Fate has it’s uncanny way of twisting itself to reality. Nigeria once known as the Giant of Africa and preeminent Black Nation in the entire world on the basis of population, endowment of natural resources and the attributes of the people is now marooned on an Island of irrelevance.
Since the amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Protectorates by the British Colonial Masters, the contraption called Nigeria has struggled with its identity.
Countries succeed not merely because they possess resources, large populations, or strategic locations. Countries progress and succeed as functional Nations because they develop a national spirit or ethos, a shared understanding that the collective interest must, at critical moments, supersede or override personal, ethnic, religious, regional, and sectional interests.
As a country, Nigeria can be described as organised Chaos. In their bid to survive, Nigerians have adjusted themselves and defined their new normal which is an aberration of normal. It’s not hyperbole to also describe Nigeria as a failed state considering that all the indicators that point to a failed state are present. The Text Book definition of a Failed State is that it’s a State whose government has become unable or unwilling to effectively perform its basic functions, such as maintaining security, enforcing laws, providing essential public services, protecting citizens, and exercising control over its territory.
It won’t be heresy to say that Nigeria is a failed state because in today’s Nigeria, literally everything has gone tragically wrong; the Judiciary doesn’t dispense Justice as expected but seems to do the bidding of the government, politicians and people who have financial clout or leverage, the Legislature is seen as more or less an appendage or branch of the Executive rubber stamping on the President’s whims, there’s frightening insecurity, Kidnappings and and attacks by Banditry is prevalent (and the government seems clueless or uninterested in doing more than assure Nigerians that the situation will soon be contained).
Also considering the palpable level of pent-up frustration in the polity, the endemic/systemic corruption which have led to a sense of hopelessness and helplessness in Nigerians, the infrastructural deficit which has caused inefficiencies and high costs of production and distribution which in turn causes spiralling inflation which make family expenses running ahead of incomes, Nigeria can described as a failed State.
Some Commentators have blamed Corruption, Ethnicity and Bad Leadership for the state of Nigeria Today. Some blame the British Colonial Masters who they accuse of forcing diverse people with different cultures, orientations, religions and ways of life into a forced marriage in a country called Nigeria in 1914 when Lord Luggard amalgamated the Northern and Southern Protectorates for the purpose of ease of administration of the Territories.
I dismiss the narrative that Nigeria has failed or is failing because a country was hastily put together by the British 🇬🇧 for the convenience of ruling over the territories which were contiguous one to the other and because the fusion of the Territories was forced, because it was akin to a bad marriage being of strange bedfellows, the paranoia and suspicious of the ethnic and religious groups has subsisted. My reason for discountenancing that narrative is because Nigeria wasn’t the only multi ethnic, multi religious country in Africa or in the world composed of people of diverse cultures which was colonised.
Several countries in and out of Africa were colonised by the British, French, Spanish, Portuguese and other Imperialist Empires and Nations which basically forced strange bedfellows on each in one Country. Some of the countries leaders and people realised early that their differences would work to their collective detriment if allowed and they made concerted efforts to flip the fates of their Countries by reconciling the people, their differences and got on to building a nation out of a Country.
Others have argued that one of the great paradoxes of Nigeria’s political history is that a country blessed with a youthful population has been repeatedly governed by an ageing political establishment who worship at the Altars of Corruption, Ethnicity and Religion but after purposeful deliberation i have concluded that Nigeria’s problem isn’t Corruption, neither is it Ethnicity or Religion. Those are symptoms, not the Disease. The Disease that bedevils Nigeria is what led or sustains Corruption, Ethnicity and Religious sentiments which have kept Nigeria down.
Nigeria’s tragedy is not merely that older leaders have dominated the political space for decades and they have been corrupt or largely driven in their politics by ethnicity and religion; it is that they failed to deliberately cultivate a succeeding generation equipped with the character, competence and patriotic vision necessary to govern a complex nation.
From Independence, Nigeria produced remarkably young leaders who occupied positions of enormous responsibility. Many military governors, commissioners, ministers and administrators assumed office at ages that would have been considered extraordinarily young in many other countries. Some were in their thirties and early forties when entrusted with responsibilities affecting millions of citizens. The problem, therefore, was never a shortage of youth. It was the absence of a systematic process of leadership succession.
