By Abdul Mahmud
Lately, I have found myself haunted by a vision of our democracy not as a living, breathing system of hope, but as a grotesque arrangement in which masks change hands while faces remain monstrously the same. It is a stage of shadows, and dimly lit hall of mirrors where forms distort and reform, while never transcending their original deformity. What we have come to call democracy in Nigeria has slipped beyond the realm of the real into something far more troubling: a simulacrum that does not merely imitate evil but perfects it, refines it, and offers it to us as governance. Imagine a long corridor lined with doors, each door marked with the insignia of a political party, each door opening into a room filled with applause, promises, and the illusion of renewal. But, behind every door stands the same figure, cloaked in different garments, rehearsing the same tired script of power. The ritual of transition, which should embody the sacred act of renewal, has instead become the mechanical passing of the baton between ghouls and fiends: a choreography of the bad and the ugly in which the music never changes, only the dancers.
To understand the point I’m making here, imagine the rubber stamp Senate of Senator Lawan which transitioned to the do-nothing-but-praise-the-Kabiyesi Senate of Senator Akpabio. One is the macabre image of the other.
The simulacrum is not merely a failure of leadership. It is a deeper corruption of meaning itself. Democracy, in its ideal form, is meant to be the language of redemption, grammar through which nation-states articulate their aspirations and negotiate their contradictions. In the Nigerian case, that language has been hollowed out, its words emptied of substance, and its syntax rearranged into a cruel parody of itself. Elections are held, votes are cast, offices are occupied, and the essence of transformation remains elusive, as though the constitutional order has been bewitched into reproducing the same outcomes under the guise of difference.
There is something profoundly unsettling about the persistence of this cycle, something that defies the logic of ordinary political decay. It is as though the system feeds on its own failures, metabolising them into new forms of dysfunction. The bad do not simply give way to the ugly; they evolve into them, and the ugly, in turn, mutate into forms so grotesque that they defy description.
Each iteration deepens the crisis, embedding it further into the fabric of our collective existence.
In this ghoulish hellscape, the movement of individuals between political parties is often celebrated as a sign of dynamism, a proof that the constitutional order is alive and responsive. The movement is nothing more than a change of costume, a superficial rearrangement that leaves the underlying pathology untouched.
A ghoul who crosses from the ruling party to the opposition does not undergo a moral rebirth. He carries his ghoulness with him, like a shadow that cannot be shed. The expectation that such a figure might suddenly embody virtue is not merely naive; it is a testament to the depth of our collective disillusionment.
The tragedy of this condition lies not only in the character of those who occupy positions of power, but also in the gradual erosion of our capacity to imagine alternatives. When the same patterns repeat themselves with such relentless consistency, they begin to acquire the aura of inevitability. The abnormal becomes normal, the grotesque becomes familiar, and the possibility of genuine transformation recedes into the realm of fantasy. We find ourselves trapped in a loop, watching the same play unfold with minor variations, applauding out of habit rather than conviction.
There are moments within this bleak landscape when the illusion falters, and when the cracks in the edifice become visible. These moments are often fleeting, quickly absorbed back into the constitutional order, but they reveal something crucial: that the simulacrum is not invincible. It relies on our participation, our willingness to accept its terms, and our readiness to suspend disbelief. Without this complicity, the entire structure would collapse under the weight of its own contradictions. Confronting this reality requires more than mere criticism. It demands a reawakening of political imagination, and the refusal to accept the given as the only possible. It calls for a radical rethinking of what democracy should mean in our context, and a reclaiming of its language from those who have turned it into an instrument of deception.
This is no small task, for it involves not only institutional reform but also a transformation of consciousness, and the collective effort to see beyond the masks and recognise the monsters for what they are. The question is not whether the baton will continue to pass between ghouls and fiends. As things stand, it almost certainly will. The more pressing question is whether we will continue to watch this macabre relay with passive resignation, or whether we will find the courage to disrupt it. For as long as we remain spectators, the change of baton will go on, and the masks will keep changing, and the monsters will continue to rule.
It cannot continue forever.
if we choose clarity over illusion, and refuse the seduction of madness, the spell can be broken. Perhaps, the corridor of doors can be dismantled, the mirrors shattered, and the quarters of hellish governance replaced wholly. Perhaps, in the ruins of this ghoulish republic, something new can emerge; and someone who’s is a reflection of our best impulses and genuine expression of our highest aspirations can emerge as the people’s choice.
Guess who’s coming?
In another time, it was a question of curiosity. Today, it is a question of power, the power of the people: when they speak, when they decide, and whom they finally beckon to sit at the head of the table they have set, even when he arrives at history’s behest.
Obi is coming. And in that arrival lies the uneasy truth: the gatekeepers have lost the gate.
