Beyond the feeble resistance mustered by Obinna Aguocha of the Labour Party in the House of Representatives and Henry Seriake Dickson of the Peoples Democratic Party in the Senate against the presidential proclamation of a state of emergency in Rivers State, the opposition in the National Assembly cut the image of a bat, wretched, drenched, bedraggled, and paralysed by inertia. 

Their silence was so deafening during the plenary debate that the Speaker of the House, perhaps in a moment of cruel amusement, added salt to the wounds already inflicted on their collective conscience by calling for a voice vote not once but twice. And twice, the expected choruses of dissenters melted into a meek and mortifying hush. Their defiance extinguished before it could even find its voice.

The feckless response of the opposition to the president’s coup against the Constitution is not only a failure but a symptom of a far deeper malaise and systemic frailty that have hollowed out Nigeria’s resistance politics. Stripped of vigour, conviction, and strategic resolve, the opposition appears less a formidable counterforce than a spectral presence, flickering faintly in the loci of power, neither able to resist with purpose nor to rally the nation against the creeping encroachments on democracy. 

While the ruling party consolidates its grip on power, the opposition remains fragmented, reactive, and largely ineffective. This inability to mount a serious resistance through political manoeuvring is emblematic of the broader deficiencies that have plagued our country’s opposition politics since 2015.

One of the most glaring weaknesses of the opposition is its chronic lack of cohesion. Since the return to democracy in 1999, opposition parties have often struggled to present a united front against the ruling party. Even when temporary alliances were formed, such as the merger that led to the All Progressives Congress (APC) creation in 2013, these coalitions have been driven more by short-term electoral calculations than by a shared ideological vision. 

This absence of ideological clarity has continued to plague the opposition, with parties and candidates frequently shifting allegiances based on personal ambitions rather than a collective strategy for governance. The events surrounding the Rivers State emergency proclamation have only further exposed this disunity. Instead of coordinating a robust response, opposition leaders issued disjointed statements and relied on social media outrage rather than meaningful political action.

This lack of strategic foresight is another defining flaw of the opposition. Politics requires long-term and well-organised strategies that anticipate every move of the ruling party. Yet, opposition parties have consistently tended to be caught off guard. The Rivers crisis did not emerge overnight; it resulted from a prolonged political tussle that a serious opposition movement should have been prepared for. 

Instead, opposition figures reacted belatedly, scrambling to issue press statements long after the President had set the narrative. There were no coordinated political strategies inside and outside the opposition political parties, mass mobilisation, effective whip lines or resistance inside the legislature. When the opposition attempted to push back, the state of emergency was already a fait accompli.

Another major weakness of the opposition is its over-reliance on social media as a substitute for the political mobilisation of the streets. While social media is an important tool in contemporary democracy, it has not replaced grassroots political mobilisation. Politics is a vehicle for political change and a battleground for revolution. The opposition and its leading opposition stalwarts have developed the habit of running to social media as the first line of attack, often neglecting the need for sustained party political mobilisation of the streets. 

The late German-American theorist Hannah Arendt rightly observed that power resides in the streets. For opposition parties to remain relevant, their politics must resonate with the streets and be inseparably woven into the sasses, gallantries and pulses of the streets. More than that, they must master the art of occupation “when power is lying in the street”, to quote Arendt, rather than become mere spectators in the unfolding drama of governance. 

In the case of Rivers State, opposition leaders could have organised protests and rallied the public that the late John Dewey famously conceptualised many years ago to counter President Tinubu’s coup. Instead, their responses were limited to issuing press statements and organising press conferences that failed to yield tangible results.

The opposition’s inability to effectively communicate and control the narrative is equally concerning. The ruling party has mastered the art of framing political events to its advantage as the opposition struggled with message discipline. In the case of Rivers State, President Tinubu and his handlers painted the state of emergency as a necessary intervention to restore order. The opposition consistently fumbled in its messaging and presented conflicting takes and counter-narratives, diluting whatever resistance they might have mounted. 

Furthermore, the opposition’s structural weaknesses extend to its lack of grassroots organisation. Effective opposition movements are built from the ground up, with strong party structures that can mobilise supporters at a moment’s notice. Unfortunately, many opposition parties in our country exist as special-purpose vehicles for elections, springing to life only during campaigns and becoming dormant afterwards. 

This lack of continuous engagement with the electorates means that when crises like the Rivers State emergency arise, the opposition has no reliable base from which to draw. Perhaps the most fundamental failure of the opposition is its lack of political courage. True opposition requires more than just criticising the government on social media or in press releases. 

It demands a willingness to take risks, to challenge power directly, and to mobilise citizens even in the face of repression. The opposition’s response to the Rivers State crisis remains an exercise in performative outrage that had no real impact on President Tinubu’s coup. If the opposition is serious about reclaiming political power, it must be willing to go beyond mere rhetoric and engage in bold and strategic actions that will invariably force the government to reconsider its moves.

The weaknesses of opposition parties are not new, but the failure to prevent or even meaningfully challenge the state of emergency in Rivers State has brought them into sharper focus. If the opposition continues on this trajectory, it will remain politically impotent, incapable of providing the necessary checks and balances that a democracy requires. The ruling party will continue to act with impunity, knowing that the opposition lacks the will and the capacity to hold it accountable.

To change this reality, the opposition must undergo fundamental transformations and shift away from over-dependence on the intrepid and fearful politics of engagement of its leading stalwarts, particularly the former presidential candidates. It must also build strong, disciplined communication apparatuses to counter Tinubu’s propaganda. Above all, the opposition must cultivate the political courage to challenge power meaningfully. 

If these changes are not made, the opposition will remain what it is today: an ineffective, fragmented force that poses no real threat to the ruling party’s dominance. And if that remains the case, then moments like the Rivers State emergency proclamation will continue to happen, with the opposition reduced to little more than a spectator in Nigeria’s unfolding political drama.

Finally, the combative stances of House Speaker Abass and Senate President Akpabio during the plenary debates of both chambers of the National Assembly toward Obinna Aguocha and Henry Seriake Dickson made it clear that the ruling party is unwilling to yield even an inch of the discursive space to the opposition. The opposition must, therefore, come to terms with the fact that the Igbo adage “egbe belu, ugo belu” (Live and let live) can no longer define its politics.

Abdul Mahmud is a human rights attorney in Abuja