By
Nze David N. Ugwu
How executive supremacy corrodes democracy — lessons from Zaire, Cameroon, Rwanda, Uganda — and the danger Nigeria would invite if it looks the other way.
There is a shorthand for a certain kind of political rot: when the president ceases to be the head of one branch of government and begins to be the government. When laws become suggestions, courts become instruments, parliaments become rubber stamps and the security services a private militia for the ruler’s political survival, you no longer have separation of powers — you have one-man rule wearing the trappings of constitutional order. Across Africa and beyond, the slow creep from constitutional governance to executive supremacy has a predictable arc: emergency powers morph into permanence; independent institutions are hollowed out; elections become theatrical renewals of consent rather than genuine contests for power. That arc is not just a threat to opposition politicians — it is a mortal threat to the rule of law, public trust and a country’s future.
When “exception” becomes the rule
Every executive justifies power grabs with urgency: security threats, economic crisis, external interference. The first decree is sold as temporary. The second—more dangerous—declares the controls necessary for stability. Before long, emergency measures are normalised, oversight is neutralised and the presidency accumulates authorities the constitution never intended. Political scientists call this process “executive aggrandizement”: the expansion of the executive at the expense of legislative and judicial checks. It is a mode of democratic erosion that can happen incrementally — and therefore deceptively — inside regimes that still claim democratic legitimacy.
Zaire: Mobutu’s lesson in how power devours institutions
History offers a blunt case study. In Zaire, Mobutu Sese Seko moved from coup leader to unchallengeable ruler by normalising decree politics and subordinating courts and legislatures to his will. Under the pretext of national unity and “authenticity,” Mobutu neutralised rivals, weaponised the state apparatus and turned public office into a private machine for patronage and plunder. The result was not only repression but institutional sclerosis: a judiciary and legislature that existed on paper but could not constrain the presidency. Mobutu’s Zaire shows the long-term cost: collapse of state capacity, kleptocracy and a society in which law serves the ruler, not the citizen.
Cameroon: the camouflaged permanence of presidential rule
Cameroon under President Paul Biya is another caution. Biya’s long incumbency — decades in power — has been accompanied by legal tweaks and informal practices that entrench the executive and erode judicial independence. When courts and appointments are politicised, the “independence” of institutions becomes performative. Governance continues, but accountability atrophies. The façade of order remains while the machinery that should restrain power is either co-opted or sidelined. Analyses of Cameroon’s judicial politicisation show how courts can be turned into instruments to bless executive decisions and delegitimise opposition. The endgame is predictable: citizens learn that rules apply unevenly, trust evaporates, and dissent is criminalised rather than negotiated.
Rwanda: delivery at the price of dissent
Rwanda’s post-genocide recovery is often cited — with reason — as a success story in reconstruction and economic growth. But that recovery has been accompanied by a sharp narrowing of political space. Independent media are stifled, opposition leaders face harassment, and critics abroad report extraterritorial intimidation. The government’s efficiency is real; so is the shrinking of civic spaces that should be the heart of democratic life. Where the executive is the final arbiter of dissent, citizens learn to equate order with obedience. The human cost — jailed activists, exiled opponents and echoing fear — is part of the bill paid for stability without pluralism.
Uganda: the slow normalisation of indefinite rule
Uganda’s trajectory under Yoweri Museveni illustrates another pattern: leaders who arrive promising reform but then neutralise limits to power. Constitutional term limits were removed, opposition suppressed, and laws have been used selectively to constrain assembly and expression. Even when elections occur, an uneven playing field — state media dominance, legal restrictions on rallies, security intimidation — turns the ballot into a legitimising ritual rather than a credible check on incumbency. The result is a polity in which institutions exist but cannot enforce boundaries on executive conduct.
Why executive supremacy kills democracy incrementally — and ruthlessly
There is a misleading narrative that democracies die in a single coup. More often they die a thousand small cuts: legal amendments that concentrate power here; appointment practices that bend the judiciary there; emergency laws that outlast the emergency; patronage and capture that buy loyalty across institutions. The consequences are structural:
- Rule of law erodes. If judges fear removal or retribution, impartial justice disappears. Laws are enforced selectively; rights depend on politics, not law.
- Political competition shrinks. When the executive controls the levers of the state, opposition parties cannot organise, campaign or win on equal terms.
- Public institutions lose autonomy. Civil service, security forces and regulatory bodies that should be neutral become instruments of partisan survival.
- Citizen trust collapses. When institutions no longer deliver predictable, impartial governance, citizens retreat from civic engagement; apathy, cynicism and extra-legal coping rise.
- Economic cost mounts. Investors prize predictable rules. Executive dominance breeds unpredictable policy swings, corruption and rent-seeking that deter sustained investment.
The scholarly literature on executive aggrandizement shows these dynamics clearly: even democratically elected leaders can hollow out checks and balances without abolishing institutions outright, producing a hollowed but durable authoritarianism.
The Nigerian fault lines
Nigeria is not immune. Its constitution lays out a separation of powers, but practice often falls short. Recent years have exposed vulnerabilities: security crises that invite emergency centralisation, episodes of heavy-handed policing, contested elections and reports of constrained civic freedoms. International monitors and rights organisations have repeatedly flagged challenges in electoral administration, civic space, and the misuse of security powers. When a presidency treats institutional constraints as obstacles rather than essentials, the cost is immediate: weakened public accountability, politicised security operations and a legal environment that privileges rulers above citizens.
