Nigeria is standing at the most dangerous political crossroads since the civil war. What is unfolding today is not accidental, not organic, and not unprecedented. It follows a familiar pattern that Nigerians have seen before, but this time with deadlier tools, weaker institutions, deeper hardship and far higher international stakes.
In 2013, APC was engineered as a blunt instrument to upstage an incumbent that it claimed had exhausted public goodwill. It was a cold political calculation, not an ideological movement. ACN, CPC, ANPP and fragments of APGA and PDP were welded together into a single brutal electoral weapon. The objective was simple. Collapse opposition fragmentation, create inevitability, attract defections, weaponise propaganda and turn an election into a referendum on failure. It worked with external cooperation and influence.
But what Nigerians are witnessing today makes 2013 look like a childs rehearsal.
APC is no longer the insurgent coalition. It is the incumbent power structure, and it is now deploying the same destabilisation logic it once used against PDP, but on steroids. Governors are being pulled in not by conviction but by fear, greed and survival instincts. At last count, APC controls or influences 28 out of 36 states. This is not democratic strength. It is democratic suffocation.
When one party swallows almost all governors through pressure, inducement and elite coercion, the country stops looking like a plural democracy and starts looking like a captured state. That is when Nigeria becomes a laughing stock globally. And that is when the language of saving democracy becomes an attractive external justification.
This is the dirty secret Nigerian elites refuse to confront. One party dominance does not protect sovereignty. It destroys it.
Once opposition is structurally crippled, elections stop being contests and become rituals. And once elections lose credibility, the door opens wide for international pressure, delegitimisation, sanctions, isolation and ultimately intervention under the banner of restoring democracy.
That is why the talk that there may not be elections in 2027 is not hysteria. It is a logical fear in a system where INEC credibility is already damaged by the brazen state capture of 2023, where the judiciary is widely perceived as pliable, and where the appointment of electoral leadership continues despite overwhelming national outcry and trust deficit.
No country survives when its referees are no longer trusted.
The irony is brutal. APC rose on the promise of change and moral renewal. What Nigeria got instead is untold hardship, collapsing purchasing power, insecurity, elite impunity and economic pain so severe that even global institutions now admit millions more Nigerians are sliding into extreme poverty. APC has run its cause. Its moral capital is exhausted. Its legitimacy deficit is widening.
And into this legitimacy vacuum steps geopolitics.
Nigeria today is tilting closer to China and maintaining deep commercial and security ties with France. Chinese loans, infrastructure financing and strategic economic footprint are now entrenched. France remains embedded through energy interests and defence cooperation. None of this is inherently wrong. Sovereign nations trade where they find value.
But here is the danger Nigerian elites underestimate.
Great powers do not tolerate strategic drift from weak and delegitimised states. When leadership credibility is shaky, when corruption optics are loud, when institutions look compromised, foreign powers do not need to invent narratives. They amplify existing ones.
Nigeria under its current leadership is a soft target.
The credibility and integrity questions hanging over the presidency are not local gossip. They are international reputational baggage. Whether or not convictions exist is irrelevant. Perception alone weakens deterrence. It reduces diplomatic respect. It makes Nigeria look bargainable.
And when a country looks bargainable, it attracts interventionists.
America does not need to send troops, it is optional. Modern interference is cleaner. Visa bans. Targeted sanctions. Financial pressure. Intelligence leverage. Narrative warfare. Civil society amplification. Diplomatic isolation. These are the real weapons of regime pressure in the twenty first century.
Now add modern technology to the mix.
In 2013, political warfare relied on rallies, newspapers, television, defections and street mobilisation. Today, algorithmic propaganda can target Nigerians by religion, ethnicity, fear, hunger and resentment at hyper local levels. Disinformation networks can turn hardship into holy war narratives overnight. Foreign and domestic actors can shape perceptions faster than institutions can respond.
This is why the Christian narrative sown deep into the national psyche is so dangerous in the hands of cynical political actors. When hardship deepens, religion becomes an accelerant. Elections become spiritual battles. Political opponents become enemies of God. Once faith is weaponised, the idea of separation enters the public imagination long before it enters maps.
This is how countries fracture.
And the most tragic part is that Nigerias own political class is doing the work for foreign meddlers.
Greedy businessmen scheming into power instead of statesmen building institutions have turned governance into a private extraction racket. States and local governments bleed resources with nothing to show. Profligacy is normalised. Incompetence is defended. Accountability is mocked.
From the outside, Nigeria does not look like a sovereign anchor. It looks like a chaotic prize.
That is why the one party drift of APC will be its undoing. By trying to monopolise power, it concentrates anger. It turns every local failure into a national indictment. It creates the perfect conditions for a unified opposition platform like ADC and the perfect excuse for external pressure framed as democratic rescue.
Nigeria now has only two real paths.
Stay on the current trajectory, cling to APC dominance, suppress competition, deepen hardship, weaken institutions, and drift toward internal implosion and external manipulation.
Or pause, reset and restructure.
Restructure the federation seriously, not rhetorically. Restore electoral credibility fast. Rebuild institutional trust. End the global image of Nigeria as elite loot territory. Pursue a balanced foreign policy that trades with everyone but belongs to no one.
This is not about APC versus ADC. It is about survival.
Nigeria must decide quickly whether it wants to remain a sovereign state or become a case study in how greed, incompetence and geopolitical naivety dismantle nations from within.
History will not be kind to those who saw this coming and chose silence.
By Hon. Chima Nnadi-Oforgu
Duruebube Uzii na Abosi
OBLONG MEDIA UNLIMITED 
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