On Benevolent Dictatorship

It's Giving Oppressed

My mother is currently studying for her doctorate degree in public administration.

I have taken to calling her “Doctor,” helping out with outfits and assignments, and listening to stories from her days.

My mum is in her fifties, so the stories are quite different from the ones I would tell. For instance, I never unplugged a phone from my lecturer’s power bank to charge my own phone for the entirety of a class. But different strokes, I guess.

The story I am most interested in, however, is the one she told me just a few days ago: the lore of a benevolent dictator.

According to Wikipedia, a benevolent dictatorship is a government in which an authoritarian leader exercises absolute power but is perceived to do so for the benefit of the people.

My mother had taken a class where this concept was discussed. Also discussed in that class was the idea that Sani Abacha was the best leader Nigeria ever had. The reasoning behind it was that “in his time, the naira did not fall once.”

If you’re unfamiliar, allow me to introduce General Sani Abacha, a military dictator who ruled Nigeria from 1993 to 1998. During his regime, Nigeria’s foreign reserves reportedly grew from $494 million to $9.6 billion, external debt dropped from $36 billion to $27 billion, and inflation fell from 54% to 8.5%. He halted privatization, and oil — Nigeria’s main export — averaged $15 per barrel. From that revenue, his government created the Petroleum Trust Fund, which funded health, education, and infrastructure projects.

The same era, however, was marked by billions in theft of public funds raised off the backs of the Nigerian working class, poisoned rivers, gas flaring, dead farmlands, and all-round environmental devastation in the Niger Delta that lingers to this day — along with some of the most severe human rights abuses in Nigeria’s history.

Political opponents were jailed, tortured, or killed. The press was censored. And Baribor Bera, Saturday Dobee, Nordu Eawo, Daniel Gbooko, Paul Levura, Felix Nuate, Barinem Kiobel, John Kpuinen, and Ken Saro-Wiwa — who fought for the Ogoni people whose lands were being destroyed by oil operations — were executed by the state following the proceedings of a case under Justice Ibrahim Auta.

I struggle to hold two contradicting thoughts in my head. “Benevolent dictator” is an oxymoron in structure, yes, but doubles as an oxymoronic concept. A dictator is a political leader who holds absolute, unrestricted power within a state, often maintaining it through force, intimidation, and suppression of opposition rather than through constitutional or democratic means. Benevolence, by contrast, is the virtue that disposes a person to promote the welfare of others.

Can absolute power ever truly be benevolent when it depends on silencing dissent, dismantling institutions, and deciding unilaterally what is “good” for the people?

As historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat notes, dictators seek to reshape their societies in their own image, demand loyalty, discredit the press, and weaponize fear to make people censor themselves. They may deliver order or infrastructure, but they often do so at the cost of freedom, truth, and human dignity. And as Essex’s School of Government Director of Education Dr. Natasha Ezrow puts it, “Even if there’s economic development, there’s no dictatorship that’s not repressive.”

The phrase benevolent dictator really points to how our views on evil shift when we’re not the ones affected. Injustice is a “firm hand” approach until it kicks you in the gut. The evil a person does is tolerated, overlooked, or excused — until it is being done to us.

There is no such thing as a benevolent dictator.
There is only injustice we have decided was not important enough.