There is a question Nigerians should stop answering according to the political identity of the person involved and start answering according to the law: must a dignitary inform a state governor before entering the governor’s state?
At first glance, it looks like a minor question of protocol, the sort of matter that should be settled by a courtesy call, a telephone conversation between officials or a simple exchange of letters. But beneath it sits a much more consequential question about the nature of political power in Nigeria, because we have become remarkably comfortable with allowing the expectations surrounding public office to grow beyond the actual authority attached to the office itself.
There is nothing unreasonable about expecting a prominent visitor to inform a governor before arriving in his state. A former president, serving minister, presidential candidate, traditional ruler or other nationally recognised figure may travel with security personnel, an entourage or a large following, and the authorities responsible for public safety have a legitimate interest in knowing what is happening. A visit may involve traffic management, crowd control, security deployment or access to government facilities. In such circumstances, communication is not merely courteous; it is sensible administration.
But informing a governor and asking a governor for permission are not the same thing, and confusing the two is where an innocent question of protocol begins to acquire a much more troubling political meaning.
A governor is the elected chief executive of a state within the Federal Republic of Nigeria. He has important constitutional responsibilities and considerable political authority, but he is not the sovereign of the territory he governs. The state does not belong to him, and the people who live there do not become his subjects because he occupies Government House.
That ought to be obvious, yet Nigerian politics has a peculiar way of making obvious things complicated whenever the interests of powerful people are involved.
The Constitution protects freedom of movement within Nigeria, subject to lawful limitations. That protection would lose much of its meaning if a governor could, simply by virtue of occupying the highest political office in a state, decide which Nigerians were entitled to enter it. Such a power would be far more than protocol. It would be an extraordinary authority, and extraordinary authority in a constitutional democracy should have a clear legal foundation.
This is why we must be precise about the words we use.
A visitor may fail to observe a protocol without breaking the law. A politician may be discourteous without becoming unlawful. A prominent figure may arrive without informing a governor and create a genuine security headache without thereby surrendering his constitutional freedom to move within the country.
Those distinctions are important because political power becomes dangerous when every disagreement with an office holder is presented as a violation of the office itself.
Nigeria has seen this happen repeatedly. Something begins as a reasonable expectation that a governor should be informed. Then the failure to inform the governor is described as a breach of protocol. Soon the language changes again, and the visitor is accused of entering the state without permission, as though Government House were an embassy and the governor were the issuing authority for visas.
That is the point at which courtesy has been quietly transformed into control.
There are, of course, circumstances in which prior approval may genuinely be required. If someone wants access to a restricted government facility, wishes to use state property for an official purpose or intends to participate in an activity governed by specific regulations, the relevant authority may properly impose conditions. Security agencies may also lawfully restrict movement where the law permits them to do so. Nobody serious about public safety should argue otherwise.
But those are legal or administrative questions, not an invitation to create a general political power that does not exist.
A governor can and should coordinate security. He can ask prominent visitors to communicate with the state authorities. He can advise against an unsafe itinerary and work with federal agencies to ensure that a sensitive visit does not become a security problem. What he cannot legitimately do merely by invoking protocol is turn the territory of the state into a political preserve where opposition figures require his personal approval before they can meet citizens.
That distinction becomes particularly important in an election season.
In Nigeria, political visits are rarely treated as ordinary social engagements. When a former president enters a state, people immediately begin calculating what it means. When an opposition leader meets local politicians, rumours of alliances follow. When a presidential candidate addresses supporters, the incumbent’s political machinery pays attention. When a minister appears at an event, people search for the political message behind the invitation.
All of that is normal political behaviour. What cannot be normal is allowing the political significance of a visit to determine whether the visitor has a right to be there.
This is why the recent Peter Obi controversy in Benue deserves attention beyond the personalities involved. Obi travelled to Benue intending to visit Yelewata, a community devastated by the violence of June 2025. His convoy was stopped on the Makurdi-Gboko road, and he was forced to turn back before reaching the community. The Benue Government said it was not aware of the visit and argued that proper security coordination should have taken place.
The security argument deserves to be taken seriously. A prominent political figure entering an area affected by insecurity should not move carelessly, and authorities should know what is happening. But even when that point is conceded, another question remains: what should happen when the problem is a failure of coordination?
The answer in a functioning democracy should be coordination, not political exclusion.
The authorities can contact the visitor. Security agencies can secure the route. An itinerary can be changed. Additional protection can be provided. A visit can be postponed if there is a demonstrable and immediate danger. There are many legitimate ways for a government to protect people without turning a political disagreement into a barrier between a visitor and the citizens he intends to see.
That is particularly difficult to ignore when the destination is Yelewata.
