By Eshioromeh Sebastian
It is not often that I find myself at a loss for words. But in the last few weeks, two events have left me wondering if we, as a nation, have completely lost our sense of shame and sovereignty. I speak of the open letter by Afrobeats superstar Davido to President Donald Trump, appealing for American oversight of the Osun State governorship election, and the parallel effort by former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who hired a Washington lobbying firm to dig up decades-old documents against President Bola Tinubu and present them to the Trump administration.
The concerns about electoral violence in Osun are not new. I have written about our violent elections for close to two decades, and the Osun governorship polls have consistently been some of the most volatile in the South-west. Some of us political chroniclers knew what went down before, during and after the 2007 elections, before the Court of Appeal eventually pronounced Baba Half-salary—if you say Baba half-salary, na you sabi. Neither the 2018 nor the 2022 elections were any different. I have this hypothesis that Osun State harbours the most extreme political partisans in the South-west.
The 15 August election will not escape the violence that has become the trademark of Osun polls. What sets this one apart, however, is the intensity of interest from all quarters and the way ordinary party members now wear political victory as a personal badge of honour.
But when a citizen, no matter how famous, runs to a foreign president to solve a domestic problem, we must pause and ask: what does this say about our democracy? Davido’s letter, posted on X, raised legitimate concerns about tension and the possibility of violence ahead of the August 15 poll. He called for voters to be protected and every vote to be respected.
These are noble sentiments, on the surface. But one must question the wisdom of addressing them to President Donald Trump—a leader whose international dealings are famously transactional. That such a man is now being invited to oversee our electoral process is nothing short of absurd.
The singer’s defence that Trump is also “his president” due to his dual citizenship is, to put it mildly, a stretch. By that logic, every Nigerian with American citizenship could summon the US president to intervene in their local disputes. It is a dangerous precedent that undermines the very institutions we claim to be building.
But if Davido’s action is the cry of a nephew desperate to protect his uncle’s re-election, what is Atiku’s excuse? The former vice president is no starry-eyed celebrity. He is a seasoned politician who has been in the corridors of power. Yet his camp hired Von Batten-Montague-York under a 12-month contract reportedly worth $1.2 million to dig up a 1993 US civil forfeiture case against President Tinubu. The lobbying firm has since distributed more than 60 pages of Department of Justice documents to the Trump administration and members of Congress.
This is desperation. Atiku’s aides argue they are merely providing information for “oversight purposes.” But the timing—as Tinubu seeks a bilateral meeting with Trump during the UN General Assembly—betrays a more Machiavellian purpose. It is an attempt to use foreign influence to weaken a domestic rival, and it stinks of a man who has not yet accepted the 2023 election verdict.
Donald Trump is many things, but a saint is not one of them. The idea that this is the man who will safeguard Nigerian democracy is not just ironic; it is laughable. We are talking about a man whose own legal troubles would fill several volumes of court records- a man convicted of 34 felonies, whose company ran a 15-year tax fraud scheme and paid hundreds of millions in financial penalties—yet our prominent citizens like Atiku and Davido see him as the moral authority to save Nigerian democracy.
His refusal to accept democratic results and his alleged incitement of the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack make him the antithesis of electoral integrity.
Beyond the unenviable catalogue of legal albatrosses hanging around Donald Trump’s neck, the man has had his hands full. For the better part of five months, the Middle East has been a raging furnace, consuming his administration’s bandwidth like a hungry termite at a wooden throne. This is the very man who had to sneak out of a plane like a fugitive debtor, swapping his presidential jet for a smaller plane via a catering truck. Yet, in the midst of all this circus, some folks back home in Osun think it is a bright idea to drag this same man into our local election. If that is not thoughtless, I do not know what is. It is one thing to have a bad dream; it is another to invite the nightmare yourself. What a shame that we would stoop so low as to import a man with more baggage than an overloaded cargo ship to oversee the sacred task of choosing our leaders. Truly, we have lost our way.
