June 12: APC Has Turned A Hard-Fought Democracy Into Monarchy – Rhodes-Vivour

The Labour Party’s 2023 Governorship Candidate in Lagos State, Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour, has criticised the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) administration led by President Bola Tinubu, asserting that it has turned a hard-fought democracy into a monarchy.

Naijaonpoint reports that Rhodes-Vivour, in a June 12 message commemorating the 2025 Democracy Day, described the year’s celebration as not only pretentious but also dubious.

According to him, Nigeria’s judiciary has been compromised, and state institutions have been turned into tools for oppressing the weak.

Rhode-Vivour’s message reads: “Liberal and constitutional democracies hold the promise of protecting individual rights and civil liberties. Beyond its promise of guaranteeing civil liberties, true democracies strive to deliver outcomes like economic prosperity and egalitarianism.

“Instead of celebrating these virtues and values, the APC has turned what was a hard-fought democracy into a monarchy where citizens are reduced to subjects, where duty and honour have given way to sycophancy. We can no longer claim to live in a democracy when dissent is criminalised or where the judiciary has been greatly compromised. What is a democracy where state institutions have become tools to oppress the weak, and where the primary determinant of wealth is proximity to state resources and state capture?

“How can we call this a democracy where several villages in the middle belt, northeast and northwest are without state protection, yet the elites drive in convoys accompanied by elite forces? Or where the right to vote is often sabotaged with state-sponsored violence and harassment, ultimately trumping the will of the people?

“Today’s Democracy Day celebration is not only pretentious but dubious. Because this is not the democracy that Chief MKO Abiola died for, nor the one our elders imagined. This experiment is failing, and that failure is being accelerated by the ruling party’s utter disregard for the rule of law and their parasitic appetite to amass and accumulate at the detriment of the people.”