Political scholar and former electricity regulator, Dr. Sam Amadi, has accused President Bola Tinubu of “shredding the sacred balance” in Nigeria’s electoral structure through ethnic-based appointments and partisan capture of state institutions.
Delivering a keynote at the First Daily Annual Public Lecture themed “Making Our Votes Count: Action, the Antidote to Cynicism,” Amadi warned that the 2027 elections may be Nigeria’s most manipulated yet.
“Tinubu has worsened the environment of electoral integrity by making partisan appointments into INEC. The head of the judiciary and security agencies are all from Tinubu’s ethnic group. That’s unprecedented,” Amadi declared.
He likened Nigeria’s electoral decay to “a criminalised contest for power,” insisting that cynicism — not INEC — is the biggest danger to democracy.
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Amadi also lamented the collapse of civic engagement in defending electoral processes, accusing political parties and civil society of complicity in election fraud.
“When citizens give up, democracy dies before the ballot box opens,” he said. “We cannot allow cynicism to hand over 2027 to a rigging machinery disguised as governance.”