What binds Davido and Atiku, in this instance, is not ambition but a singular and rather unsettling disposition: a profound deficit of faith in their own country’s institutions. Davido did not petition INEC. Atiku did not return to the Supreme Court. Both, instead, took their grievance to Washington. And in that choice, they have become unwitting emissaries of Nigerian failure – projecting abroad the very narrative we ought to be disproving, that our electoral system is irredeemably compromised that it requires American oversight. Not just any American oversight, mind you, but oversight from a man whose own history with electoral legitimacy is, to put it charitably, checkered, and whose business dealings have been the subject of sustained judicial scrutiny.
This represents a new nadir. It is one thing for the ordinary citizen, worn down by years of institutional neglect, to despair of the system. It is quite another for our political and cultural elites to actively solicit foreign intervention – and from a figure whose own track record on democratic norms is, at best, a cautionary tale.
The irony is that Davido and Atiku are not powerless outsiders. Davido is the nephew of the sitting governor. Atiku is a former vice president and a major opposition figure. If they cannot engage our institutions with dignity, what hope do ordinary Nigerians have? Some supporters of Davido argue that calling for international attention is necessary to prevent violence. But there is a difference between asking the world to watch and asking the American president to act. We saw the response on X: “Even a baby knows nothing concern Trump and no foreigners can fix our country for us.” That is the voice of a people who still believe in their own capacity to govern themselves.
As for Atiku, his move is even more egregious. He is not calling for peace; he is waging a proxy war on American soil. The lobbying firm boasted that “many within the U.S. government were previously unaware of the DOJ’s allegations concerning Bola Tinubu. We are changing that.” This is not politics; it is sabotage dressed in the garb of advocacy. Atiku knows that the 1993 case was settled civilly, not criminally. He knows that the Presidential Election Petition Court had already dismissed its relevance to Tinubu’s eligibility. Yet he persists, not in Nigerian courts, but in Washington. This is a man who has spent his political career chasing the presidency and has now resorted to foreign intervention to undermine his rival. What a sad end to a once-respected political career.
The Presidency’s condemnation of Atiku’s move as an “undermining of Nigeria’s sovereignty” is entirely justified. The 1993 case was settled civilly, not criminally, and the Presidential Election Petition Court had already dismissed its relevance to Tinubu’s eligibility. To resurrect it now, not in Nigerian courts, but in Washington, is a betrayal of our democratic process. It is an admission that Atiku has no faith in our judiciary, no faith in our electoral system, and no faith in our democracy. And for what? A presidential ambition that has already been rejected by the Nigerian people?
Let us also consider the message this sends to the international community. Nigeria is already struggling with a poor reputation. We are seen as a country of corruption, insecurity, and dysfunctional governance. And now, our prominent citizens are reinforcing that narrative. They are telling the world that our elections cannot be trusted, that our institutions are useless, and that we need an American convicted felon to save us. How do we expect foreign investors to take us seriously? How do we expect to be respected on the global stage when our own leaders are busy exporting our embarrassment?
In the end, what have they achieved? Davido has drawn attention to Osun, but he has also exposed his family’s political anxiety. Atiku has spent $1.2 million to embarrass his rival, but he has also embarrassed Nigeria. The international community will not see a legitimate call for democratic oversight; they will see two powerful Nigerians running to a convicted felon because they do not trust their own country. They will see a nation that has lost its way, a nation that has forgotten its own strength, a nation that is so consumed by political rivalry that it is willing to sell its sovereignty to the highest bidder.
We cannot build a democracy on borrowed shoes and borrowed audiences. We must learn to trust our own institutions, even when they fail, and hold them accountable through our own means. We must demand more from our leaders and more from ourselves. We must stop running to foreigners to solve our problems and start looking inward. Until then, we will continue to be the butt of our own jokes—a nation that cannot help but export its embarrassment to a man whose own hands are far from clean. God help us all.
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