By Musa Bakare.
In Nigerian politics, hypocrisy often wears the mask of principle. Politicians praise institutions when they win and trash them when they lose. To them, an election is credible only in victory; defeat suddenly exposes rigging. That is not democratic conscience, it is political convenience.
The February 21 by-elections proved the point. Polls conducted by the Independent National Electoral Commission across the Federal Capital Territory and constituencies in Rivers State showed a familiar script: winners applauded the process, losers condemned it. Same election, same rules, opposite reactions.
Results gave the All Progressives Congress five of six FCT chairmanship seats, leaving the Peoples Democratic Party with only Gwagwalada. Predictably, credibility became a partisan opinion, not a democratic standard.
This is the crisis of convenient legitimacy, when politicians accept institutions only when outcomes favor them.
Electoral bodies are compromised until they deliver victory, principles stretched, standards shift, outrage becomes strategy.
Such conduct is corrosive. When leaders delegitimize systems for tactical gain, they teach citizens to distrust democracy itself. And when trust collapses, even winners inherit a weakened state.
Democracy is not validated by winners; it is validated by rules respected in victory and defeat alike. A political class that treats legitimacy as private property cannot build a stable republic.
Nigeria does not just need better elections; it needs better democratic character. Until political actors learn to lose with the same grace they celebrate winning, legitimacy will remain conditional, trust fragile, and democracy unfinished.
– Musa Asiru Bakare, APC member and political analyst, writes from Lokoja, Kogi State.
