THE 10TH NATIONAL ASSEMBLY, NOW A DEPARTMENT OF THE VILLA, FAILS TO PROTECT NIGERIA AND NIGERIANS—PAVING THE PATHWAY TO TINUBU’S “LIFETIME PRESIDENCY”
How Akpabio and Abbas Are Dismantling the Constitutional Checks Designed to Restrain Presidential Power October 2026
A lifetime presidency does not begin with the abolition of term limits. It begins when the institutions created to restrain a president stop restraining him. Nigeria’s Constitution does not establish an elected monarchy. It establishes a presidential democracy deliberately divided among institutions so that no individual, however popular or politically powerful, exercises the authority of the Nigerian state without constitutional restraint. The president possesses enormous executive power. Parliament controls legislation, appropriation, and oversight. The courts interpret the law. Each arm must respect the others, but none was created merely to validate the wishes of another. That is why the condition of the 10th National Assembly should concern every Nigerian. This is not an argument that Parliament must oppose everything the President proposes. Cooperation between the executive and legislature is constitutional and necessary. But cooperation is different from submission.
The president may request. Parliament must scrutinize. The president may propose. Parliament may accept, amend, or reject. The president may exercise power. Parliament must ensure that power remains within the Constitution. The charge against the 10th Assembly cannot credibly be that it has done nothing. It has passed legislation, conducted investigations, held hearings, and undertaken oversight. The more serious question is whether it has exercised sufficient institutional independence at precisely those moments when independence mattered most. Viewed separately, each controversy examined below may be explained as an isolated procedural dispute. Viewed chronologically, they raise a more disturbing question: What kind of presidency is this parliament gradually helping Nigeria to build?
JULY 2024: THE POLICE ACT AND THE IGP — THE MAN AT THE CENTER OF THE SECURITY OF OUR VOTES: THE FIRST MOVE TOWARD TINUBU’S “LIFETIME PRESIDENCY”?
Before Rivers. Before the Electoral Act controversy. Before State Police. Before Section 145. Before the first hints of another debate over presidential tenure. There was the Police Act. On 23 July 2024, President Bola Tinubu transmitted an executive bill to the National Assembly seeking a specific amendment to the Nigeria Police Act 2020. The amendment created an exception allowing a person appointed Inspector-General of Police to remain in office until the expiration of the tenure contained in his appointment letter, notwithstanding the ordinary retirement provision requiring police officers to leave after 35 years of service or at the age of 60. This was not an amendment that originated as an ordinary legislative initiative from members of Parliament. It came from the president. And Parliament moved with remarkable speed. The bill passed first, second, and third readings in both chambers on the same day. The available legislative record shows no substantive parliamentary alteration to the core tenure clause transmitted by the Executive. One day. Three readings. Two chambers.
Why did the President require this particular amendment for this particular office at that particular time, and why did Parliament comply with such extraordinary speed? The question is not whether Parliament possessed the power to amend the Police Act. It did. The question is why legislation dealing with the tenure of the head of one of Nigeria’s most consequential institutions required such exceptional legislative speed. What urgency required an executive bill governing the tenure of the Inspector-General of Police to travel from introduction to final passage through both chambers in a single day? What degree of scrutiny was sacrificed to achieve that speed? Why was legislation with an obvious and immediate consequence for an identifiable incumbent treated with such urgency? The first immediate beneficiary was Kayode Egbetokun. Egbetokun had previously served as Chief Security Officer to Bola Tinubu when Tinubu was Governor of Lagos State. He was approaching the ordinary retirement threshold when the amendment removed the obstacle to completing the tenure stated in his appointment letter. Egbetokun eventually left office in February 2026. But the law remained. President Tinubu then appointed Olatunji Disu as Inspector-General of Police. Disu had also previously worked directly with Tinubu, serving as his Aide-de-Camp when Tinubu became governor of Lagos State. And so an uncomfortable question arises: Is it merely coincidence that the first two IGPs to benefit from an executive-initiated amendment to the Police Act are both officers who previously served directly with the president who requested that amendment? Perhaps it is. That question does not establish wrongdoing. Previous professional service to a political office-holder does not make a police officer partisan, and it does not prove that either Egbetokun or Disu would act improperly. But constitutional safeguards exist precisely because democratic institutions cannot depend solely upon assumptions about personal loyalty, gratitude, goodwill, or personal integrity. And that leads to an even more uncomfortable question.
