A state begins to lose its authority when the law is formidable when dealing with the powerless but negotiable when dealing with the politically connected. Nigeria is increasingly flirting with precisely that danger.
A slap at a state inauguration. An alleged assault on journalists inside Government House. A public servant allegedly beaten at his own workplace and subsequently dead.
Three incidents. Different circumstances. Different actors. But one uncomfortable question:
Does political proximity increasingly provide a shield against the consequences that ordinary citizens would face?
This is not ultimately a story about Bianca Ojukwu, Ebelechukwu Obiano, an Edo governorās aide or the Delta Commissioner. Nor should allegations be converted into convictions before the evidence is established.
It is a story about something bigger: whether Nigeriaās institutions still possess the independence and authority to apply the law when the people involved are connected to political power.
The rule of law is not tested when the accused is powerless.
It is tested when the accused is powerful.
The Bianca Ojukwu incident
In March 2022, at the inauguration of Governor Chukwuma Soludo in Anambra State, Bianca Ojukwu, widow of Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, and Ebelechukwu Obiano, wife of the outgoing governor Willie Obiano, became involved in a public altercation.
Video footage showed Bianca Ojukwu slapping Ebelechukwu Obiano after the latter approached her. Bianca subsequently gave her account, saying that Mrs Obiano had verbally confronted and taunted her. Mrs Obianoās camp disputed that account and described the slap as unprovoked. (Punchā )
Whatever preceded the confrontation, the spectacle was extraordinary: two politically prominent women physically confronting each other at a state inauguration in full public view.
Yet the incident quickly became political theatre and social-media entertainment.
The more important question was institutional.
What happens when somebody with political prominence is accused of conduct that may constitute a criminal offence?
The answer should not depend upon who the person is.
The Edo Government House incident
In December 2025, Juliet Enabulele-Asein, a reporter with the Edo Broadcasting Service, and cameraman Bright Osifo were reportedly assaulted at an empowerment programme at Government House in Benin City by an aide to Governor Monday Okpebholo, Kingsley Okungbowa, popularly known as Ebo Stone.
Reports said the incident began when the aide confronted the cameraman and the journalist intervened. The Nigeria Union of Journalists condemned the alleged assault and called for investigation.
The location matters.
Government House is public property. The journalist was performing a professional function at a public event. The alleged assailant was a person attached to political power.
The question therefore becomes larger than the alleged assault:
Who protects the citizen when the alleged aggressor is connected to government?
Then came Delta
The Delta case is more serious because it involves a death.
Unity Ekpevbughe Adeda, a Deputy Director in the Delta State Ministry of Secondary Education, died following an incident at his own office.
There are competing accounts. Allegations have been made that Adeda was assaulted by aides connected with Commissioner Kingsley Ashibogwu. The commissioner denies ordering any assault and has given a different account of what occurred.
Those competing accounts must be tested by evidence, not political allegiance.
The police have arrested one suspect and commenced a homicide investigation. That is the proper criminal-justice route.
But the stateās administrative response raises a separate question: what should happen when an internal government inquiry overlaps with an ongoing criminal investigation?
The legal framework matters
The starting point is the Constitution.
Section 17(2)(a) of the 1999 Constitution provides that the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government. Section 17(2)(b) recognises the sanctity of the human person, while section 34 guarantees the right to the dignity of the human person.
Those provisions are not ornamental constitutional wallpaper.
They establish the broader constitutional obligation of government to protect human dignity and security.
Where an alleged assault occurs, however, the immediate question becomes one of criminal law and due process.
The relevant criminal offence will depend upon the facts, the applicable law in the particular state and the nature of the injury. The Criminal Code, for example, contains provisions dealing with assault and unlawful violence, while state criminal laws may apply depending on the jurisdiction. The legal characterisation of the Delta incident must therefore await the evidence and the applicable charging provisions.
The criminal process then has its own safeguards.
The Administration of Criminal Justice Act 2015 expressly identifies, among its purposes, the protection of society from crime together with protection of the rights and interests of suspects, defendants and victims.
That balance is important.
Demanding investigation is not the same thing as demanding conviction.
The police must investigate. The prosecution must determine whether the available evidence supports a charge. The accused remains entitled to due process. Ultimately, criminal guilt is a matter for a court.
That is precisely why political influence should have no role in the process.
The Delta problem: administration versus criminal investigation
The distinction becomes particularly important in Delta.
There is nothing inherently unlawful about a government conducting an administrative inquiry into an incident involving its employees. An employer may need to determine whether officials breached disciplinary rules, whether procedures were followed and whether institutional reforms are necessary.
But an administrative inquiry is not a substitute for a criminal investigation.
