Conventions, Conscriptions, Consensus – By Lasisi Olagunju
I begin with Game of Thrones, a world not far removed from ours, where power, wealth, and revenge are the true currencies of politics. In Season 5, Episode 1, we hear this:
Tyrion Lannister: What is it that you want exactly?
Lord Varys: Peace. Prosperity. A land where the powerful do not prey on the powerless.
Tyrion Lannister: Where the castles are made of gingerbread and the moats are filled with blackberry wine. The powerful have always preyed on the powerless, that’s how they became powerful in the first place.
Lord Varys: Perhaps. And perhaps we’ve grown so used to horror we assume there’s no other way…
The APC gathered in Abuja at the weekend. There was music. There were speeches. They spoke about order, about rights, and about democracy. They spoke from, and to so many angles. And there was meaning—if you listened closely. I did.
What I saw there were men, like in Game of Thrones, taking up residence in Nigeria’s Great Pyramid of Meereen “to watch the city below descend into chaos.” They spoke like Varys, guardians of the people. But they move in Tyrion’s world, where power protects itself. In that contradiction, they fashioned a double life, dual identities: one for public morality, another for private consolidation; morality for the public stage, consolidation in the inner room.
APC is the reigning king. And, if you are a king with all fingers on every pie; be careful what you eat. There is this children’s song in the classic Yoruba film, Saworoide:
I went to the forest
I killed a strange bird
I gave it to Nana
Nana said “this is taboo”;
I asked “who eats it?”
They said “Oloja” (the king).
I rushed to the palace,
I offered the bird to Oloja,
Oloja asked no question,
Oloja snatched it
Oloja threw it into his mouth.
On the seventh day,
A message came,
They said Oloja is dead…
The Yoruba have a name for the one who takes without restraint. They call him Jeunkóokú (eat and die).
Every system has a taboo. The taboo of democracy is impunity dressed as mandate. Power, in the simple song above, dies from reckless, unrestrained appetite.
I watched the president at the convention. All around him milled suitors, raptors and preys. He was the super eagle; every part of the game was his; every bit of available meat was offered to him by everybody, friends and closet foes. He was the groom; all maidens on parade wanted his ring.
Very Yoruba in sensibility, the president knows this anecdote very well: Down by the stream, a handsome prince bathes. The water glistens on his skin; the spectacle draws a crowd. One by one, the maidens step forward, each eager to offer him soap, free of charge, unasked, unearned. Wisdom whispers that the spectacle is not love; it is longing for proximity, for recognition, for the illusion of being seen by power and with power; for the dignity of servitude.
You don’t need any initiation into the cult of wisdom to know that those suitors are birds feathered by opportunism without cost. They feast on tall trees, but when the branch breaks, they are already in flight. They benefit from power, yet escape its consequences.
It is what defines our politics. Nigeria’s ruling party is bursting at the seams, its barn swollen with pests and pestilence. Around the seat of authority, men who should stand upright bend low, their spines soft as palm fronds, voices lowered, convictions traded for proximity to power. They seek favour and compete for submission and slavery. They stretch out their hands, to receive; to partake in the private banquet. To eat from the president’s palm is, for them, not humiliation but honour.
One is reminded of ‘Animal Farm’, George Orwell’s grim parable of a revolution that devours its own promises.
If democracy is the farm and the people are Mr Jones, then we must admit, with heavy hearts, that the farm is no longer theirs. Democracy here has slipped, quietly but completely, into the custody of new beasts. The slogans remain; the rituals endure; but inside, a different order reigns. The feast is ongoing—lavish, unrestrained, shameless. Those who once chased out tyranny now sit comfortably in its seat, tasting the sweetness of absolute control.
The fire-eating democrats who fought Abacha and vanquished him, where are they now? The living are dead; the dead live on in regret. The runners of the system laugh at them and call them stupid.
Perhaps the despisers are right. It may indeed be naivety to believe that democracy is about goodness and good people. Power is rarely that innocent. Left unchecked, it feeds its greed with reckless abandon. And so democracy, in practice, becomes a banquet. Taking and eating. Taboo, non-taboo, take and eat. The question of consequence is postponed, dismissed, forgotten. Yet consequence waits. It always does. There was a consequence for Oloja in the Sawaroide song above.
Nigeria’s ruling class have merged their regiments. They are busy with an orgy of power, grasping and gobbling. You loathe what they do but what can you do? In Nigeria of 2026, moral aspiration is politically fragile. Varys’ vision is noble; Tyrion reminds us it is unrealistic. For us, and with us, it will remain so without structural change.
And, true. Without firm institutional constraints, and unless the incentives of power are altered, grasping will continue to be attractively rewarded.
On the field of play, because they want a fait accompli election, conscription now answers consensus. Every political party that thinks of presenting a viable alternative is slaughtered like Iléyá ram and is eaten up by the Irúnmolè. The Irúnmolè fear no tomorrow because they are, in fact, that tomorrow.
But, to overreach is to go too far; to exceed established limits. Power does that. It often mistakes silence for surrender. It misjudges resilience, overestimates its own coercive magic, underestimates the danger of escalation, and wanders without a clear endgame. It eats from all chafers believing this buffet is a forever feast.
Yet one question remains: how will this one-party, one-person democracy end?
We have seen this before. It ended in a thunderclap—a stroke: sudden, unforgiving, the consequence of stolen excess.
There is an old African story retold in J. D. Lewis-Williams’ ‘The Jackal and the Lion: Aspects of Khoisan Folklore.’ I summarise it here in plain words and in innocent sentences so the weary and the wounded may follow:
A jackal hunted antelopes, but each time he made a kill, a lion appeared and seized it. Strength took what labour produced. The jackal protested; the lion ignored him. Power had no need for fairness.
The jackal turned to an old woman—keeper of memory, custodian of wisdom. She told him not to fight strength with strength, but to answer it with strategy. She taught him how to win without a fight.
The next time the lion came to take what was not his, the jackal was ready.
He offered the lion meat—fat, rich, irresistible. Inside it, unseen, was a burning stone. The lion, confident and unquestioning, opened his mouth and swallowed.
What he consumed was not food, but fire.
The appetite that devours everything eventually devours itself. That is how unhinged power ends. Not by confrontation, it is by consequence.
A political order that behaves like that lion, seizing what others produce, feeding without restraint, mistaking silence for consent, may appear invincible. It may dominate the field, intimidate the weak, and grow fat on unchecked power. But such power carries within it the seed of its own ruin.
So, if in this moment you feel helpless, go to the old woman. She teaches how to hide the fire in the fat.
- Olagunju is a journalist and columnist
