When the drum of revenge is beaten, even those who did not dance will hear its final silence. Nigeria knows this music. Politicians beat the drum, partisans supply the rhythm, and ordinary citizens bury the dead. Against this tragic orchestra, Professor Chris Kwaja’s November 6, 2026 essay, Why Elite Consensus is the Ultimate Prerequisite for Architecting Stability in Nigeria in 2027, deserves serious attention. I agree with his diagnosis, but doubt that our political class possesses the discipline his prescription demands.
Kwaja correctly argues that a state cannot survive an elite treating every election as an existential struggle. His threefold connection between peace, security and development is compelling. When competitors turn ethnicity into ammunition and religion into electoral insurance, institutions suffer, investment falters, and citizens fight over privileges they will never enjoy. His insistence on a minimum agreement about democratic rules is not romantic idealism. It is elementary statecraft.
Branches may choose different directions, but wisdom teaches them never to sever the roots that made them one. That, for me, is the moral centre of Kwaja’s argument. A republic does not require identical political convictions. It requires disagreement without destroying the constitutional soil where ambition grows. Governments must be able to lose, oppositions to win, and neither may treat Nigeria as family inheritance.
History offers no shortage of warnings. The disputed federal election of 1964 and the Western Region crisis of 1965 exposed the combustible union of political rivalry, institutional distrust and regional anxiety. The deeply contested elections of 1983 preceded the military overthrow of the Second Republic that December. In June 1993, the annulment of a presidential election widely regarded as credible demonstrated that even a hopeful national mandate could be defeated by those who considered power their private property. The 1999 transition offered another paradox: elite bargains restored civilian rule while shielding some powerful actors from accountability.
The aftermath of the 2011 presidential election was bloodier still. Human Rights Watch estimated that more than 800 people died in post-election and communal violence. They were neighbours, workers and worshippers, not authors of the slogans that marked them for death. Revenge, once outsourced to the streets, has no reliable mechanism for recalling its victims.
Kwaja rightly recalls 2015. The Abuja Accord, renewed by the principal contenders, helped establish restraints on inflammatory campaigning, while Goodluck Jonathan’s concession to Muhammadu Buhari gave democratic alternation a powerful human example. But peace was not manufactured by elite signatures alone. Electoral administration, civic vigilance, institutional conduct and the willingness of the defeated incumbent to accept the result mattered. A signed agreement without corresponding behaviour is merely expensive stationery.
Yet I depart from Kwaja’s optimism about a timely elite settlement. Approaching 2027, I see no convincing prospect of genuine consensus among Nigeria’s dominant political actors. There may be alliances, defections, reconciliations and carefully photographed embraces. But the arithmetic of electoral convenience should not be confused with the ethics of coexistence. We have mastered the handshake without learning the discipline of an open hand.
The deeper deficiency is not simply the absence of an agreement. It is the absence of a culture capable of producing an honest one. Too many powerful actors approach debate not as a search for better judgment but as a contest in which concession means humiliation. They listen not to learn but to retaliate. A superior argument becomes an insult when offered by a junior colleague, rival or citizen without a convoy. In such a climate, consensus becomes impossible because reason itself has been demoted beneath rank.
A functioning elite consensus must therefore include the humility to bow before a superior argument, not merely a superior office. It must permit principled disagreement, protect internal party democracy, and recognise that opposition is not treason. Elites who silence dissent within their parties cannot promise national tolerance. If primaries reward intimidation and objections become betrayal, who will believe the subsequent peace pledge?
The farmer who plants yam and expects to harvest palm oil has misunderstood the agreement between the soul and the seed. We cannot plant entitlement and harvest citizenship; sow contempt and reap trust; cultivate exclusion and demand national belonging. Kwaja identifies rent-seeking, ethnic mobilisation, religious manipulation and elite capture as structural obstacles. I agree. Yet beneath them lies a deeper vice: the conviction that the public good becomes meaningful only when it serves private advantage.
Consider our peculiar understanding of compromise. When politicians bargain over appointments, nominations or access to the treasury, agreement can arrive with astonishing speed. When the conversation turns to transparent recruitment, credible elections, equitable citizenship or enforceable accountability, agreement suddenly becomes philosophically complicated. Such selectivity disgraces the rhetoric of national unity. It is not that our elite cannot reach consensus. They too often reach for the wrong things.
Even the finest soup loses taste when served on a dirty plate. Institutional legitimacy matters as much as negotiated peace. A closed-door pact among influential figures, however elegant, cannot cleanse a process perceived as exclusionary. Nor can dialogue substitute for justice. Where citizens distrust electoral referees, courts or security agencies, an elite embrace may reassure the powerful while leaving the governed unconvinced. Peace without fairness is frequently only the interval between grievances.
Kwaja’s inter-party dialogues, equity pacts, economic accords and alternative dispute resolution deserve support. I would extend this roadmap toward democratic restraint: a binding political ethic in which contenders defend the right of rivals to compete, accept verifiable outcomes, respect lawful challenges, disclose the terms of political bargains and renounce collective punishment of communities for electoral choices. The National Peace Committee matters, but so do citizens, journalists, professional associations and young voters. No class should hold the exclusive franchise to define national peace.
The distinction is fundamental. Consensus on constitutional rules is indispensable; consensus on who gets to govern is neither necessary nor desirable. Democracy manages disagreement through rules no faction may rewrite when defeat beckons. And the measure of political maturity is not how warmly leaders embrace after dividing positions, but whether they protect the rights of those who refuse to join their embrace.
Kwaja has sounded a necessary alarm. I stand with his call to rescue the republic from zero-sum politics, yet fear that selfishness, intolerance and the inability to concede intellectual ground will frustrate the very consensus he seeks. The test of 2027 is whether elites can love Nigeria more than their preferred outcome. The drum is already being lifted. The question is whether those holding the sticks possess enough wisdom to put them down before the silence reaches us all—May Nigeria win.
