Political co-optation is not a Nigerian invention. It is one of the oldest and most elegant tools in the authoritarian toolkit far more refined than the crude business of jailing poets or shooting journalists. Why break a man’s spirit when you can simply rent it? Offer him a title, a salary, a motorcade, and watch the moral thunder turn into polite applause. History is littered with the wreckage of principles that met a well-timed appointment.
In classical Rome the Praetorian Guard perfected an early version of the game. They did not always need to assassinate emperors; sometimes it was enough to elevate the convenient ones and pension off the awkward. The message was clear: loyalty has a price, and dissent has a shelf life measured in denarii. Centuries later, Japan’s Fujiwara clan refined the technique by marrying into the imperial family and installing child emperors while the real power stayed in the hands of the in-laws. Cloistered rule, they called it. The emperor still wore the crown; the critics simply discovered that the crown now paid better than the protest.
Fast-forward to the modern era and the method becomes almost scientific. In Peru under Alberto Fujimori, the intelligence chief Vladimiro Montesinos did not bother with ideology. He simply bought the television stations. Six of seven major channels ended up on the government payroll. Criticism did not disappear; it was quietly reclassified as “constructive engagement.” In Jordan, King Hussein routinely absorbed Islamists and former leftists into consultative councils and ministries, transforming potential revolutionaries into respectable stakeholders with offices and letterheads. In post-Arab Spring Egypt, the military co-opted the very youth movement that had helped topple Mubarak. Tamarod’s leaders discovered the pleasures of proximity just in time to endorse the return of uniformed power.
Communist regimes perfected the reward-and-reprimand model. Bulgaria’s secret police shifted from pure terror to a system of volunteer informants who received benefits in exchange for regular reports. Iraq’s Ba’th Party never relaxed the dual approach: fear for the stubborn, privileges for the flexible. The result was the same everywhere, potential opposition leaders found that the shortest route to influence was through the front door of the presidential palace rather than the barricades outside it.
Nigeria simply added local flavour. When Ibrahim Babangida arrived in 1985, the remaining centres of resistance were the professionals, doctors and lawyers. He did not ban the Nigerian Medical Association or the Nigerian Bar Association. He simply appointed Olikoye Ransome-Kuti (brother of the more famous rebel Fela) as Health Minister and Bola Ajibola as Attorney-General. The logic was elegant: remove the most credible voices from the streets by giving them air-conditioned offices. The rest of the opposition was left shouting at a diminishing audience.
Decades later the same playbook reappears with upgraded software. Tinubu’s government has absorbed yesterday’s most energetic critics, Reno Omokri, Femi Fani-Kayode, Daniel Bwala and others, into the ranks of ambassadors-designate and special advisers. The transformation is so complete that former accusations of drug dealing and corruption have been replaced by catalogues of presidential achievement. What once looked like conviction now resembles a subscription service that can be cancelled the moment a better package arrives.
The short-term advantages are obvious. Noise levels drop. The president sleeps better. The remaining critics are dismissed as residual, unemployable, or simply not yet offered the right portfolio. Yet the long-term damage is structural. When every public moralist can be converted by the prospect of a diplomatic posting or a special advisership, citizens lose the ability to distinguish principle from performance. Trust becomes the first casualty. Power, already inclined toward self-preservation, learns that the cheapest form of security is the co-opted conscience.
History does not suggest that this strategy ends well for the polity. It ends well for the ruler’s tenure. The country is left with a political class that has perfected the art of reversible outrage and a public that has stopped believing anyone. The critics have not been defeated; they have been hired. And once hired, they tend to stay quiet, until the next administration offers better terms.
Centre for Nigeria Progress 