The president initiated legislation that removed the statutory retirement obstacle that would otherwise have affected the tenure of the Inspector-General of Police. Parliament passed it in one day. If the president pulled the institutional string that removed the tenure barrier, what guarantees Nigerians that no political string can ever be pulled in the opposite direction when that president seeks another mandate? Put differently: If presidential intervention helps preserve the tenure of the officer heading the police, what institutional safeguards ensure that the occupant of that office can never feel politically indebted to the president whose electoral return the security apparatus will help protect? That is not an accusation of a bargain. There is no evidence presented here that either IGP agreed to repay a political favor or manipulate an election.
The point is more fundamental. Democracy should not require Nigerians merely to trust that an Inspector-General of Police will resist political indebtedness. The institutional architecture should make such indebtedness irrelevant. The appropriate question is therefore not simply: Can Nigerians trust this particular IGP? It is: Has Parliament created sufficient safeguards so that Nigerians never have to ask whether the IGP owes the President anything at all? That question becomes particularly important because INEC may conduct elections, but elections do not take place in a security vacuum. INEC’s own election manual identifies the police as the lead security agency on election duty. Police and other security personnel protect polling units and collation centres, secure election materials and officials, prevent violence and disruption, and make arrests where necessary to protect the process. The Nigeria Police Force, therefore, sits at the center of the security architecture surrounding the ballot. The IGP does not count votes. He does not declare election results. But the institution he commands helps determine whether voters can vote safely, whether officials and materials can move securely, whether collation centers remain protected, whether violence is contained, and whether the entire electoral environment commands public confidence. Nigeria’s own electoral history demonstrates why this matters. INEC’s reports have previously recorded allegations of partisan interventions by security personnel and other security failures during elections. That history does not establish anything improper about the present IGP. It establishes why institutional neutrality must be protected visibly, not merely presumed. So another question confronts the Akpabio–Abbas National Assembly: When the president seeking another electoral mandate appoints a former aide to head the institution that leads election security, what additional safeguards has Parliament demanded to guarantee and visibly demonstrate the political neutrality of that institution? When the legislation governing the tenure of that office originated from the President himself and was rushed through Parliament in a single day, should Parliament not be even more vigilant about the appearance of institutional dependence? The sequence is difficult to ignore. The president initiated the amendment. Parliament passed it with extraordinary speed. The immediate beneficiary was a former chief security officer to the president. His successor is a former Aide-de-Camp to the same President. And the institution they head is the lead security agency surrounding Nigeria’s elections. None of those facts proves electoral manipulation. But together they make one parliamentary question impossible to dismiss: What has the National Assembly done to ensure that a tenure arrangement created at the President’s request can never become or even appear to become a relationship of political indebtedness between the Presidency and the officer responsible for leading election security? A pathway to an increasingly entrenched presidency does not have to begin with the cancellation of elections or the abolition of term limits. It can also emerge when the institutions surrounding the process through which presidential power is renewed become increasingly dependent upon public faith that they will act independently—without Parliament doing enough to protect that confidence institutionally. The Police Act amendment does not prove a plan for a “lifetime presidency.”
The appointment of a former presidential aide as IGP does not prove electoral manipulation. But viewed within the chronology examined in this article, Nigerians are entitled to ask whether this was the first institutional stress test on a pathway in which Parliament increasingly facilitates presidential preferences rather than building additional safeguards around them. And so the question deserves to be asked: Was the Police Act merely an administrative correction or the first move toward the kind of Presidency this article warns about?
