Post by Simon-Peter Gom (@TerGom)

Tyranny Has Consequences
Written by Simon-Peter Gom, a concerned Nigerian living in the diaspora.
There are moments in the life of a nation when silence becomes complicity, neutrality becomes surrender, and fear becomes the oxygen by which tyranny breathes. Nigeria is approaching such a moment.
The signs are no longer hidden. They are no longer whispers in the corridors of power. They are becoming visible in courtrooms, in police cells, in the shrinking space for dissent, in the intimidation of critics, in the weaponization of state institutions, and in the systematic weakening of opposition political platforms. Any Nigerian who still believes that democracy dies only through military coups has not been paying attention to history. Democracy can also be strangled slowly, legally, administratively, and judicially, until only its corpse remains wrapped in the flag.
Tyranny rarely announces itself as tyranny. It arrives wearing the garment of “national security.” It speaks the language of “constitutional order.” It claims to be protecting democracy even while dismantling the very pillars that sustain democracy. It tells citizens to be patient while it crushes their voice. It tells judges to be loyal while asking them to forget justice. It tells opposition parties to obey the law while using the machinery of the law to weaken, frustrate, and destroy them.
This is why Nigerians must be vigilant. A people who cannot recognize the early signs of tyranny will eventually wake up in a country where resistance has become a crime, truth has become sedition, opposition has become treason, and silence has become the only safe language.
Across the world, history has shown us the consequences of tyranny. Bashar al-Assad did not destroy Syria in one day. The Syrian tragedy began with a state that refused to tolerate dissent. Peaceful protests were treated as rebellion. Citizens demanding dignity were answered with bullets, prisons, torture, and propaganda. What began as a cry for reform became a national catastrophe. Syria was shattered, millions were displaced, hundreds of thousands were killed, and a once-proud country became a theatre of foreign influence, armed factions, grief, and ruin. Tyranny told Syria it was preserving order. In the end, it destroyed the nation it claimed to protect.
Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya offers another painful lesson. For decades, he personalized the state, weakened institutions, crushed opposition, and made himself bigger than the republic. No strong democratic institutions were allowed to grow. No credible peaceful transition was permitted. No opposition space was allowed to mature. When the system finally collapsed, Libya did not inherit democracy; it inherited chaos. Militias, rival governments, lawlessness, and insecurity filled the vacuum that tyranny had created. That is the irony of dictatorship: it claims to be the guardian of stability, but because it destroys institutions, it leaves only instability behind.
Liberia, our West African neighbour, also reminds us that when rulers abuse power, corrupt institutions, militarize politics, and normalize impunity, the consequences can consume generations. The descent from political exclusion and authoritarian rule into civil war, warlord politics, mass suffering, and national trauma was not accidental. It was the harvest of years of institutional decay, ethnic manipulation, greed, and violent power struggle. Liberia’s story is a warning to every African nation: when justice dies, peace becomes fragile; when democracy is mocked, violence begins to look like the only language left for the desperate.
Nigeria must not travel that road.
Today, under the Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration, Nigerians are witnessing developments that should trouble every patriot, regardless of party affiliation. The reported moves through the courts to deregister political parties such as ADC, ZLP and others, and the legal uncertainty surrounding NDC, cannot be viewed in isolation from the wider political climate. When opposition political structures are weakened ahead of a major election cycle, when the state appears more energetic in destroying political alternatives than in protecting citizens from hunger and insecurity, Nigerians are entitled to ask: what exactly is being built — a democracy or a one-party fortress?
Let it be clear: political parties must obey the law. No responsible democrat argues that parties should exist outside constitutional requirements. But law becomes dangerous when it is applied selectively, strategically, and politically. Law becomes tyranny when it is deployed not as an impartial standard but as a weapon to remove competitors. Law becomes oppression when the same institutions that should protect pluralism become instruments for narrowing the democratic field.
A democracy without opposition is not democracy. It is coronation. It is monarchy wearing civilian clothes. It is dictatorship pretending to conduct elections.

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