By
Nze David N. Ugwu
There is a photograph that will not go away: a governor’s mandate, carried in the everyday dress of state officials — a cap with a president’s brand stitched into the cloth — turned from sartorial preference into a civic command. In mid-October 2025, Edo State Governor Monday Okpebholo instructed his commissioners to wear the “Asiwaju” cap linked to President Bola Tinubu at executive meetings, a public nudge toward political devotion that instantly read as something more: not mere loyalty, but an assertion of power that blurs the line between state and partisan display. The order — and the reaction it provoked — is one more stroke in a portrait being painted across Nigeria: impunity given institutional room to breathe.
This is not, of course, a single-incident story. It is a composite. It is the habit of ignoring legal restraints, the selective enforcement of rules, the tendency of those who hold office to treat law as an optional script. From high-profile detentions to the suspension of local governments, from the refusal to obey court orders to the casual politicization of public rituals, the signals are persistent: the law can be disobeyed with impunity — and sometimes is.
What follows is an attempt to trace that pattern in recent Nigerian life: to set out the incidents, the institutional weaknesses that enable them, and the broader political and social consequences when citizens watch courts ruled by reason and power be treated as negotiable.
The Cap that Speaks for More: Symbolism, Coercion, and the Public Square
When a governor tells commissioners to show up in a particular brand of cap, it is a fandom edict dressed in bureaucracy. Yet this is more than pageantry. It is a public performance that signals who presides over political loyalty and how officeholders should signal that allegiance. Critics say such gestures normalize the merger of state functions with partisan identity and weaken the boundary between public duty and political allegiance — an important boundary in any functioning democracy.
The Edo episode was widely reported and debated: it attracted commentary that went beyond fashion, focusing on what it said about the expectations of executive loyalty in a federal system where governors, ministers and commissioners are meant to serve the broader public interest, not merely to demonstrate fidelity to party leaders.
When Courts Order and Governments Stall: A Pattern of Non-Compliance
Perhaps the starkest sign of institutional impunity is the refusal — explicit or structural — to obey orders of the courts. Nigeria’s recent public life contains multiple examples where judicial directions have been delayed, ignored, or met with countermoves that render the orders ineffective.
A striking pattern involves high-profile detentions and the treatment of accused public figures. In mid-2023 the High Court ordered the release of then-Central Bank Governor Godwin Emefiele or that he be charged within a week after his detention; yet the sequence of detention, transfers between security agencies, and legal wrangling that followed exposed fault lines in how court directives are operationalized by security and executive organs. That case became shorthand for the worry that institutions tasked with upholding the rule of law would find ways to delay compliance.
Another long-running flashpoint has been the treatment of separatist leader Nnamdi Kanu: judicial pronouncements, appeals, and conflicting rulings have been met by a mix of legal appeals from the government and prosecutorial pushbacks that many commentators read as a politically charged disregard for earlier judicial findings. Supporters and legal observers describe episodes in Kanu’s case as emblematic of the state’s willingness to prioritize perceived security or political considerations over the straightforward implementation of court orders.
Local Governments, Suspension and the Politics of Defiance
Impunity is not confined to the highest offices. In Edo State, for example, successive episodes involving the suspension of local government chairmen — and the state’s failure to implement court rulings restoring those officials — have attracted sharp criticism. Commentators and legal analysts have pointed out that when a state refuses to honour court judgments about local-government autonomy or the lawful tenure of elected local officials, it weakens the very fabric of constitutional governance at the grassroots. Such refusals are not only legal problems; they become political instruments to reshape local power.
When governors or state executives effectively ignore an order, the court’s authority is eroded in practical terms. The effects cascade: citizens lose faith that rights and verdicts will be upheld; opposition or dissenting local leaders face political marginalization without legal remedy; and the normalization of disobedience becomes politically contagious.
Administrative Evasions: From Forfeiture Orders to Regulatory Standoffs
Beyond detentions and reinstatements, administrative evasion takes many forms. Court orders mandating the forfeiture of assets, injunctions on procurement, or directives against certain executive actions can be delayed or resisted through appeals, administrative reinterpretations, or tactical non-compliance. Analysts who study rule-of-law erosion observe that such evasions are more damaging than overt lawbreaking because they hide in procedural complexity: the law appears to be operating even while the spirit of judicial intent is frustrated.
Recent reporting on asset forfeiture orders tied to corruption probes — such as those involving Emefiele — illustrates this dynamic. Courts may issue final forfeiture orders, but follow-through, the public accounting of seized assets, and the institutional willingness to let forfeitures stand without political interference remain contested.
Why Does Impunity Take Root? Institutional Causes
Impunity does not appear from nowhere. Several structural causes make it more likely to appear and harder to eradicate in Nigeria:
- Concentration of power at the executive level.When the executive has broad discretion over security agencies, appointments, and the purse strings, it gains levers to resist or delay court directives.
