As Nigeria marks Democracy Day 2026, we call on the federal government and all democratic institutions to treat declining citizen trust in democratic processes as a national governance priority.
Twenty-seven years of uninterrupted civilian rule is an achievement worth recognising, but the sustainability of that achievement depends on whether citizens believe their voices matter, their votes count, and public institutions respond to their concerns.
It is for this reason that we consider President Bola Tinubu’s acknowledgement that ‘democracy fails when citizens doubt the process’ to be the most important statement in his Democracy Day address. That admission identifies the central challenge confronting Nigerian democracy today and should become the standard against which both the speech and the government’s democratic record are assessed.
We welcome several commitments contained in the president’s address, particularly the call for peaceful and credible elections in Ekiti and Osun States, the pursuit of financial autonomy for Nigeria’s 774 local government councils, and the recognition that public confidence is essential to democratic legitimacy.
However, the address measured democratic progress largely from the supply side, highlighting years of civilian rule sustained, resources committed to security, megawatts added to the national grid, agricultural interventions implemented, and economic indicators reported. These are important measures of state performance. Democracy is also measured by what citizens are able to demand, verify, influence, and enforce. On that side of the ledger, the address was largely silent.
Twenty-seven years of elections have coincided with steadily declining voter participation. Barely one in four registered voters participated in the last presidential election, the lowest turnout since Nigeria’s return to democratic rule in 1999. Many Nigerians increasingly doubt that participation produces meaningful change, and when citizens believe their vote has little impact on the quality of schools, healthcare, security, or public services, democratic endurance becomes a statistic rather than a lived experience.
The same challenge is evident in the area of security. We share the nation’s concern over recent reports of schoolchildren abducted in parts of the country and pray for their safe return. While improvements in security indicators are welcome, citizens experience security through their communities and daily realities, not through aggregate statistics. Public confidence in official claims, therefore, depends on the existence of independent verification mechanisms, including a free press and an active civil society.
We note that journalists in Nigeria continue to face arrest, surveillance, and prosecution under legal provisions that have repeatedly generated concern among media freedom advocates. A government that describes the press as a democratic guardrail must ensure that journalists can perform their constitutional role without intimidation or fear of reprisal.
At ImpactHouse, we have consistently argued that the quality of citizen demand is one of the most important determinants of accountable governance in Africa. Citizens need the information, skills, confidence, and opportunities to ask informed questions, track public commitments, distinguish facts from propaganda, and sustain engagement between election cycles.
We therefore call on the presidency and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to treat the forthcoming Ekiti and Osun elections as a practical test of the commitments made in today’s address. Credible elections are demonstrated through transparent processes, neutral security deployments, effective results management, and unhindered citizen and media observation.
We also call on the federal and state governments to move local government financial autonomy beyond policy declarations and ensure that council finances are published in formats that citizens can easily access and understand. As for the National Assembly, we demand that it review provisions of the Cybercrimes Act and related instruments that have been used to restrict journalism and legitimate civic criticism, just as we call on security and education authorities to recognise that every child driven out of school by violence represents both a security failure and a democratic injury.
Finally, we encourage Nigerians to exercise the president’s invitation to criticise and disagree constructively. The right to question public officials is one of the most important expressions of democratic citizenship.
Signed
John Andah
Executive Director
ImpactHouse Centre for Development Communication