MARCH 2025: RIVERS — WHEN EXTRAORDINARY PRESIDENTIAL POWER MET PARLIAMENT
The first major constitutional warning came from Rivers State.
On 18 March 2025, President Tinubu declared a state of emergency in Rivers State.Section 305(6)(b) of the Constitution provides that such a proclamation ceases to have effect unless approved by a resolution supported by a two-thirds majority of all members of each House of the National Assembly.Yet when the matter reached Parliament, both chambers approved it through voice votes rather than recorded numerical votes. Neither chamber conducted the sort of roll-call or recorded vote that would have established precisely whether the constitutionally prescribed two-thirds threshold had been reached. Senator Ireti Kingibe subsequently argued publicly that a voice vote was incapable of establishing the numerical supermajority required by the Constitution. The issue was therefore not simply whether Parliament agreed with emergency rule. It was more fundamental: When the Constitution requires two-thirds of all members, should Nigerians not be entitled to know precisely who constituted that two-thirds? The Constitution imposes enhanced voting thresholds for extraordinary decisions because extraordinary powers require extraordinary safeguards. The higher the power being exercised, the greater the need for procedural certainty. When constitutional procedure stands between presidential ambition and parliamentary procedure, which one gives way?
THE TAX LAWS — WHO CHANGED WHAT PARLIAMENT PASSED, AND WHO WAS HELD ACCOUNTABLE?
Then came a controversy that went directly to the integrity of Parliament’s law-making power.Questions arose over discrepancies between provisions of Nigeria’s 2025 tax laws as they passed through the legislative process and versions subsequently gazetted and circulated.
In January 2026, an ad-hoc committee comprising members of the House of Representatives reported that its comparison of Certified True Copies with earlier gazetted versions showed alterations in key provisions. The committee described the discrepancies as an encroachment upon legislative authority. The House leadership subsequently released Certified True Copies, while the deputy spokesperson argued that their publication had effectively resolved the controversy. But releasing the certified text answers only one question: What version did Parliament actually pass? It does not answer the more troubling questions. Who changed what Parliament passed? At what stage did the discrepancies arise? Who had custody of the legislation at that stage? Was it an administrative error, unauthorised intervention or something else? And who was held accountable?Correction is not accountability. Publishing the authentic law may tell Nigerians what the statute contains. It does not by itself explain how other provisions entered versions circulated as law, who was responsible, or what institutional consequence followed. A Parliament jealous of its constitutional authority should want those answers more urgently than anybody else.Because if Parliament cannot guarantee the integrity of the legislation it passes, what exactly remains of legislative power?
FEBRUARY 2026: THE ELECTORAL ACT — WHEN “NAY” CAN BECOME “AYE”
Then came electoral reform. Few matters are more consequential to democratic legitimacy than the law governing how political power is acquired.In December 2025, the House of Representatives had adopted mandatory real-time electronic transmission of election results. Then came 17 February 2026. The House was asked to rescind its earlier position and align the legislation differently.When Speaker Tajudeen Abbas put the rescission motion to a voice vote, the “nays” were louder than the “ayes”, yet the Speaker ruled that the ayes had carried the motion.The ruling triggered protests. The chamber became rowdy. An executive session followed. This goes beyond the merits of electronic transmission. The constitutional-democratic question is more fundamental:What becomes of parliamentary representation when members say “nay” and the presiding officer declares “aye” to please the president? The Speaker possesses procedural authority. But that authority exists to ascertain and give effect to the decision of the House, not to replace it.And this is why parliamentary procedure can never be dismissed as legislative housekeeping. Parliamentary procedure is not ceremonial. It is the machinery through which the voices of Nigerians, expressed through their elected representatives, become law.If Nigerians cannot trust the mechanism through which parliamentary majorities are determined, the problem is no longer merely electoral law. It is confidence in Parliament itself.
