Donald Duke Says Nigerians Were Better Off Under Military Rule
Abuja · Monday 7 September 2026
Donald Duke, former governor of Cross River and now the presidential candidate of the Peoples Redemption Party, has said Nigerians were better off under military rule than they are today. His specific comparison is with 1999, the year the soldiers handed over.
It is a line built to travel, and it did. It also deserves a harder look than it usually gets.
What the claim can and cannot mean
Duke is not arguing for a coup, and reading it that way is the fastest way to avoid the point. The claim is about living standards: that a Nigerian in 1999, on the wages and prices of 1999, could buy more, move more safely and expect more from the state than a Nigerian in 2026.
Why the argument keeps returning
Because twenty-seven years of civilian government have not delivered the thing the transition was sold on. Democracy was presented to Nigerians in 1999 as an economic proposition as much as a political one. The political half has partly been delivered. The economic half has not, for most people.
When a system is defended only by pointing at what it replaced, it has stopped making a case for itself.
The convenient part for Duke
He is a candidate. The line is doing campaign work, and it does that work by flattening a genuinely complicated comparison into one that favours whoever is not currently in office. Every opposition figure in Nigeria has a version of it.
It is also worth noting that Duke governed Cross River from 1999 to 2007, inside the democratic period he is now grading. Politicians who describe the era they helped run as a failure are making an argument that includes themselves, whether they intend to or not.
What would actually settle it
Real wages, food inflation, and the murder and kidnapping rates, measured consistently from 1999 to now and published without adjustment. Nigeria has patchy data for the early part of that period, which is convenient for everyone arguing about it.
Until somebody produces that series, this stays a feeling with a political use, and the feeling is widespread enough that dismissing it is its own kind of mistake.
Reporting: Vanguard, Ripples Nigeria and Daily Post.
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