Editorial: Silence is complicity: Nigeria’s democracy under siege – ITREALMS

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“Democracy dies when citizens choose to be silent spectators to injustice.”

Those words, drawn from Dr. Obiageli Ezekwesili’s recent memo to the Nigerian Senate, judiciary, and fellow citizens, are not mere rhetoric. They are a warning that Nigeria’s democratic project is now standing on shaky ground.

For six months, the people of Kogi Central have been denied their voice in the Senate following the unconstitutional suspension of Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan. What began as a petition of sexual harassment against the Senate President has been converted into a tool of political vendetta, exposing once again how the powerful can bend laws to suit their convenience.


The Senate’s justification that the suspension remains until the matter is resolved in court, is both cynical and unlawful. The courts have ruled in the past, and again under Justice Binta Nyako, that such suspensions beyond 14 days are unconstitutional. Yet, the Senate has chosen to ignore judicial precedent, deny constituents representation, and mock the separation of powers on which our democracy rests.

This goes beyond Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan. It goes to the heart of whether Nigerians truly live under a constitutional order or under the whims of officeholders. If lawmakers, whose duty is to make laws, become serial lawbreakers, then the very soul of democracy is at risk.

We are disturbed, not just by the Senate’s recklessness, but also by the judiciary’s inconsistencies that allow impunity to thrive. The National Judicial Council and the Chief Justice of Nigeria must move swiftly to restore public faith in the courts. Justice delayed or weakened in this case amounts to complicity in eroding the rule of law.

But most troubling of all is the indifference of citizens. When Nigerians dismiss this case as a personal quarrel or as irrelevant to their daily struggles, they miss the bigger picture: if a Senator can be silenced, then the rights of ordinary citizens stand on even shakier ground.

ITREALMS insists that the suspension of Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan is not just a parliamentary scandal; it is a democratic crisis. The Senate must rescind its unconstitutional decision, reinstate the Senator immediately, and end its abuse of public power. Anything less is an endorsement of tyranny in legislative garb.

In the end, democracy is not defended by constitutions alone. It survives because citizens are vigilant, vocal, and unwilling to tolerate injustice. Silence, in this case, is not neutrality; it is complicity. And complicity, as history shows, is how democracies die.