By Emeka Monye
It was Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States, who gave democracy one of its most enduring definitions: government of the people, by the people, for the people. The phrase is short, almost plain. But it carries a radical idea at its core — that legitimacy in politics comes not from palaces, military barracks, or the size of a bank account, but from the consent of the governed.
That idea continues to shape political thought across continents. From Washington to Warsaw, from Nairobi to New Delhi, the notion that power ultimately rests with the people has become the baseline against which political systems are judged. It’s not perfect. No definition of democracy is. But it gives us a standard to measure how well, or how poorly, a society is governed.
Viewed through the lens of African politics, Lincoln’s formulation feels both aspirational and urgent. On paper, most African constitutions echo the language of popular sovereignty and equality. In practice, many democracies on the continent still bend under the weight of money-bag politics, elite pacts, and a culture where access to power is often auctioned to the highest bidder. Yet even in that environment, people power refuses to die. It shows up in unexpected places, at inconvenient times, and reminds the political class that no amount of money can permanently substitute for legitimacy.
Across Africa, the common assumption among new entrants into politics is simple: if you have the money, you can buy the structure, secure the ticket, and win the election. There’s some truth to that. Campaigns cost money. Structures require funding. Mobilization doesn’t happen for free. But the mistake is to confuse funding with influence, and influence with consent.
Money can get you into the room. It can rent a campaign office, pay for billboards, and move buses of supporters on election day. What it struggles to do is manufacture belief. Voters, especially in environments where promises have been broken repeatedly, have developed a sharp radar for transactions masquerading as politics. They know when a candidate shows up only when the votes are needed, and they remember who was absent when the hospitals had no drugs and the roads washed away.
This is why so many high-profile, well-funded candidates crash in primaries and general elections. The political class assumes that because they have the bucks, they can determine who gets what, when, and how. But the electorate has learned to separate the performance of power from its substance. And when the gap between the two becomes too wide, people power steps in.
People power is not always dramatic. It doesn’t always look like mass protests or civil disobedience. Sometimes it’s quieter — the refusal to sell a vote, the decision to stay home on election day, the way communities organize to protect their own interests when the state fails. At other times it’s loud and visible, as we’ve seen in Nigeria’s #EndSARS movement, Kenya’s 2024 finance bill protests, and countless local uprisings against bad governance.
What these moments share is a rejection of the idea that politics belongs only to the political class. They are reminders that democracy, however imperfect, is still rooted in the consent of the governed. When that consent is withdrawn, even the most entrenched power structures begin to wobble.
The corrective function of people power matters precisely because formal institutions in many African democracies are weak. Courts are slow, electoral commissions face trust deficits, and legislatures often rubber-stamp executive decisions. In that gap, citizens become the check and balance. They don’t replace institutions, but they force institutions to respond. A government that can ignore a court order for months cannot easily ignore a city that refuses to move.
African democracies operate in a context shaped by history and identity. Colonialism left centralized states with weak legitimacy. Post-independence leaders often prioritized control over participation. The result is a political culture where patronage and ethnicity can override policy. Money thrives in that environment because it lubricates the system of patronage.
But even here, people power finds footholds. Voters may vote along ethnic or religious lines, but they also punish candidates who take that loyalty for granted. The South East of Nigeria, for example, has shown repeatedly that defections and big-money campaigns don’t automatically translate into votes. The electorate demands a reason beyond “he’s our son” or “he has money.” They want to know what you’ve done, what you stand for, and whether you’ll be accountable after the election.
This is where Lincoln’s definition becomes practical. Popular sovereignty means the people are not just a source of legitimacy during elections. They are the audience that judges performance afterward. Equality means that a market trader’s vote counts the same as a billionaire’s. Consent means that governance without the people’s buy-in is unstable, no matter how many structures you control.
Three things explain why people power remains relevant despite the odds.
First, information spreads faster than control. Social media has lowered the cost of organizing and documenting abuse of power. A video of a ballot box snatching in a remote village can now shape national discourse within hours. The political class no longer has a monopoly on the narrative.
Second, the cost of disengagement is rising. Young Africans are more educated, more connected, and less willing to accept politics as a closed shop. They may be cynical, but they are not apathetic. When they engage, they do so on their own terms — issue-based, networked, and impatient with patronage.
Third, people remember. African electorates are often accused of having short memories, but that’s not true. What they lack is the luxury of forgetting. When a community lives with bad roads, erratic power, and insecure schools for years, those failures become part of the political calculus. No amount of cash on election eve erases that ledger.
People power is not a magic solution. It can be manipulated, co-opted, and turned into mob justice if it lacks organization and clear demands. It can also burn out if it remains episodic — flaring up in anger and fading without building lasting structures.
That’s why the responsibility cuts both ways. Citizens have to move beyond protest to participation: joining parties, contesting positions, monitoring budgets, and holding representatives to account between elections. Politicians, in turn, have to recognize that legitimacy cannot be rented. It has to be earned through delivery, consistency, and respect for the voter as more than a transaction.
For political parties, especially those trying to break into regions where they have no historical base, this is the lesson. Defections and endorsements make headlines, but they don’t move voters unless they are backed by work on the ground. People power means that the ground matters more than the press release.
If democracy is to mean anything in Africa beyond the ritual of elections, it has to return to Lincoln’s core idea: government by consent. That doesn’t require perfection. It requires responsiveness. It requires a political class that listens when people speak, not just when they chant slogans at rallies.
People power still matters because it is the only check that works when all other checks fail. It is messy, unpredictable, and sometimes inconvenient for those in power. That’s the point. Democracy was never meant to be convenient for the powerful. It was meant to be accountable to the people.
The money-bag politician who believes he can buy his way into permanent relevance will always face a moment when the money runs out and the crowd stays home. The activist who believes a single protest can change a system overnight will learn that institutions don’t move that fast. But the synthesis of the two — organized citizens engaging consistently with a political class that knows it can be removed — is how democracy becomes real.
In the end, Abraham Lincoln’s phrase survives not because it describes every democracy perfectly, but because it describes the direction every democracy must move toward. Government of the people, by the people, for the people. Not government of the moneyed, by the connected, for the few.
That’s why people power still matters. It’s not a slogan. It’s the reminder that without consent, power is just force wearing a suit. And force, in politics, never lasts.
*Emeka Monye Is A Journalist*