Those people have already suffered enough. They have buried relatives, lost homes and watched ordinary lives collapse under the weight of violence. Whatever political interpretation may eventually be placed on Peter Obi’s visit, the people he intended to meet remain victims first. Their grief does not become less real because a politician has decided to visit them.
If Obi’s motives were political, his opponents could have said so. If they believed the visit was calculated for publicity, they could have made that argument publicly. If they believed he had failed to observe proper protocol, the authorities could have raised the issue with him directly. Nigerians are capable of hearing political arguments and deciding for themselves.
What becomes troubling is the moment when political suspicion is allowed to determine access to the very citizens whose suffering has brought the politician there.
That is where the matter stops being about Peter Obi alone.
It becomes a question about the kind of political culture Nigeria is building.
For too long, we have allowed public office to become surrounded by an almost feudal language of ownership. Governors speak of “their” states. Political parties behave as though public institutions are party property. Powerful officials sometimes react to criticism as though questioning their decisions were an act of disloyalty to the state itself.
But the state is not the governor, just as Nigeria is not the President.
Public office is a temporary trust. The person occupying it changes; the institution remains. The political party in power changes; the constitutional framework remains. The governor who enjoys the privilege of incumbency today may be an opposition leader tomorrow. The minister who demands deference from state officials today may one day need those same officials to respect his rights when political circumstances have changed.
That is why the defence of constitutional boundaries cannot depend on who happens to benefit from them.
It is easy to defend a principle when it protects our friends. The real test comes when the principle protects somebody we distrust.
If Peter Obi is wrong, criticise him. If his politics are flawed, challenge them. If his ambitions are questionable, expose the weaknesses in them. If he ignored a reasonable courtesy, say so. None of those criticisms requires us to invent a power for a governor that the law does not provide.
The proper response to a failure of courtesy is not the creation of a new constitutional authority.
And there is a larger lesson here for governors themselves. A strong governor does not need to be treated as the owner of his state. He does not need imaginary powers to make his office formidable. The Constitution already gives state governors enormous responsibilities, and their legitimacy is strengthened, not weakened, when they exercise those responsibilities within clearly defined boundaries.
The same standard must apply everywhere.
The President is not the owner of Nigeria. Governors are not the owners of their states. Ministers are not the owners of their ministries. Public institutions do not become private possessions because a powerful individual happens to control them for a period of time.
This is the foundation of constitutional democracy: power belongs to institutions and is exercised through rules, not to individuals and exercised according to personal discretion.
That is why the distinction between protocol and permission matters so much.
Protocol can create order. It can facilitate communication. It can make security arrangements easier. It can demonstrate respect between public officials. But protocol cannot become a convenient language for extending political authority beyond the boundaries established by law.
Once that happens, everyone is in danger.
Because the precedent created for one political opponent does not disappear when the controversy ends. It waits for another election, another governor, another administration and another political quarrel. The person celebrating a restriction today may discover tomorrow that he has helped create the very machinery that can be used against him.
Nigeria has spent too much of its political history learning this lesson the hard way.
We should therefore be mature enough to hold two ideas together without confusing them. Prominent visitors should behave responsibly and coordinate with authorities where security and established procedures require it. At the same time, public officials must understand that courtesy does not give them powers that the Constitution has not granted.
Inform when notification is reasonably required. Coordinate when security demands coordination. Seek permission when the law actually requires permission.
But do not manufacture permission where the law requires none.
That principle is not anti-governor. It is pro-democracy.
It protects governors from having their legitimate responsibilities dismissed as irrelevant. It protects visitors from arbitrary political gatekeeping. It gives security agencies the room to do their jobs properly. Most importantly, it preserves the boundary between public authority and personal influence.
A state belongs to its people before it belongs to the politicians who administer it. Its roads, towns, villages, markets, schools, hospitals and communities are not extensions of Government House. Nigerians do not become political possessions because they happen to live under one governor rather than another, and a visitor does not surrender his citizenship at the state boundary.
Perhaps the simplest test is the one Nigerian politics too often avoids: would we defend the same rule if the political identities were reversed?
If the answer is no, then we should be suspicious of the rule.
Because democracy is not the freedom to exercise power over people we dislike. Democracy is the discipline of accepting that the same rules must restrain us when we possess power and protect us when we lose it.
The Government House is an office, not a border post.
The governor is an elected custodian of public authority, not the owner of the territory over which he presides.
And the day Nigeria becomes comfortable with governors deciding, according to personal political judgment, who may enter their states is the day we will have allowed something much more dangerous than a breach of protocol: we will have allowed public office to begin behaving like private property.
That is a line a constitutional democracy should never cross.
Stephanie Shaakaa shaakaastephanie02@gmail.com
08034861434