SECTION 138: WHY DID PARLIAMENT CLOSE THE POST-ELECTION DOOR ON QUALIFICATION?
Buried within the Electoral Act 2026 is another consequential change. Under Section 134 of the Electoral Act 2022, an election could expressly be challenged on the ground that the person whose election was questioned was, at the time of the election, not qualified to contest. Section 138 of the Electoral Act 2026 no longer lists that ground.Instead, the Act provides that an election may be questioned on the grounds that it was invalid because of corrupt practices or non-compliance with the Act, or that the respondent was not duly elected by a majority of lawful votes. That distinction must be stated accurately. Parliament did not legalise certificate forgery. Constitutional qualifications and disqualifications did not disappear. The 2026 Act also retains pre-election procedures through which qualifying information submitted by candidates may be challenged. But the deletion raises an unavoidable question about remedies: Why remove qualification as an express ground of post-election challenge when constitutional qualification requirements continue to exist? If a qualification problem emerges only after an election or if those legally entitled to institute a pre-election action do not do so, what remedy remains through an election petition? It would be wrong, without evidence, to assert that this provision was enacted specifically to protect President Tinubu or any particular politician. But legislation must be examined not only by alleged motive but by practical consequence. Who benefits from narrowing post-election qualification challenges? What safeguard has been removed? Is the pre-election remedy an adequate substitute? And ultimately: where does this legislative architecture lead?
2024–2026: APPROPRIATION WITHOUT ACCOUNTABILITY
Then there is one of Parliament’s most fundamental constitutional responsibilities: control of the public purse. Nigeria entered another cycle of overlapping budgets, extensions and weak capital implementation.While presenting the 2026 budget, President Tinubu himself acknowledged that only ₦3.10 trillion approximately 17.7 per cent of the 2025 capital budget had been released by the third quarter of 2025, partly because government remained focused on completing projects under the extended 2024 capital budget.An Appropriation Act is not an executive aspiration. It is law.
When implementation repeatedly falls dramatically behind appropriation, Parliament’s responsibility cannot end with passing another budget or extending the life of an earlier one. A legislature that repeatedly rewrites the fiscal calendar to accommodate executive non-performance risks moving from overseeing budget implementation to normalising budget non-performance as a feature of governance. And this concern has come from within the governing party itself.In July 2026, Senate Chief Whip Tahir Monguno publicly argued that failure to implement an Appropriation Act amounts to a breach of law and described it as an “impeachable offence”. Whether that proposition would ultimately satisfy the constitutional test for impeachment is a legal question that should not be treated as automatically settled. But Monguno is not an opposition activist attacking Parliament from outside. He is a senior senator of the governing party.Was Senator Monguno wrong? If he was wrong, Parliament should explain why. If he was right that persistent non-implementation can amount to constitutionally serious misconduct, then what institutional consequence has followed? Where are the sustained investigations? Where are the enforceable corrective measures? Where is the accountability?
2024–2026: SERVICE-WIDE VOTES AND THE IMF — IS THE AKPABIO–ABBAS PARLIAMENT TURNING A BLIND EYE TO ₦26.22 TRILLION?