Many of the people now referred to as “the old Guards” were once young. It’s useful to recall that at independence and during the first decades thereafter, Nigeria was not led by old men. Many of Nigeria’s early leaders were young Men when they assumed positions of national importance.
Nnamdi Azikiwe became Governor-General in 1960 at about 56 and President in 1963 at 59.
Abubakar Tafawa Balewa became Prime Minister in 1957 at about 45.
Obafemi Awolowo became Premier of the Western Region at about 43.
Ahmadu Bello became Premier of Northern Nigeria at about 44.
Yakubu Gowon became Head of State in 1966 at only 32.
Murtala Mohammed became Head of State at 36.
Olusegun Obasanjo first became Head of State at 39.
Muhammadu Buhari first became Head of State at 41.
Ibrahim Babangida seized power at 44.
Sani Abacha became Head of State at 50.
In stark contrast to the Sixties and Seventies, Nigeria today remains substantially governed by people whose political roots stretch back decades. A few examples will suffice.
Atiku Abubakar’s Presidential pursuits span almost two decades:
Action Congress (2007)
PDP (2011 primary contest)
APC (2015 primary contest)
PDP (2019)
PDP (2023)
By 2027, he would have spent roughly twenty years actively pursuing the presidency.
Likewise, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu entered national prominence as a senator in 1992, became governor in 1999, and remains Nigeria’s dominant political figure more than three decades later.
One of the few political insights for which Babangida deserves considerable credit was his recognition that Nigeria could not perpetually recycle the same political class. His “New Breed Politicians” project attempted to draft younger Nigerians into politics and reduce the influence of the old political establishment. In this regard, General Ibrahim Babangida occupies an interesting place in Nigeria’s political evolution. Whatever criticism may be levelled against his administration, and there is much that deserves criticism, he at least recognised a problem that many others either ignored or lacked the courage to confront. He understood that Nigeria could not continue recycling the same political actors indefinitely and still expect national renewal.
Babangida’s transition programme sought to encourage the emergence of what became known as “New Breed Politicians.” The concept was based on the sensible premise that Nations progress when fresh generations bring new ideas, new energy and new perspectives to public life. The old political class had become entrenched. New entrants were needed to challenge existing assumptions and introduce different approaches to governance.
Babangida saw that a generational transition was necessary if Nigeria was to escape the stagnation associated with an ageing and self-perpetuating political elite and invited a “New Breed” of Politicians into politics and governance. It’s critical to emphasise that recognising a problem is not the same as solving it. Babangida’s project of producing a new generation of politicians suffered from a critical defect because recruitment occurred without adequate formation.
Although it’s true that when the same actors dominate politics for thirty or forty years, younger generations become spectators rather than stakeholders. Calls for youth inclusion, though important, are not sufficient. The mere emergence of younger politicians will not automatically transform governance. Youthfulness is not a political ideology. Age alone does not guarantee competence, integrity or patriotism. Nigeria’s future will not be secured merely by younger leaders. It will be secured by better leaders. The difference is that one concerns age whereas the other concerns character.
History suggests that character matters far more. Today, the lesson remains as relevant as ever. It’s simplistic to assert that the problem with Nigeria derives from the age of the leadership because not only did Nigeria once have youthful leadership, the leadership today is actually comprised of the old and the new generation. It’s pertinent to point out that age is not necessarily a negative in leadership afterall many leaders remain intellectually productive at advanced ages. The problem hasn’t also been ethnicity and/or religion because those can be contained if conscious effort was made at independence or by successive generations to build institutions capable of reproducing patriotic leadership.
Many Igbo commentators contrast the nationalism of Nnamdi Azikiwe with the more regionally grounded politics of Awolowo and Ahmadu Bello. Whether that assessment is entirely fair is debatable. What is undeniable is that Nigeria’s founding generation never fully resolved the tension between nation-building and regional loyalties. The result was a state that achieved independence without fully creating a nation. The issue is the inability of Nigeria’s political system to renew itself.
When young politicians were introduced into the political arena by General Ibrahim Babangida in the Eighties, they were not systematically indoctrinated in the values, ethics and sense of national mission required for responsible leadership. They entered politics without passing through a rigorous process of civic education and character formation and consequently, many of those who were expected to transform the system became products of the system. Instead of changing the political culture, the political culture changed them.