Where a person has died following an alleged assault, the priority must be the preservation of evidence relevant to the criminal investigation.
And in this case the alleged incident occurred in the victimās own government office.
That potentially places CCTV footage, official records, access logs, communications, medical records and eyewitness accounts at the centre of the investigation.
The danger of a premature administrative process is therefore not merely that it might produce the wrong conclusion.
It may affect the evidence itself.
Witnesses may discuss their accounts. Records may be altered or lost. CCTV may be overwritten. Employees may feel pressure, consciously or otherwise, to conform to an institutional narrative. People who might otherwise provide independent accounts may become reluctant to speak.
None of this requires a deliberate conspiracy.
It is precisely why criminal investigations require control of evidence, proper documentation and protection against interference.
The state should therefore be extremely careful about allowing an internal administrative process to get ahead of the criminal investigation.
An administrative inquiry may ultimately be necessary.
But it should not compromise the criminal process or become a mechanism for establishing an official version of events before the police have established the facts.
The real issue is equality before the law
These three incidents should not be artificially treated as identical.
The Anambra episode was a public altercation between political spouses. The Edo matter involved allegations of assault by a government aide against journalists. The Delta case concerns a death and an ongoing homicide investigation.
But together they expose a recurring problem in Nigerian public life:
the suspicion that the practical consequences of conduct change according to oneās proximity to power.
For an ordinary Nigerian, an allegation of assault can quickly become a police matter.
When the alleged perpetrator is politically connected, citizens often expect the process to become slower, quieter and more complicated.
Whether that perception is justified in any particular case is a question for evidence.
But the perception itself is damaging.
A constitutional democracy depends not merely upon laws existing but upon citizens believing that those laws apply without regard to status.
When citizens stop asking whether conduct is lawful and start asking:
āWho is behind him?ā
the problem has moved beyond individual misconduct.
It has become institutional.
Political office is not legal immunity
A governorās aide does not acquire immunity from the criminal law because he works for a governor.
A commissioner does not possess private coercive authority over civil servants.
Political influence does not create a separate legal code.
Nor does prominence, family connection or proximity to government.
That is the essential principle of civil authority.
The state must remain the only legitimate public authority for the investigation and prosecution of crime. Political actors and their associates cannot be permitted to exercise coercive power as an extension of political office.
This is where the idea of the writ of the state becomes important.
The state demonstrates its authority when citizens know that disputes will be resolved through institutions rather than intimidation, and that the same criminal law applies whether the accused is unknown, politically connected or sitting in government.
If citizens instead believe that political connections determine whether the police act, whether evidence is preserved or whether prosecution occurs, the formal existence of the law becomes less important than its practical enforcement.
That is how state authority quietly recedes.
Accountability without prejudgment
There is a further principle that must not be lost in the outrage.
The accused are entitled to the presumption of innocence.
In the Delta case, Commissioner Ashibogwu denies ordering the assault. That allegation must be investigated, not assumed.
If the evidence establishes that he had no criminal involvement, the law must say so.
If the evidence establishes criminal responsibility against him or anybody else, the appropriate prosecution should follow.
The same principle applies to the other incidents.
Accountability means establishing facts through lawful process. It does not mean deciding guilt before the investigation is complete.
That distinction is not weakness.
It is the rule of law.
The retreat of civil authority
The deeper concern, therefore, is not simply that individuals may have behaved badly.
It is what happens when citizens repeatedly see allegations involving political power disappear into the machinery of government without a clear, credible and independent resolution.
The result is a dangerous shift in public psychology.
Citizens begin to believe that law is something imposed from above rather than a restraint upon those above.
Civil servants become cautious about confronting political superiors.
Journalists become wary of challenging government officials.
Victims become reluctant to report abuse.
Witnesses become nervous about what their evidence might cost them.
And political office begins to look less like a public trust and more like a protective shield.
That is not what constitutional government is supposed to achieve.
The test
The Nigerian state does not need another declaration that nobody is above the law.
It needs to demonstrate the proposition in practice.
In the Anambra episode, the issue was whether political prominence should alter the legal response to a public physical confrontation.
In Edo, it was whether a government aide could be held accountable for alleged violence against journalists performing their duties.
In Delta, the immediate test is more fundamental: whether a death allegedly following violence in a government office can be investigated independently, with the evidence protected from interference and without an administrative process prejudicing the criminal investigation.
These are not merely questions of personality.
They are tests of institutions.
The strength of a state is measured not by the power it gives its officials, but by the restraints it places upon them.
Nigeriaās institutions must therefore make one principle unmistakable:
Political power may confer office. It must never confer immunity.
