised. Transparent administrative procedures, independent oversight, impartial law enforcement and credible sanctions can alter the calculation facing political actors. The problem is not simply that politicians may behave badly; it is that institutional arrangements can make behaviour that weakens democratic competition politically advantageous. Understanding this incentive structure is essential to confronting Iberiberism as a recurring feature of political competition rather than merely a defect of individual character.
An Anti-Iberiberism Agenda
An effective response to Iberiberism must make political competition genuinely open without turning regulation into another instrument of exclusion. Campaign permits, signage fees and access to public facilities should be governed by transparent, proportionate and politically neutral rules. Public institutions must maintain a clear distinction between the state and the governing party, ensuring that public facilities, media, security agencies and administrative authorities operate according to predictable standards applicable to incumbents and opposition parties alike.
These safeguards must be reinforced by credible enforcement. Electoral offences should be investigated impartially, with consequences determined by evidence and law rather than political affiliation. At the same time, Nigeria needs a stronger information-integrity ecosystem involving independent media, fact-checkers, civil society, technology platforms, political parties and informed citizens. Political disagreement and robust criticism are legitimate features of democracy; deliberate fabrication and systematic deception undermine citizens’ ability to make informed choices. Ethnic and religious incitement must likewise be addressed consistently, regardless of the identity or political affiliation of the offender.
Institutional reform, however, cannot substitute for an informed electorate. Citizens must be encouraged to evaluate candidates through competence, integrity, policy proposals and measurable performance in areas such as security, public finance, employment, education and healthcare. This requires political parties to explain how they intend to govern and citizens to demand evidence rather than accept patronage, fear or group loyalty as substitutes for accountability. The citizen who asks for evidence, compares performance and insists on accountability is better equipped to resist political manipulation than one whose judgment is surrendered to partisan loyalty or identity-based mobilisation.
The Real test of Nigerian Democracy
The test of the 2027 election will extend beyond whether Nigerians cast their ballots. It will include whether candidates can campaign without arbitrary administrative obstruction, whether public institutions remain impartial, whether citizens can distinguish political argument from deliberate fabrication, whether ethnic and religious identities can be expressed without being weaponised, and whether intimidation and inducement attract credible consequences.
Iberiberism is useful as an analytical concept because it describes how democratic competition can be distorted without the formal abolition of democratic institutions. Elections may proceed, opposition parties may remain registered, and constitutional provisions may remain in force, while administrative discretion, selective enforcement, intimidation and manipulation of public perception weaken the conditions necessary for meaningful choice. The concept therefore directs attention beyond the formal existence of democratic institutions to how they operate in practice.
Its implications extend across political affiliations. Rules manipulated to benefit one political actor can later be used against another, while institutions weakened for immediate advantage may become unreliable for everyone. Sustainable democratic competition consequently requires more than confidence that one’s preferred candidate will win. It requires confidence that the rules will remain fair regardless of who wins, who loses and who holds power.
Nigeria does not need to achieve perfect democracy before strengthening its institutions. It needs practical safeguards that make manipulation more difficult, accountability more credible and political participation more secure. Ultimately, democracy is not simply the right to enter the polling booth; it is the freedom to arrive there with a meaningful choice.
The question Nigerians should increasingly ask is not merely, “Who will win?” It is: “Will the Nigerian citizen still be genuinely free to choose?”
John Onyeukwu is a Lawyer and Governance & Social Impact Practitioner based in Abuja.
Email: john@impactbridgeafrica.com
