Across Nigeria today, there is a dangerous misunderstanding of what governance truly means. Many leaders believe that their performance can be measured simply by the number of roads, bridges, flyovers, and glittering infrastructure projects they commission. These things are visible. They photograph well. They dominate press headlines and social media posts. But they are not the true measure of governance.
Infrastructure is important, no doubt. Roads facilitate commerce, bridges connect communities, and public buildings serve administrative purposes. But infrastructure alone does not define leadership. Governance is measured primarily by how many lives you improve, how many people you lift out of poverty, how many citizens you empower to succeed, and how many opportunities you create that allow prosperity to multiply from one person to another.
The real legacy of leadership is not concrete and asphalt. It is human capital.
A truly successful administration leaves behind thousands of empowered citizens who themselves become employers, mentors, investors, and community builders. The ripple effect of empowering one citizen can transform entire families, neighborhoods, and generations. That is how societies grow.
When governments receive tens of billions of naira every month from federal allocations, the 13 percent derivation funds, ecological funds, intervention programs, and internally generated revenue, it is intellectually dishonest to justify those enormous resources with nothing more than a few roads and cosmetic development projects.
Governance must go far beyond aesthetics and optics.
Across Nigeria, there are leaders who understand this fundamental principle. Some governors have quietly developed systems that directly and indirectly empower their people. They award contracts to large construction firms but insist that those firms must create opportunities for local entrepreneurs, subcontractors, and young professionals. They deliberately instruct major contractors to empower several individuals as part of every project, sometimes political associates, sometimes ordinary citizens, sometimes promising young entrepreneurs.
This is not corruption when done transparently. It is strategic empowerment.
Some administrations deliberately invest in growing local businesses, ensuring that indigenous companies expand, employ people, and compete nationally. Others open doors for their associates by creating access to federal contracts, interstate partnerships, and investment opportunities.
Politics, after all, is not only about power. It is also about building networks of opportunity.
Look across Nigeria and you will notice that some political figures have remained influential for decades. Whether one agrees with them or not, figures like James Ibori, Nyesom Wike, Atiku Abubakar, and Bola Ahmed Tinubu did not remain relevant for decades purely by accident.
They understood a simple political truth: lasting influence is built through empowerment.
These are leaders who, whether admired or criticized, were never afraid to share opportunities, distribute influence, and allow others around them to rise. Some of them remain the architects of powerful political and economic networks precisely because those they empowered continue to thrive and remain loyal.
Great leaders understand that empowering others does not weaken leadership, it strengthens it.
There are governors in Nigeria we know who go as far as allocating land to citizens and associates, encouraging them to build businesses, supporting them financially, and ensuring they succeed. Some open doors in Abuja, introduce entrepreneurs to investors, and connect their local businessmen to opportunities across other states and sectors.
How does empowering people threaten leadership?
On the contrary, it entrenches it.
Yet there is a troubling contrast mostly especially in parts of Igboland. Many of our political and business elites operate from a mentality of scarcity, pettiness and insecurity. Some leaders deliberately refuse to empower those around them because they fear competition. They don’t position those around them strategically, but rather keep them perpetually enslaved. Others deliberately impoverish their followers to ensure they remain dependent.
Some governors even delay paying contractors or frustrate business partners simply to keep them politically submissive. They believe that if others prosper, their own authority will diminish.
That is not leadership.
That is insecurity and pettiness masquerading as power.
Some governors also believe that giving people stipends to keep them loyal and returning regularly is clever Machiavellian politics. It is not. What such leaders are actually doing is cultivating a circle of loyal sycophants who secretly despise them but pretend to be devoted in order to continue receiving crumbs to survive. A man only truly respects the person who genuinely improves his life in a meaningful way. If such a man later betrays you after genuine empowerment, then leave him to his karma. What is baffling is how some leaders, in their desperate attempt to establish themselves as untouchable kings, deliberately surround themselves with dangerous enemies disguised as loyalists. The same syndrome exists among certain businessmen who proudly call themselves moguls and billionaires but can only point to their children as the people they have genuinely empowered. Some even derive a strange satisfaction from distributing crumbs that keep people perpetually dependent and coming back for more.
The result is a tragic pattern. Many prominent politicians and wealthy businessmen in the South East live and die without having empowered anyone of real consequence. When they pass away, there are no protégés, no institutions, no thriving networks, no flourishing businesses that can point to them as the architect of their success.
Sometimes, even their own families are left without strong economic foundations.
That is not legacy.
That is failure.
Even more telling is what happens after many former governors leave office. Within a few years, some of them become politically and financially irrelevant because they never built networks of empowered allies who could sustain them. The people they surrounded themselves with were merely dependents, not empowered partners.
And dependents cannot sustain you.
Only empowered associates can.
This raises uncomfortable but necessary questions. Why are many Igbo political leaders reluctant to empower others? Why have successive state governors failed to systematically grow indigenous businesses, connect them to federal opportunities, or position them to compete nationally?
Why do many leaders prefer to be worshipped as kings simply because they temporarily control public funds that belong to everyone?
Public office is not a throne. It is a stewardship of collective resources.
The funds controlled by governors are not personal wealth. They belong to the people. Yet too often those entrusted with managing these resources behave as though the citizens must kneel before them in gratitude.
Leadership should liberate people, not enslave them through dependency.
The irony is that the most powerful leaders in history are often those who shared power generously. They built institutions, empowered others, and created ecosystems where many could succeed.
That is how enduring influence is built.
Until governance in Igboland shifts from a culture of control to a culture of empowerment, the region will continue to struggle to translate its immense talent, entrepreneurship, and energy into sustainable political and economic power.
Roads may be built. Bridges may be commissioned. Projects may be celebrated.
But if the people remain economically powerless, then governance has failed its most fundamental test.
By Hon. Chimazuru Nnadi-Oforgu
Duruebube Uzii na Abosi
OBLONG MEDIA UNLIMITED 
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