It is not necessary to cast accusations of intent. Executive encroachment can be structural, not conspiratorial — a mix of political expediency, institutional weakness and real security threats exploited for political advantage. That makes it no less dangerous. Because when the president becomes, in effect, the final lawmaker, Nigeria risks the same trajectory experienced by its neighbours: institutions that exist in name but cannot protect citizens’ rights or check abuse.
Politics of personality, not policy
Once executive supremacy takes hold, politics becomes personalised. Decisions reflect the ruler’s survival calculus rather than public policy or collective deliberation. Appointments reward loyalty, protests invite force, investigative journalism invites sanctions. The result is a politics of personality: policy debates shrink, dissent becomes risk, and the public sphere is narrowed to approved narratives. This is not merely ugly politics; it is bad governance. Long-term development — the kind based on predictable regulation, accountable procurement and meritocratic administration — withers when power is concentrated in one person or office.
The contagion: why one broken institution invites many more
The death of separation of powers is not a localised institutional failure: it’s contagious. When the presidency neutralises the judiciary, the legislature has no practical mechanism to reassert balance. When the security sector is politicised, elections can be influenced by force or threat. A captured electoral commission produces predictable outcomes; a pliant court ratifies them. Each compromised institution raises the cost of resistance and lowers the chance of peaceful redress. That is why democratic backsliding often accelerates once it begins: many institutions fall, fast.
But the price is not paid only in politics
Beyond politics, there are social and economic prices. Property rights become uncertain; contracts can be voided by decrees; public funds are diverted into patronage networks. International credibility suffers; aid and investment can be reduced, especially where human rights abuses become evident. Citizens — especially the poor and marginalised — pay first and most. In Zaire, decades of kleptocracy left a burden of poverty and failed services that outlived the ruler. In more recent examples, shrinking civic space has meant fewer checks on corruption, diminished accountability for security abuses, and the erosion of the institutions that could deliver schools, hospitals and infrastructure reliably.
What Nigeria stands to lose — and why “strongman” excuses don’t hold
Some argue that a strong executive is necessary for decisive action — to fight terrorism, to stabilise an economy, to respond to crises. That is a seductive pitch. But effectiveness and autocracy are not the same; and autocratic concentration of power often produces short-term “order” at the expense of long-term resilience. Nigeria’s complex problems — insecurity in the North-East and Middle Belt, maritime and energy governance, economic diversification, youth unemployment — require institutional solutions: independent courts to enforce contracts and human rights; a credible parliament to scrutinise budgets; an impartial civil service to deliver programs across regions.
If Nigeria slides toward executive supremacy:
- democratic contestation will be hollowed out;
- ordinary citizens will lose reliable legal protections;
- corruption and economic mismanagement will gain cover;
- regional inequalities and grievances will deepen;
- and the country’s global standing and investment climate will be harmed.
Put plainly: the temptation to treat the constitution as an obstacle to be managed is a short-term fix that sows long-term failure.
How to stop the slide: institutional, legal and civic remedies
The remedy is not wistful hope but practical, repeatable checks:
- Strengthen institutional independence — protect the tenure and appointment processes of judges and independent agencies; legislate clear, transparent processes for appointments and removals.
- Enforce accountability in security operations — civilian oversight of security forces and public reporting mechanisms reduce temptation to use force for political ends.
- Protect civic space — safeguard freedom of assembly, of the press and of association; ensure laws on public order and cybercrime are not weaponised to silence criticism.
- Make elections resilient — invest in impartial electoral bodies, transparent vote management and credible international and domestic observation.
- Promote civic education and pluralism — a politically literate electorate and a plural media environment make it harder for any leader to normalise extraordinary powers.
- Guard the constitution — resist constitutional amendments that concentrate power through opaque processes; require supermajorities and national dialogue for profound changes.
These are not technicalities. They are the scaffolding of a free society.
The moral of the African — and Nigerian — story
From Mobutu’s Zaire to contemporary Cameroon, Rwanda and Uganda, different mixes of coercion, legal manoeuvre and institutional capture have been used to concentrate power in the executive. The stories vary — patronage here, emergency law there, electoral manipulation elsewhere — but the pattern is the same: democracy is hollowed from the inside, often without dramatic rupture. Nigeria has seen the warning signs in public debate, in civil society complaints, and in international reports. The real question now is whether Nigerians — leaders, civil society, the bar, the bench, the press and every citizen who values the future — will act as guardians of institutions or permit the slow substitution of the presidency for the law.
If the presidency becomes the final law, then law itself becomes negotiable — and that is a bargain no nation can afford. Nigeria has wealth — human, natural and cultural — that could be squandered by short-term political calculations and the concentration of power. The alternative is harder work: to build and defend institutions that make liberty durable. That is less glamorous than invocations of decisive leadership, but it is the only path to a stable, prosperous and just polity.
A final word to those with power
The allure of unchecked power is real because it promises immediate control. But power unmoored from law is always temporary. It leaves ruined institutions, degraded public trust and a weaker state when the storm finally comes. Real leadership is the courage to bind oneself to rules that outlast a single presidency — to accept constraints not as burdens but as the very conditions of legitimate authority. For the presidency, the highest claim to greatness is not that it rules without rivals, but that it rules within the law and for the people.
Nigeria stands at a crossroads. The continent’s history shows what happens when the question is decided the other way. The better, harder, lasting choice is cleaner: preserve separation of powers, deepen accountability, and make sure that when citizens look for justice, they find a law — not the man who claims to be it.
