When Bullying Becomes a National Philosophy.

The disturbing video from Igbinedion Education Centre in Benin City would ordinarily be dismissed as yet another ugly episode of schoolyard cruelty. Two boys beating a defenceless classmate while another films the spectacle is shocking, yes, but not unprecedented. Every society occasionally produces such moments of juvenile brutality.

Yet to treat the incident merely as adolescent delinquency would be to miss a darker truth about Nigeria. The video is unsettling not only because of the violence it depicts, but because it feels so familiar. The choreography of the assault, strength overwhelming weakness while onlookers record rather than intervene, mirrors a much larger theatre unfolding across the country’s politics.

In Nigeria today, force increasingly masquerades as legitimacy.

The ethos appears simple; might is right, and the strongest actor reserves the authority to decide who may speak, assemble, or compete.

Recent political rhetoric offers a troubling illustration. In Edo State, the governor and his party chairman, Jarret Tenebe, have reportedly warned that they do not want other political parties operating in the state. In the southwest, the activist Sunday Igboho publicly declared that his people want only Bola Tinubu and the ruling party, as if electoral democracy were a coronation rather than a contest.

Such statements might once have been dismissed as the theatrical bluster of partisan politics. But they have been accompanied by something far more ominous; violence.

Opposition political gatherings have increasingly become targets of intimidation and disruption. In Benin City, political meetings have been violently scattered. In Lagos, opposition campaign activities have reportedly faced harassment. In Bakassi and elsewhere, gatherings have been attacked by thugs whose loyalty often appears suspiciously aligned with local political power.

The message transmitted, whether intended or not, is unmistakable; some political actors are entitled to the public square, while others are not.

It is precisely the same logic that governed the bullying video.

The aggressors believed they could act with impunity, the victim had no meaningful protection and the audience watched.

And somewhere behind the spectacle lies a cultural assumption that strength confers permission.

Democracy, of course, rests on the opposite premise. It assumes that political legitimacy emerges not from intimidation but from competition, sometimes messy, often noisy, but fundamentally peaceful. Elections are meant to replace force with persuasion.

Nigeria’s democratic institutions remain formally intact. But culture often precedes institutions in determining how power is exercised. When public rhetoric begins to treat opposition as illegitimate, and political competition is framed as an intrusion rather than a right, the democratic architecture starts to hollow from within.

The danger is not merely theoretical.

Nigeria approaches another election cycle in 2027. Historically, such periods heighten political tension. If the present trajectory continues, where powerful actors openly suggest that rival parties have no place in certain territories, then electoral competition may increasingly resemble territorial warfare rather than civic participation.

This is how democracies slowly erode.

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