Nigeria is failing: The Jega-Gambari verdict we can’t ignore

The joint statement released on June 8, 2026, by a galaxy of Nigeria’s most respected statesmen and academics, including Professor Attahiru Jega, Professor Ibrahim Gambari and Malam Kabiru Yusuf, is a chilling, unvarnished look into the mirror. Their collective verdict is definitive: Nigeria stands at a dangerous crossroads where rising insecurity, systemic electoral manipulation and […]

The joint statement released on June 8, 2026, by a galaxy of Nigeria’s most respected statesmen and academics, including Professor Attahiru Jega, Professor Ibrahim Gambari and Malam Kabiru Yusuf, is a chilling, unvarnished look into the mirror. Their collective verdict is definitive: Nigeria stands at a dangerous crossroads where rising insecurity, systemic electoral manipulation and the total capture of democratic institutions converge into a crisis threatening our very survival.

The group’s intervention is a watershed moment in Nigeria’s current political landscape. “Our assessment of the state of the nation,” the group declared, “reveals that Nigeria stands at a dangerous crossroads where rising insecurity, an alarming level of electoral manipulation by government and the weakening of democratic institutions are converging into a national crisis that threatens the country’s survival.” They are spots on.

We should all stop pretending or sitting on the fence. When individuals who have held the literal keys to the state apparatus warn that the judiciary has lost its integrity and the legislature is mere executive scenery, it is no longer political alarmism. It is an anatomy of a failing state.

A failing state is a country where the government can no longer perform its basic functions. The core idea is the loss of monopoly over violence, legitimacy and service delivery. A state fails not when it is essentially poor but when it stops being a state. Today, Nigeria fits the bill.

Yet, while the Jega-Gambari group diagnoses the symptoms with surgical precision, we must be courageous enough to name the historical authors of this tragedy. The current administration did not inherit a pristine republic; it inherited a burning house. The slide into this abyss has been a multi-generational relay race, aggressively run by successive civilian presidents since the dawn of the Fourth Republic in 1999.

The tragedy of our modern democracy is that every single president has left the foundational architecture of the state weaker than they found it, each adding a dollop of chaos to our battered political history

The capture of our electoral umpire did not begin yesterday. It was Olusegun Obasanjo who notoriously declared the 2007 elections a “do-or-die” affair, institutionalising state-sponsored electoral fraud. Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, in an act of rare candour, was forced to admit that the very election that brought him to power was deeply flawed. Goodluck Jonathan’s administration, despite his graceful concession in 2015, presided over a system where corruption hollowed out state capacity, creating the initial security vacuums that today’s bandits now occupy.

Then came Muhammadu Buhari. His eight-year tenure was characterised by a catastrophic indifference to economic realities, an unprecedented expansion of national debt and a deep ethno-religious polarisation of the security architecture. On his watch, the separation of powers became a farce. The Department of State Services (DSS) raided judges’ homes in the dead of night, and the National Assembly effectively transformed into a rubber-stamp department of the presidency.

Each past leader used the over-centralised power of the federal executive to reward cronies, subvert local governance and undermine the rule of law. The current crisis is simply the logical conclusion of decades of imperial presidencies treating the Nigerian state as a spoils system.

The Jega-Gambari group’s recommendation to appoint a special envoy to the Sahel to douse regional fires, or to appeal to the patriotism of civil society, is noble. But it is akin to applying a band-aid to a cancer wound. We cannot fix a structurally defective house by merely changing the curtains or pleading with the tenants. To stop the bleeding, Nigeria must undergo deep, uncompromising political restructuring that will make it a functioning federal state.

What is a state? In political science, a state is a political entity with four core features. Max Weber boiled it down to one: the monopoly of legitimate force. The modern definition uses four elements from the 1933 Montevideo Convention: control of a specific piece of land; people who live in that territory; institutions that make laws, enforce them and collect taxes.  The bottom line is that a state exists when it can draw borders, govern people inside them and defend those borders from anyone else telling it what to do. Nigeria fails in all of these parameters.

What is to be done?  First, we must enforce a radical devolution of power. The 1999 Constitution is an unworkable, unitary document masquerading as a federalist blueprint. It concentrates far too much power and resources at the centre. We must strip the exclusive legislative list of its bloated items and hand them back to the states.

The federal government has no business managing driving licenses, local agriculture or primary education. A leaner federal centre will instantly reduce the desperate “do-or-die” allure of the presidency.

Second, the model of a single, centralised police force directed from Abuja to secure a country of over 220 million people has utterly failed. We must constitutionalise decentralised state and regional policing, strictly bound by federal human rights standards. Local security challenges require local intelligence, local personnel and local accountability.

Third, we must return to true fiscal federalism. States must become economic engines, not beggars travelling to Abuja every month with a bowl for federal allocation. Nigeria must transition to a system where states retain a significant percentage of the revenues generated within their borders, whether oil, agriculture or solid minerals, and pay a designated tax to the centre. This will force governors to innovate, build internal economies and look inward for survival.

Finally, we must insulate our democratic umpires. The appointment of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) chairman and national commissioners must be completely removed from the whims of the sitting president. The National Judicial Council (NJC) and independent civic bodies should lead a transparent vetting process to select electoral officials.

Furthermore, the judiciary must be granted absolute financial autonomy, pulling its funding directly from the consolidated revenue fund to shield judges from executive leverage.

Nigeria’s survival cannot be secured by wishing for a clean 2027 elections under a broken system. The Jega-Gambari intervention must serve as a final clarion call for an elite-led, citizen-backed constitutional reconstruction. We must fix the foundation before the weight of our failures pulls the entire roof down upon us.

It is a timely warning.

 

Adediran, a political scientist, wrote via [email protected]