In three budget years; 2024, 2025 and 2026, Service-Wide Vote has risen from approximately ₦4.08 trillion to ₦9.31 trillion and then ₦12.83 trillion. ₦4.08tn + ₦9.31tn + ₦12.83tn = approximately ₦26.22 trillion in three budget years. The issue is not that every naira contained in a Service-Wide Vote is suspicious. It is not. The issue is whether parliamentary scrutiny has grown at anything approaching the same pace as the money.In 2024, the House itself acknowledged the problem. It resolved to investigate alleged abuse of Service-Wide Votes and established an ad-hoc committee expected to report within four weeks.What became of that investigation? What findings were made? What reforms followed? What expenditure has subsequently been traced?And how did Parliament move from expressing concern over ₦4.08tn Service-Wide Votes in 2024 to approving approximately ₦12.83 trillion under the same architecture in 2026? Of the approximately ₦26.22 trillion authorised across these three years, how much has actually been released? To whom? For what purposes? Who authorised the individual releases? Which committees followed the money after appropriation? How many recipient institutions have been summoned outside the ritual of annual budget defence to account for what they actually received and spent? The Budget Office says the 2026 Service-Wide Vote is not an unrestricted presidential fund. It says the ₦12.827 trillion consists of identifiable obligations including approximately ₦2.18 trillion in personnel costs, ₦1.52 trillion in other recurrent expenditure and ₦9.12 trillion in capital expenditure and that the rise from ₦9.305 trillion in 2025 to ₦12.827 trillion in 2026 represents about 37.8 per cent. That explanation deserves to be acknowledged. But it does not eliminate Parliament’s oversight responsibility. Then there is the timing.The ₦12.83 trillion 2026 Service-Wide Vote comes in the fiscal year immediately preceding Nigeria’s 2027 election. That does not make Service-Wide Votes electoral funds. It does not establish that the money will be used for partisan purposes. But precisely because of the proximity of a presidential election, an expenditure architecture involving trillions of naira under centrally managed provisions should invite greater disclosure, greater legislative surveillance and greater public accounting, not less. A democracy should not require citizens merely to trust that enormous centrally managed expenditure will be properly deployed. Parliament exists in part to verify it.And then came the IMF.The IMF estimated that the consolidated-government statistical discrepancy increased from 1.2 per cent of GDP in 2024 to 2.7 per cent of GDP in 2025.
At the federal-government level, the discrepancy rose from approximately 1.0 per cent to 1.7 per cent of GDP.The IMF estimated Nigeria’s nominal GDP at approximately ₦442 trillion in 2025. On that base, 2.7 per cent of GDP is roughly ₦11.9 trillion. This is a calculation based on the IMF figures, not an IMF allegation that ₦11.9 trillion was stolen. The Fund said the discrepancy could reflect spending not captured by the Office of the Accountant-General, and separately reported that some expenditure executed outside the budgets was later incorporated into the 2024 and 2025 budgets through repeal-and-re-enactment legislation.
How does government spend first and legislate the expenditure afterwards? Where is Parliament?Could one of Akpabio’s and Abbas’s most consequential contributions to an increasingly dominant Presidency be what Parliament has chosen not to interrogate? A President does not become institutionally dominant only because Parliament passes the laws he requests. Presidential power also expands when Parliament fails to exercise powers it already possesses, especially the power of the purse.The question, therefore, is not whether Akpabio or Abbas personally benefited from Service-Wide Votes. There is no evidence here establishing that.The more consequential question is: Is the Akpabio–Abbas National Assembly turning a blind eye to an expanding concentration of fiscal discretion within the Executive and could that legislative silence become one of Parliament’s quietest contributions to the increasingly dominant Presidency this article warns about?
JUNE 2026: THE SIX-YEAR SINGLE TERM — FROM EIGHT YEARS TO TEN?
Just when the debate might appear confined to decisions already taken, another constitutional question waits ahead.In June 2026, Senate Leader Opeyemi Bamidele announced that one of the first bills he intends to introduce in the 11th Senate after the 2027 general election would seek to replace Nigeria’s current presidential and gubernatorial tenure structure with a single six-year term. The idea itself is not new.Nigeria has debated single-term presidencies before, and supporters of the concept argue that removing the incentive for re-election could allow presidents and governors to concentrate on governance rather than campaigning for a second term. But the timing introduces an unavoidable question: WHY AFTER THE 2027 ELECTION? By then, Nigerians will already have elected a President under a Constitution providing a four-year tenure.If President Tinubu wins the 2027 presidential election, his second four-year mandate under the present Constitution would ordinarily conclude in 2031.
