Press Release
Democracy Day 2026: A Promise Made to Nigerians That Is Still Waiting to Be Kept
Abuja, Nigeria – June 11, 2026 – When President Muhammadu Buhari declared June 12 as Nigeria's Democracy Day in 2018, replacing May 29, it was an act of restoration. It was a formal acknowledgement that the annulment of the June 12, 1993, presidential election, the freest and fairest in Nigeria's history, was an injustice, that Chief MKO Abiola's mandate belonged to him and to the Nigerian people, and that the decade of political crisis and suffering which followed the annulment represented a debt the Nigerian state owed its citizens. Renaming the day was a promise that the will of ordinary Nigerians would, from that point forward, be treated as the foundation of governance rather than an obstacle to it. Eight years after that declaration, and 33 years after the original mandate was stolen, that promise deserves scrutiny: is it being kept?
The evidence on civic space suggests it is not. The freedom to speak, organise, report, and dissent is under sustained pressure from the very institutions that are supposed to protect it. In April 2026, the National Human Rights Commission received 266,787 human rights complaints in a single month, citing extra-judicial killings, abuse of authority, and the systematic restriction of freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly. Journalists are being prosecuted under the Cybercrimes Act for coverage inconvenient to the powerful: in Kebbi State, a journalist who filmed a decaying public hospital was arrested while officials accountable for its condition faced no consequences; activist Omoyele Sowore was brought to court in 2025 alleging torture in detention; and ACTIVISTA member Abubakar Isah was arrested under the same Act for fact-checking a state governor's claims about graduate assistants' salaries. These are not isolated incidents. They describe a government systematically narrowing the space in which citizens may hold it to account, which is precisely the opposite of what restoring the June 12 mandate was meant to guarantee.
Nigeria’s electoral framework is under equal strain, and with the 2027 general elections approaching, the consequences of inaction are measurable. The Electoral Act 2026 was passed without the inclusive stakeholder engagement that legislation governing elections requires, and ActionAid Nigeria warns that unless it is urgently amended, public confidence in the credibility of the next electoral cycle will erode before a single vote is cast. The lesson of 1993 is that electoral legitimacy, once destroyed, extracts a generational cost. A government that has officially committed to honouring that lesson should be strengthening the electoral process, not introducing legislation that casts doubt on it. Beyond procedural concerns, there is a deeper question of state capture, as the nation increasingly witnesses a legislature overwhelmingly dominated by the ruling party and operating in alignment with the executive, such that legislation that should reflect the will of citizens now risks becoming an instrument of political consolidation instead.
What makes these political failures especially grave is the scale of poverty and insecurity in which they are unfolding. The National Bureau of Statistics 2022 Multidimensional Poverty Index found that 133 million Nigerians, representing 63 percent of the population, live in multidimensional poverty. By October 2025, the World Bank confirmed that 139 million Nigerians, approximately 61 percent of the population, now live in extreme poverty, with an additional six million pushed below the poverty line between 2022 and 2025 alone. Meanwhile, communities across the country live under the threat of banditry, kidnapping, and armed conflict; farmers cannot access their land; children cannot go to school; and places of worship are no longer safe. Insecurity and poverty are not separate crises; each deepens the other, and both are the product of the same failure of governance. After 27 years, the cumulative weight of poor electoral outcomes, institutional weakness, corruption, and shrinking civic space has produced exactly these conditions.
These conditions are sustained in part by a fiscal architecture that resists accountability. Nigeria is currently implementing three federal budgets concurrently, an arrangement that weakens legislative oversight, reduces transparency, and creates conditions for the misallocation of resources that are meant to reach the most vulnerable. Nigeria's ranking of 116th out of 120 countries on the 2025 Chandler Good Government Index is the cumulative expression of these failures, and it sits in direct contradiction to the stated intent of a government that has placed democratic restoration at the centre of its national identity.
ActionAid Nigeria calls on the Federal Government and the National Assembly to respond to this Democracy Day not with ceremony but with concrete action. The Electoral Act 2026 must be amended through an open and consultative process well ahead of 2027. The use of the Cybercrimes Act and security agencies to suppress journalism, activism, and peaceful protest and dissent must end. The security crisis ravaging communities across Nigeria must be addressed through a rights-based strategy that protects civilians, restores livelihoods, and ends impunity. Social protection systems must be restructured to reflect the true scale of Nigeria’s poverty crisis, with genuine investment in food security and the livelihoods of smallholder farming communities. Fiscal governance must be reformed to consolidate budget implementation and restore meaningful oversight by legislators and citizens alike.
Declaring June 12 as Democracy Day was a significant act, but declarations are only as meaningful as the policies and institutions that sustain them. If civic space continues to shrink, if electoral law is weakened on the eve of a general election, if 139 million Nigerians remain in poverty while governance remains opaque, then the promise made in 2018 is being hollowed out in plain sight. ActionAid Nigeria will continue to work with communities, partners, and civil society across Nigeria to hold that promise to account.
Signed
Andrew Mamedu
Country Director
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Editors' notes
ActionAid Nigeria, a social justice non-governmental organisation working to eradicate poverty and all forms of injustice in Nigeria. We are an affiliate member of the ActionAid International Federation with a presence in 45 countries. AAN works in solidarity with people living in poverty and exclusion to achieve social justice, gender equality, and poverty eradication towards achieving a just, equitable, and sustainable world in which every person enjoys the right to a life of dignity, freedom from poverty and all forms of oppression.
Contact: Oluwakemi Akinremi-Segun | Communications Coordinator | ActionAid Nigeria Tel: +234 (0) 809 207 6904 | +234 (0) 812888 8826
Email: Oluwakemi.AkinremiSe@actionaid.org | Info.nigeria@actionaid.org