The deployment of the word “puerile” by state actors to shield a sitting administration from the standard democratic expectation of accountability is a masterclass in historical amnesia. There is a profound, biting irony when those who currently occupy the corridors of power dismiss a call for resignation as “childish,” given the very theatrical, scorched-earth choreography they used to ascend to those seats.
Let me attempt a surgical anatomy of that exact contradiction — the kind of perspective that cuts through the noise of selective memory.
The Irony of Newfound Decorum
There is a traditional proverb that says: “The man who climbed to the top of the roof by tearing down his neighbor’s ladder should not suddenly become a preacher of architectural safety.”
When the APC was an opposition movement, its strategy was not marked by delicate diplomacy or mild critiques. It was a high-octane, unsparing assault on the sitting government. The rhetoric of 2014 and 2015 did not stop at calling for resignations; it actively threatened the formation of a parallel government if electoral outcomes did not align with their expectations — a stance that, by the strict definitions of statecraft and constitutional law, skirts dangerously close to the line of subversion.
Every imaginable epithet was hurled at the presidency; the public square was deliberately superheated, and resignation was framed not just as an option, but as a moral obligation for an administration failing to secure its people or stabilize its currency.
Yet today, the political vocabulary has shifted overnight. The fiery rhetoric that was once celebrated as “vibrant opposition” and “democratic courage” when directed at Goodluck Jonathan is now rebranded as “subversion,” “treason,” or “puerile distraction” when directed at Bola Tinubu.
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The Law of the Mirror
A government cannot demand the reverence of a monarch when it campaigned with the raw, unvarnished aggression of an insurgent opposition. If calling for a leader’s resignation amidst historic economic inflation, security crises, and systemic hardship is “puerile,” then the entirety of the 2015 pre-election cycle was an exercise in juvenile delinquency.
True statesmanship is measured by a simple metric: Can you survive the climate you helped create?
In robust democracies — even in highly polarized ones like the United States — the office of the president is subjected to daily, brutal critique, mockery, and intense public anger. Power is understood to be a public trust, not a personal inheritance. When an administration begins to treat public distress as a criminal offense, and hounds citizens or political actors for expressing their frustration, it does not signal strength. It signals a profound, brittle vulnerability.
A Surgical Reality Check
To suppress criticism is to mistake the symptom for the disease. Silencing the man who cries out in pain does not heal the wound; it merely hides the agony from the person holding the scalpel. If this administration wishes to retire the word “puerile” from the national discourse, the solution is not to jail critics or weaponize state machinery against dissent. The solution is to out-govern the criticism. When statecraft relies entirely on the heavy hand of law enforcement to command respect, it concedes the intellectual argument.
Power that must lock up its citizens to protect its ego has already lost the moral authority to lead them. True leadership does not demand silence; it delivers results so undeniable that critics are rendered irrelevant by reality, not by a cell door.
Okemmuo Okemmuo Oji