But what happens if, after that election, Parliament alters presidential tenure from four years to six? Everything would depend upon the wording and transitional provisions of such an amendment. No current proposal automatically gives President Tinubu or any incumbent an additional two years. That must be made clear. But it is precisely because the transitional rules have not yet been written that Nigerians should ask the questions now rather than after an amendment has been passed. Would the single six-year term apply prospectively only to Presidents elected after the amendment? Would a President elected in 2027 under a four-year constitutional mandate remain bound to that four-year mandate? Would the existing two-election limitation remain completely protected? Would an incumbent President be expressly prevented from benefiting from any extension created after his election? Because if an amendment enacted after the 2027 election were ever drafted to convert an incumbent’s four-year mandate into six years, the practical consequence would be extraordinary. For President Tinubu, a tenure beginning in 2023 could then extend to 2033. Ten years in office.
Again, no existing enacted provision presently produces that result.But that possibility illustrates why presidential-tenure amendments require exceptional vigilance. A reform advertised as curing the politics of second terms must never become, through transitional drafting, an indirect mechanism for extending the mandate already granted to an incumbent. And after the controversies already examined in this article, Nigerians would be entitled to scrutinise any alteration of presidential tenure with exceptional care. Could a six-year single term become the transit hub to a longer presidency? Is it simply an old constitutional-reform idea whose time has returned or another test of how far political power may be permitted to reshape constitutional restraints around the President already occupying the office?Nigeria must never reach the stage where the tenure of an incumbent President is altered first and explained afterwards.
JULY 2026: STATE POLICE — CAN THE CONSTITUTION BE ALTERED FROM OUTSIDE THE CHAMBER?
Then came State Police. The policy question is important. Nigeria faces profound policing and security challenges, and support for a more decentralised policing architecture has grown substantially. But supporting a policy cannot mean treating constitutional procedure as optional. A Constitution is not amended merely because the policy behind the amendment is popular. The Constitution must be amended constitutionally.
On 23 July 2026, Speaker Tajudeen Abbas announced that 276 members were physically present while another 35 members participated virtually through the National Assembly’s electronic platform, producing stated participation of 311 members. The constitutionally required two-thirds threshold for the 360-member House is 240. The arithmetic therefore is not the principal question. The process is.Section 9 of the Constitution prescribes the special majority necessary to alter Nigeria’s supreme law. What constitutional authority permitted members outside the chamber, participating virtually, to count toward the special majority required to alter the Constitution? If an earlier resolution or rule of the House authorised electronic participation in parliamentary business, another question follows:Can an ordinary parliamentary resolution determine how the special majority expressly prescribed by the Constitution itself is constituted? A resolution of Parliament cannot amend the Constitution. That makes the distinction between ordinary legislative procedure and constitutional alteration critically important.
The report before the House contained 26 clauses. Opposition members subsequently protested the manner in which the clauses were handled and walked out, alleging that the constitutionally required process had not been followed. The House leadership took a different view of the validity of the proceedings.What constitutional authority governed virtual participation? How was each proposed constitutional alteration subjected to the level of scrutiny demanded by the supreme law? And what precedent has now been created for future constitutional amendments? Today, the issue is State Police. Tomorrow, it may be something considerably more consequential, including the constitutional provisions governing presidential tenure itself. The safeguard is not the popularity of today’s amendment. The safeguard is the procedure every future amendment must obey.
SEPTEMBER 2026: 37 PEOPLE DIE IN FEDERAL CUSTODY — WHERE IS PARLIAMENT?
On 17 September 2026, 37 people detained by the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps in Niger State over suspected illegal mining died in custody.The Federal Government responded by establishing an independent ten-member investigative committee and suspending officers connected to the incident. The Police also commenced an investigation. Those actions matter and must be acknowledged. But they do not extinguish Parliament’s independent responsibility.