The “New Breed Politicians” inherited the ambitions of the old order without rejecting its defects. They embraced the privileges of power without challenging the practices that had undermined governance and rather than becoming reformers, many became successors to the very habits they were expected to replace and the result was basically a change of faces without a change of values. Nigeria witnessed the emergence of younger politicians, but the political methods remained largely the same. Patronage survived. Opportunism survived, personal enrichment survived, Ethnic manipulation survived and Electoral malpractice survived. The names changed, the ages changed, but the culture endured.
General Babangida’s attempt to encourage the emergence of a new political generation identified a genuine national need. Babangida’s idea itself was sound, but the flaw lay in the fact that no serious national ideological programme accompanied the project.
Institutions such as the NYSC and the former Directorate for Social Mobilisation, later known as MAMSER under Jerry Gana, could have become instruments for creating a new civic culture but because they failed to try, this failure highlights the important lesson that Leadership succession is not merely about replacing older individuals with younger ones. It is about transmitting principles, values and institutional memory. It is about ensuring that a new generation understands not only how power is acquired, but also why power exists and in whose interest it must be exercised.
The effort to draft a “New Breed” to leadership and Politics never matured into a sustained national reorientation project and as a result, the “new breed” rapidly absorbed the habits of the old breed. The New politicians were introduced into a political environment already saturated with corruption, patronage, ethnic calculations, and impunity. They were expected to behave differently while learning from men who behaved exactly the same way as the politicians they supposedly replaced. They learnt from people to whom public office was primarily an avenue for wealth accumulation, patronage distribution, and ethnic bargaining. The disease survived even though some of the patients changed. The experience demonstrated that leadership recruitment without leadership formation is inadequate. Put differently or metaphorically and in context, a nation can’t simply draft new players onto the field and expect a different result if they are trained by the same coaches, taught the same habits and rewarded for the same conduct.
When Olusegun Obasanjo returned to power in 1999 at age 62, he attempted to inject technocratic competence into governance. Figures such as Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nasir Ahmad el-Rufai and Oby Ezekwesili represented a different governing style that emphasized reform, economic management, and institutional restructuring.
Not all their policies succeeded, but there was at least an identifiable effort to modernize governance. Subsequent administrations gradually shifted emphasis from technocratic reform toward political survival, patronage management, and elite accommodation.
During the administration of Muhammadu Buhari, significant influence was often attributed to an older network of political insiders and power brokers. Names frequently mentioned included: Ismaila Isa Funtua, Mamman Daura and Abba Kyari. Whether one accepts every characterization of a “cabal” or not, the public perception became widespread that unelected actors exercised extraordinary influence over national affairs and that perception reflected a deeper crisis of confidence in institutions.
Nigeria’s political class have always spoken about the future while behaving as though it would never arrive. Through the decades since independence occupiers of positions of authority became consumed by the preservation of power rather than the preparation of successors. Instead of building institutions capable of reproducing competent leadership, they built patronage networks designed primarily to perpetuate personal influence.
A sobering, yet fundamental question that has haunted Nigeria since independence is; “Can Nigeria survive and prosper when Nigerians see it principally as a platform for distributing patronage rather than as a common national enterprise?”
History shows that successful nations treat leadership development as a deliberate process. Future leaders are identified, trained, tested and mentored. They are exposed to responsibility gradually. They learn that public office is a trust rather than an entitlement. They are taught that leadership is measured not by personal gain but by public service. Nigeria largely neglected this process and as a result, every generation has complained about the failures of the generation before it, only to reproduce many of the same failures when its turn arrived. The cycle continues because the transfer of power has not been accompanied by the transfer of civic values.
After extensively dissecting Nigeria’s sad history, inspite of the different conclusions of others, I am convinced that the Country’s most serious challenge is not corruption, it’s not ethnicity, it’s not religion, it’s not even poor leadership. I fervently believe that Nigeria’s deeper challenge is the absence of a widely accepted national ethos !!!
There’s a profound difference in the mindset of Citizens of successful nations, regarding public office and that of Nigerians. Citizens in successful nations understand public offices primarily as service whereas in Nigeria, public office is often understood as opportunity. In Nigeria, politicians are frequently judged not by what they contribute to Nigeria but by what they bring home to their communities. An office holder who leaves office without securing appointments, contracts, roads, scholarships, and other benefits for his ethnic constituency is often ridiculed. He is described as foolish, accused of failing his people. So…… basically, society itself incentivises nepotism with this disposition which creates the contradiction that Citizens condemn corruption in the abstract while demanding preferential treatment in practice.
