The resurgence of military coup rumors is not a coincidence; it is a clinical symptom of a democracy in profound failure. The disturbing truth is that, for any attempt to disrupt the constitutional order to gain traction, plotters must first conduct a reconnaissance of the public mood.
And right now, the mood of Nigeria is one of exhausted, desperate despair—a mood that, tragically, creates a perverse sense of permission for non-democratic forces. This is the grim realization under the current administration: the political elite has pushed the populace so far to the brink that the unthinkable—military intervention—is no longer merely a distant historical regret, but a whisper of radical relief.
For nearly two decades, stability was maintained because, despite the imperfections of the PDP era and the early years of the APC, the average Nigerian was not fundamentally threatened with starvation or economic erasure. That stability, however, has been systematically dismantled by the current wave of sudden, crippling policies—the subsidy removal, the currency freefall, and the resulting hyper-inflation.
When millions of households fall into extreme poverty overnight, democracy ceases to be a noble goal and becomes an unbearable burden. It is precisely this pervasive loss of hope that plotters bank on. Military regimes do not overthrow functional governments; they move on exhausted populations who have lost all faith in the legitimate process to deliver justice, security, and basic subsistence.
The silence that once shielded our democracy is now replaced by the clamor of public suffering, a sound that, to the anti-democratic ear, sounds dangerously like approval. The tragedy here is twofold. First, the ruling class has failed to recognize that its inability to manage the economy is a greater threat to national security than any opposition rally. Second, many Nigerians are tragically forgetting the dark lessons of history. Military rule is never a solution. It is a suspension of civil rights, a stifling of free speech, and the exchange of one form of corruption for another, far more violent and unaccountable one. It does not feed the hungry; it only silences them. The only way to decisively defeat the insidious spirit of the coup is not through military arrests, but through transparent, immediate, and effective governance.
President Tinubu’s administration must understand that the real national security threat is the empty stomach and the closed mind of the citizen who believes the ballot box is useless. Until the economic conditions that have broken the nation’s spirit are reversed, the soil remains fertile for anti-democratic weeds, and the desperate mood will continue to tempt the military to intervene. The onus is on the democratic leadership to prove, before it is too late, that civilian rule is still the only viable path to progress.
NIGERIANS AND THE DESPERATION TRAP
BY DARE ADELEKAN