- Weak enforcement mechanisms.Courts can issue orders; enforcing them often relies on bureaucracies that are part of the executive chain. If those agencies demur, the court’s writ is difficult to execute.
- Political instrumentalization of state institutions.Security agencies, public corporations, and regulatory bodies that are politicized are more liable to be used as instruments to protect or prosecute political interests selectively.
- Public cynicism and normalization.Repeated instances of disobedience teach citizens to expect selective justice and to adapt rather than resist — an erosion of civic norms that is slow and insidious.
- Legal complexity used as a shield.Appeals, jurisdictional fights, and procedural technicalities can shield substantive non-compliance in the name of due process.
Scholars and civil-society monitors argue that impunity thrives where formal legal rules exist alongside an informal political economy that rewards non-compliance for political advantage. Reports and legal reviews in recent years have documented this double life of law: present on paper, fragile in practice.
The Human Cost: Rights, Confidence, and Fragile Trust
The consequences of impunity are not abstract. They are felt in detained families who watch court orders for release go unheeded; in communities whose elected local leaders are removed or suspended without effective judicial protection; in entrepreneurs and investors who see rule-of-law fragility as commercial risk; and in ordinary citizens who lose faith that institutions can or will protect them.
When people conclude the law is negotiable, they may resort to extra-legal means to secure redress, or they withdraw from civic life entirely. That is a dangerous spiral: weakening legal channels can push grievances into informal or violent spheres, amplifying instability.
Human-rights organizations, bar associations, and watchdog NGOs have repeatedly sounded this alarm: the credibility of the justice system is not an elite concern but the bloodstream of a functioning nation. When the courts’ orders are treated as suggestions, the social contract frays.
Politics, Patronage and the Language of Obedience
Political loyalty and patronage are not inherently criminal. Parties expect fidelity. But the problem emerges when loyalty is enforced via the apparatus of the state or when state resources, symbols or legal powers are deployed to manufacture consent. The Edo cap order is emblematic here: it is a trivial command with symbolic weight — a small act that normalizes the idea that public office is first and foremost an expression of partisan fidelity rather than public service.
When officials are told they will face consequences for failing to display partisan insignia at official meetings, it signals a tilt toward governance by loyalty rather than governance by law. In the longer arc, such practices corrode institutional independence and make impartial administration of public goods harder to accomplish.
Can the Trend be Reversed? Institutional Remedies
A portrait of impunity is discouraging, but it also makes clear the policy levers that could rein it in:
- Reinforce enforcement independence.Strengthening agencies that enforce court orders—prison services, police, and clerks of court—so they act on judicial directives without executive interference.
- Protect judicial operations.Ensure courts and judges have the institutional space and security to carry out orders, and fast-track contempt proceedings where defiance is clear and willful.
- Limit politicization of security agencies.Reforms that depoliticize recruitment and promotions within security and investigative agencies can reduce their use as partisan tools.
- Civic and legal education.Public campaigns to emphasize the finality of court orders and the civic duty of compliance can shift norms over time.
- Transparency and public accountability.Where the executive delays compliance, procedural requirements to publish reasons and timelines for compliance can create pressure and provide clear evidence for accountability.
No single reform is a panacea. But combined, these measures can strengthen the scaffolding around judicial authority and reduce the opportunities for selective non-compliance.
The Role of Media and Civil Society
A free press and an active civil society are essential corrective forces. Reporting that names specific acts of defiance, that follows the chain of accountability, and that pressures institutions to explain themselves brings public scrutiny to bear. Legal advocacy groups and human-rights defenders can litigate faster and use public campaigns to make the cost of non-compliance politically painful.
International observers and treaty obligations may also matter: when court defiance involves human-rights violations, international scrutiny can ratchet up the reputational price for sustained impunity.
Conclusion: The Long Work of Restoring the Rule of Law
The cap on a commissioner’s head is a small image, but it sits inside a larger, more troubling frame. Across Nigeria, the repeated refusal to implement court orders, the instrumental use of security agencies, and the entanglement of party loyalty with state functions are more than episodic missteps. They are symptoms of an institutional disease: when political expediency outcompetes judicial finality, the rule of law loses ground.
Fixing this will not be accomplished by a single dramatic judgment or a single reform. It will require patient rebuilding: of institutions, of norms, and of public faith that the law will work for everyone. That is a civic commitment that requires pressure from all sides — judges willing to sanction defiance, civil society willing to litigate and protest, journalists willing to expose, and political leaders willing to subordinate short-term party advantage to the long-term health of the polity.
If the law is the skeleton of a democratic society, respect for that law is the muscle that makes the body move. When the two fall out of sync, the patient — a nation — grows fragile. Portraits of impunity are not destiny. But they are a warning. Heed it, and the long work of repair can begin.
Nze David N. Ugwu is the Managing Consultant of Knowledge Research Consult. He could be reached at [email protected] or !2348037269333.