As of 14 October 2026, 27 days after the deaths, the constitutional oversight question remains: Where is Parliament’s own publicly announced investigation? Which parliamentary committee has summoned the NSCDC leadership? Which officials have appeared before elected representatives to explain how 37 people entered the custody of a federal security institution and died there? The Executive has established a committee to investigate an Executive agency. That may be appropriate. But should Parliament simply wait for the Executive’s conclusions? Is Parliament content to depend upon an Executive investigation into an Executive institution? If so, what becomes of independent legislative oversight?Separation of powers exists partly because constitutional accountability should not depend solely upon institutions investigating themselves. Oversight cannot be measured only by condolences, motions, condemnations or statements. It must ultimately be measured by independent scrutiny and institutional consequence.
SEPTEMBER 2026: SECTION 145 — DID PARLIAMENT IGNORE THE CONSTITUTION’S 21-DAY CLOCK?
Perhaps the most symbolically important constitutional test came next.
On 30 August 2026, the Presidency announced that President Tinubu had departed Nigeria for a three-week working vacation. He returned on 29 September 2026. Nigeria has confronted presidential absence before. The country should remember why the current Section 145 exists. President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s prolonged medical absence triggered a constitutional crisis. The National Assembly eventually invoked the Doctrine of Necessity in 2010. The Constitution was subsequently altered.The amended Section 145 could hardly be clearer.
Whenever the President is proceeding on vacation or is otherwise unable to discharge the functions of office, subsection (1) provides for transmission of a written declaration to the Senate President and Speaker so that the Vice-President performs presidential functions as Acting President.
More importantly, subsection (2) provides that where the President is unable or fails to transmit that declaration within 21 days, the National Assembly shall, by simple-majority resolution of each House, mandate the Vice-President to act until the President communicates his return.The word used by the Constitution is shall.The Presidency stated during Tinubu’s absence that he continued directing national affairs remotely and that Vice-President Kashim Shettima represented him at some official engagements. That is relevant context. But it does not eliminate the constitutional question. The Constitution does not say that Section 145 becomes obsolete because Zoom, WhatsApp and encrypted telephones exist.
Technology may change how Presidents communicate. It does not override the Constitution. If the constitutional interpretation is that Section 145(2) was not triggered because the President remained able to discharge presidential functions, Parliament should explain that interpretation. If the interpretation is that a “working vacation” falls outside Section 145, Parliament should reconcile that position with the explicit words of subsection (1), which refer to a President “proceeding on vacation”. Institutional silence is not constitutional interpretation. Nigeria paid for Section 145 with a constitutional crisis. If Parliament will not enforce or publicly explain its interpretation of an express constitutional safeguard dealing with presidential power, what provision concerning presidential power will it enforce?
THIS IS NOT AN EXHAUSTIVE CATALOGUE
The episodes discussed here are not the only controversies associated with the 10th National Assembly. Other decisions, omissions and exercises of legislative authority deserve separate examination. Space does not permit their treatment here. Nor is every episode legally identical.
The Rivers vote, tax-law discrepancies, Electoral Act controversy, budget implementation, fiscal reporting, State Police amendment, Minna deaths and Section 145 each engage different constitutional principles.But taken together, they permit a narrower and entirely legitimate question:When confronted with some of the most consequential tests of constitutional procedure, appropriation, oversight and executive accountability, has Parliament consistently exercised the independence expected of a co-equal arm of government?
THE GREATER CASUALTY: PUBLIC FAITH IN DEMOCRACY
The larger casualty may ultimately be neither Tinubu, Akpabio nor Abbas.
It is public faith in democratic government.Democracy does not survive merely because elections continue to take place. It survives because citizens believe institutions mean something.That Parliament can keep Presidents within constitutional boundaries. That laws passed by representatives cannot mysteriously change between passage and publication. That public money remains subject to appropriation and scrutiny. That constitutional amendments must themselves be constitutional. That federal institutions can be independently investigated. And that the President remains subject to rules that do not disappear because compliance becomes politically inconvenient.When citizens cease to believe those things, democracy begins losing something periodic elections alone cannot restore: legitimacy.
