Odita Sunday 
By. Chris Okobah, PhD
Award-Winning Author
A Nigerian should return from the polling station with an ink-stained finger—not leave behind a family searching for a body.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s directive to security agencies to ensure free, fair and credible elections, conveyed after the security meeting of October 15, is welcome. But a presidential instruction must become protection on our streets, at campaign rallies and around polling stations. Nigerians need evidence that every citizen will be protected, regardless of political affiliation.
My concern is simple: how can citizens trust promises of neutrality when they believe security personnel will stand aside while political opponents are threatened, intimidated or attacked?
Trust cannot be commanded from a podium. It must be earned through conduct.
The police and other security agencies are paid to protect Nigerian lives and property. Their duty does not change when a citizen joins an opposition party, criticises a governor or refuses to support the president.
A police uniform belongs to the Nigerian state. It must never become the campaign attire of a political party.
When officers ignore threats, perpetrators grow bolder. When an attack attracts no meaningful investigation, another attack becomes easier to contemplate. When political connections appear to offer protection from prosecution, impunity begins to look like government policy.
Where are the transparent investigations? Where are the public updates on prosecutions? What consequences await officers who deliberately abandon citizens in danger?
These are questions a serious democracy must answer.
A threat to burn a home, disrupt a rally or kill an opponent must never be dismissed as political excitement. Authorities must investigate credible threats and act before a family becomes bereaved. After violence occurs, both the perpetrators and anyone who financed or directed them must face accountability through a fair legal process.
The security officer who watches a citizen being assaulted and deliberately does nothing has failed that citizen. Repeated failures of this kind destroy public confidence and deepen the dangerous belief that survival depends on private force.
That is a road Nigeria must refuse to travel.
We must never push citizens into choosing between exercising their rights and staying alive. Nor should we encourage retaliation, armed confrontation or mob justice. Our demand is that the institutions entrusted with public protection fulfil their responsibility.
Defending democracy requires courage, organisation and peaceful resolve.
It means refusing intimidation. It means documenting abuses when safe, reporting threats, supporting victims, demanding credible investigations and using lawful civic action to insist on accountability. It means casting our votes freely and following the electoral process through lawful observation and scrutiny.
No citizen should have to fight a gunman to make a ballot count.
To the young people recruited as political thugs, I ask: whose future are you destroying?
You face the same food prices as the people you are sent to attack. Your family needs the same hospitals. Your children need functioning schools. Your household suffers when transport becomes unaffordable and electricity fails.
Why accept money to terrorise another struggling Nigerian so that a politician can retain power?
When violence ends, the politician may return to a guarded residence. You return to the hardship that should have united you with your neighbour.
Do not let someone purchase your anger and spend it against your own future.
The beauty of democracy is that public office remains subject to public judgment. We choose a candidate, assess the performance and retain the freedom to choose someone else at the next election.
A politician who cannot accept that possibility does not respect the people’s authority.
What democratic legitimacy survives when armed men frighten voters away, seize ballot boxes or impose an outcome? A military takeover uses weapons to displace public authority. Electoral violence can likewise be used to defeat the people’s choice while preserving the appearance of civilian government.
The ballot cannot express freedom when a gun determines who may approach it.
Those who speak proudly of their struggle for democracy must also accept scrutiny. Past sacrifice cannot excuse present corruption. No history of activism gives anyone ownership of the treasury or permanent entitlement to power.
The measure of democratic commitment is how a leader treats dissent, accountability and the possibility of defeat.
Our shared suffering should make this clear. Hunger does not recognise party membership. Illness does not spare a loyal supporter. An unsafe road does not ask how its victims voted.
We all need a country where institutions work and public money serves public needs.
That is why electoral security matters beyond election day. When citizens cannot freely remove failed leaders, every struggle for better schools, hospitals, jobs, roads and clean water becomes harder.
President Tinubu’s directive must therefore be followed by visible action: impartial protection, prompt investigation of threats, credible prosecution of offenders and consequences for security personnel who assist or deliberately overlook political violence.
Nigerians must also reject bullying within their own parties. We cannot condemn intimidation only when our preferred candidate is its victim. The freedom we demand for ourselves must extend to those whose opinions we dislike.
We have no other country to surrender to this cycle of fear.
Let us stand firm, peacefully and lawfully. Let us insist that political disagreement must never become a death sentence. Let us demand security agencies that protect citizens with the same seriousness with which they protect powerful officeholders.
Our votes must count. Our lives must matter. Our democracy must belong to us all.
Chris Okobah PhD
Award wining author
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