By Udo Silas
There is a scene in “The Talented Mr. Ripley” where Tom, that magnificent fraud, confesses his singular talent — “forging signatures, telling lies, and impersonating almost anyone.”
He says it with a smile, and the room laughs, because the truth, when dressed in charm, is indistinguishable from a joke.
Nigeria, you have been laughing too long.
Bola Ahmed Tinubu is not running for 2027.
Let that sink into the marrow of your bones.
A man who forged a life from the wreckage of contested identities – whose academic records from Chicago State University trail behind him like a bloodied garment, bearing the stench of discrepancies, gender mismatches, phantom school attendance dates, and a name that shifts between Adekunle and Ahmed depending on which forgery is being tendered — such a man does not plan elections.
He plans eternity.
Just like he is doing in Lagos.
Ripley did not kill Dickie Greenleaf to spend a weekend in Italy.
He killed him to become him – to wear his skin, spend his inheritance, and live forever in the architecture of his stolen life.
Tinubu has killed Nigerian democracy for the same reason.
Consider the evidence, if you still possess the faculty of reason.
Thirty-one of thirty-six governors kneel at his altar.
The National Assembly is a rubber stamp dipped in the ink of servility.
The judiciary – that last cathedral of hope – has been captured, its robes soiled, its gavel silenced, the Supreme Court unable even to schedule a hearing against his then unconstitutional overreach in Rivers State.
And now, the Electoral Act of 2026 – signed with contemptuous haste barely twenty-four hours after passage – strips electronic transmission of results and hands presiding officers the discretionary power to declare your vote worthless.
But there’s more.
What is this ‘consensus nomination’ if not to kill participatory democracy?
Akpabio would never have been governor in 2007, if the consensus nomination option had existed then.
He won, not only because he was dogged, but because he represented the will of the people.
There are yet, many such examples.
Tinubu signed it and gloated, because Ripley always gloats when the forgery is perfect.
But Nigerians do not understand the psychology of Ripley.
They think this is politics.
It is not. It is a pathology.
Literary critics and psychologists who have dissected Highsmith’s creation speak of narcissistic personality disorder, a profound absence of conscience, an inability to feel empathy – only the cold, reptilian hunger to possess.
A man who merely wanted 2027 would have been content with his grotesque dominion.
But Tinubu wants what Ripley wanted – not a term, but a transformation.
He wants to become the state itself, to wear Nigeria like Ripley wore Dickie’s rings.
The opposition calls the new Electoral Act “anti-democratic” and threatens boycotts.
But boycotts do not frighten Ripley.
Nothing frightens Ripley.
In the movie, there is a hollow sense of cosmic justice – Tom is free but miserable, haunted by the murders that purchased his gilded cage.
But this is Nigeria, not fiction.
Here, Ripley does not suffer.
Here, Ripley builds a throne.
Wake up, Nigeria.
The talented Mr. Tinubu is not campaigning.
He is consolidating.
Did I hear you say “it can’t happen here”?
Well, do your list.
Everything you thought can’t happen in Nigeria, has happened.
Nigeria, wake up! Smell the coffee.
Allow the aroma to give your nostrils wisdom.
Or else, by the time you understand the difference, the election will be a memory, and the republic, a forgery.