One of the clearest manifestations of this culture is the elaborate celebration accompanying political appointments. Lavish receptions, thanksgiving services, and expensive festivities often follow appointments. In mature political cultures, appointment to office signifies responsibility but in Nigeria, it frequently signifies access. The public understands this intuitively and it’s for this reason that appointments trigger celebrations resembling lottery wins. If public service were genuinely viewed as sacrifice, the mood would be more solemn than festive.
It is true that a Country is not necessarily a Nation. The distinction between a Country and a Nation is crucial. A country is a territory whereas (for want of better words), a nation is a psychological community. Examples abound of many states which emerged from colonial boundaries and became nations. including
Rwanda: Rwanda emerged from genocide in 1994. The country’s leadership concluded that continued ethnic politics would guarantee future bloodshed. Whatever criticisms may be made of Rwanda’s political system, its leaders consciously constructed a national identity that superseded Hutu-Tutsi divisions.
Singapore: Singapore inherited deep ethnic cleavages among Chinese, Malays, and Indians.Under Lee Kuan Yew, national identity was deliberately cultivated through education, public service, housing policies, and anti-corruption enforcement.
Tanzania: Tanzania under Julius Nyerere consciously promoted a common national culture and language through Kiswahili. Today Tanzania remains one of Africa’s least ethnically polarized states.
Ghana: Ghana’s example and comparison with Nigeria is instructive.When many Nigerians remember Ghana, they recall the “Ghana Must Go” era in the Eighties when Ghanaians (mainly Arisans) were deported enmasse in ignominy on the orders of Nigeria’s Government because they were considered poachers of Nigerian jobs and also as unwelcome nuisances. Ghana undertook a national transformation with the central figure in that process being Jerry J. Rawlings. Rawlings was far from perfect, but he aggressively challenged corruption, demanded accountability, and promoted a sense of civic responsibility. More importantly, Ghana gradually developed institutions that outlived him. Today Ghana elections routinely produces peaceful transfers of power. The lesson is not that Ghana became successful because of one man. The lesson is that leadership initiated reforms which institutions eventually sustained.
The Paradox or is it irony of Nigerian Politics is that whereas many politicians claim that “Nigeria’s unity is non-negotiable”, their conduct indeed weakens that unity. Nepotism tells citizens that ethnic identity matters more than citizenship. Corruption tells citizens that public resources belong to whoever captures power. Impunity tells citizens that rules are optional and together, these practices create precisely the fragmentation politicians claim to oppose. The Politicians fear disintegration yet they continually nourish the forces that could produce it.
So….. who Bells the Cat? That’s the question
History suggests that national renewal usually begins through one of three routes:
A visionary leadership class.
A civic awakening from below.
A national crisis severe enough to force reform.
The tragedy is that many nations choose reform only after catastrophe. Rwanda reformed after genocide. Germany reformed after defeat. Japan reformed after devastation. The challenge before Nigeria is whether it can reform before such a rupture occurs.
My conclusion is that Nigeria’s future is not bleak because Nigerians are incapable of nationhood. Nigeria’s future is uncertain because the incentives governing public life reward loyalty to tribe over nation, patronage over merit, and accumulation over service. The central task of the twenty-first century is therefore not merely economic reform or constitutional reform. It is nation-building. Nigeria must create a civic creed stronger than ethnicity, religion, and regionalism.
History suggests that such transformations are possible. History also suggests that they don’t happen accidentally. They happen when enough citizens decide that the survival and progress of the nation must become more important than the advantages gained from its dysfunction. The challenge before Nigeria is therefore larger than generational change. It is the creation of a political culture capable of producing leaders who understand the obligations of public service. It is the construction of institutions that reward merit rather than loyalty, competence rather than patronage, and national interest rather than personal ambition.
Until a substantial number of Nigerians begin to see themselves first as citizens and only second as members of ethnic, religious, and regional communities, the country will continue to struggle with the same cycle of corruption, distrust, and underdevelopment. The great question before Nigeria is not whether the country possesses sufficient resources, talent, or population to become prosperous. It does. The question is whether Nigerians can construct a national spirit capable of transforming a colonial inheritance into a genuine nation.…….
Obi J. Iwuchukwu Esq. June 2, 2026.
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