By Okechukwu Nwanguma
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s government has fundamentally breached the social contract with the Nigerian people, a contract implicit in his assumption of office, despite the unresolved controversy surrounding the credibility of the 2023 election conducted under the leadership of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), which was widely discredited.
While elections confer formal authority, legitimacy in a constitutional democracy is sustained by performance, fidelity to the Constitution, and respect for the consent of the governed. On these counts, the Tinubu administration is steadily forfeiting its moral claim to govern.
The social contract, as articulated by political philosophers and entrenched in modern constitutionalism, is neither theoretical nor symbolic. John Locke argued that individuals submit to government only for the protection of their lives, liberty, and property, and that where government fails in this duty, it dissolves the basis of its authority.
Thomas Hobbes, though more accommodating of strong state power, was equally categorical that the justification for sovereignty lies in the provision of security; without it, the state reverts to a condition of fear and disorder. In both traditions, security is not a privilege it is the foundation of political obligation.
Nigeria’s Constitution adopts this principle without ambiguity. Section 14(2)(b) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) provides that “the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government.” Nigerian courts have consistently affirmed that the Constitution is not merely aspirational but binding on all authorities and persons. Where a government persistently fails to secure lives, protect livelihoods, and promote welfare, it is not simply underperforming it is acting in breach of its constitutional mandate.
Across Nigeria today, insecurity has become normalised: mass abductions, rural banditry, urban violence, and unchecked abuses by state and non-state actors persist with alarming regularity. Communities are left to fend for themselves, while victims of violence receive neither justice nor redress.
In such circumstances, the Hobbesian justification for obedience collapses, and the Lockean condition for consent evaporates. A government that cannot protect its citizens cannot credibly demand their loyalty.
It is therefore not surprising, though deeply troubling, that foreign governments increasingly intervene, sometimes openly and sometimes tacitly, in Nigeria’s internal security affairs. In comparative constitutional practice, such interventions often signal a failure of sovereign capacity. A state that effectively discharges its constitutional responsibilities does not require external actors to step in to perform core functions of governance.
These interventions are not acts of benevolence; they are indictments of a state that has lost the confidence of its own people and, increasingly, of the international community.
Compounding this crisis of security is the Tinubu administration’s fixation on revenue extraction at a time of deepening poverty and social distress. Rather than confronting corruption, waste, and elite impunity, the government appears determined to shift the burden of its policy failures onto ordinary Nigerians through aggressive and poorly sequenced taxation measures.
Proposed tax reforms widely criticised for their opacity, haste, and exclusion of meaningful public participation have generated serious concerns about legality, fairness, and democratic process, including allegations of attempts to railroad or effectively “forge” far-reaching tax laws without adequate legislative scrutiny or social consensus.
Comparative constitutional jurisprudence is instructive here. In constitutional democracies, taxation is inseparable from representation, fairness, and the capacity of citizens to bear the burden imposed. Courts in jurisdictions such as South Africa, India, and Canada have emphasised that fiscal policy, while within the domain of the executive and legislature, must still conform to constitutional values, proportionality, and the protection of human dignity.
Taxation that exacerbates misery in the absence of security and welfare provision ceases to be a legitimate exercise of state power and begins to resemble economic coercion.
Locke warned against precisely this abuse: the use of state authority not for the common good but for the convenience of those who govern. When a government that has failed to secure lives and livelihoods resorts to over-taxation as a substitute for governance, it violates both the spirit and letter of the social contract. Citizens are not subjects to be milked indefinitely; they are rights-bearing participants in a constitutional order.
Having breached the social contract under which Nigerians were presumed to have voluntarily surrendered aspects of their sovereignty, the people retain the inherent right to demand accountability. This includes the right to call for resignation where governance failure becomes systemic and sustained.
Such demands are neither seditious nor unprecedented. They mirror the very standards Tinubu himself invoked as an opposition leader when he called for the resignation of President Goodluck Jonathan over insecurity and governance failures. Democratic accountability cannot be selective; principles do not lose validity once power changes hands.
President Tinubu must be reminded that Nigerians “elected” him, however contested the process, on the belief that he possessed the judgment, competence, and resolve to govern effectively and to serve as Commander-in-Chief of Nigeria’s armed forces. Leadership in a constitutional democracy is not measured by slogans, fiscal experimentation, or the multiplication of taxes. It is measured by outcomes: lives protected, welfare promoted, rights respected, and public trust sustained.
Where insecurity worsens, poverty deepens, sovereignty erodes, and constitutional obligations are treated as inconveniences rather than commands, the claim to leadership becomes increasingly untenable.
Nigeria deserves a government that honours the Constitution, respects the social contract, and governs for the common good, not one that normalises failure, monetises misery, and expects endurance in place of justice.