The warning signs are measurable.Afrobarometer’s latest Nigeria data show that 64 per cent of Nigerians still say democracy is preferable to any other form of government.That is significant. Nigerians have not abandoned the democratic ideal.But institutional confidence tells a different story.
The Africa Polling Institute’s 2026 Social Cohesion Report found that only 23 per cent of respondents expressed significant trust in the National Assembly, while 77 per cent expressed little or no trust. The survey identified Parliament as the least trusted institution among those measured.Those figures do not prove that the constitutional controversies examined in this article caused that distrust. But they show that Parliament operates in an environment where public confidence is already dangerously fragile.What happens to democracy when citizens increasingly believe that Parliament cannot or will not perform its constitutional function of checking executive power?
THE PRESIDENCY PARLIAMENT IS BUILDING
This is why the phrase “lifetime presidency” in the title should not be read literally.President Bola Tinubu has not abolished presidential term limits. Nor does the evidence examined here establish that he intends to remain President for life.The argument is institutional rather than literal.
A lifetime presidency does not require a President who remains in office forever.
It requires a presidency whose power increasingly encounters no meaningful institutional restraint while that President remains in office.Presidents naturally seek political advantage and attempt to advance their programmes. The Constitution anticipates that reality. That is why Nigeria has a separately elected Legislature with its own constitutional authority.The Police Act raised questions about extraordinary legislative speed, Executive-initiated tenure rules and the safeguards surrounding an institution central to election security. Rivers raised questions about Parliament’s handling of a constitutionally prescribed supermajority. The tax-law controversy raised questions about the integrity of enacted legislation.
The Electoral Act controversy raised questions about whether parliamentary procedure accurately reflected parliamentary will. Section 138 raised questions about post-election remedies. Budget implementation raised questions about Parliament’s willingness to enforce the laws it appropriates. Service-Wide Votes and the IMF findings raised questions about whether Parliament is fully exercising the power of the purse. The proposed six-year tenure placed presidential tenure itself on the horizon of constitutional alteration. State Police raised questions about the process through which Nigeria’s Constitution may be amended. Minna raised questions about Parliament’s independence in overseeing Executive institutions. Section 145 raised questions about Parliament’s conduct when presidential power itself was directly implicated.
These controversies should not be collapsed artificially into a single allegation. But collectively they justify close scrutiny of the relationship between executive power and legislative independence.
The charge is not inactivity. It is failure of independence when independence matters most. PARLIAMENT MUST DECIDE WHAT IT ISThis argument is not born of hostility toward Akpabio and Abbas as individuals.
It is an examination of how the institutions they lead exercise the constitutional powers entrusted to them.A legislature should be jealous of those powers.It should defend the integrity of laws it passes. It should protect its appropriation authority. It should demand transparent compliance with extraordinary constitutional voting thresholds. It should defend the integrity of constitutional alteration. It should independently investigate catastrophic failures within federal institutions. And it should never require the political permission of the Presidency to perform any of those functions.No President should want a Parliament incapable of saying no.Because every President eventually leaves office. The precedents remain.
Every procedural shortcut tolerated today becomes available to another President tomorrow. Every constitutional safeguard ignored today becomes harder to invoke when it is desperately needed. Every parliamentary power voluntarily surrendered becomes harder for future legislators to recover.That is why this argument is ultimately bigger than Tinubu. Bigger than Akpabio. Bigger than Abbas.It is about whether Nigeria is strengthening institutions or merely strengthening incumbents.
A citizen who repeatedly watches institutions fail to enforce their own rules may eventually stop believing those rules matter. A citizen who concludes that Parliament cannot check power may eventually ask why Parliament matters. And a citizen who ceases to believe democratic institutions can defend the constitutional order may eventually begin to question the democratic arrangement itself.
That would be the gravest consequence of all. The oath they took was to the Constitution, not to the President.
History may forgive a Parliament that confronts a powerful President and loses.It will be far less forgiving of a Parliament that never seriously asserts the constitutional powers it was elected to exercise.
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