Nigeria’s Cantankerous Kingmakers -By Ike Willie-Nwobu

The height of Nigeria’s leadership catastrophe is found on the ugly high horse of outgoing elected officials who presuppose to feel the people’s pulse by choosing their successors. Experience has shown that they do this not to continue any legacy of development, which is mostly lacking anyway, but to protect their loot and larceny from being detected.

The momentous 2027 general elections draw closer by the day, and Nigerians are feeling the heat already. The elections are proving disruptive, but not in the good way democracy is meant to be disruptive and destructive of the tendencies of a people to dictatorship.

For example, for months now, as insecurity has soared around the country, pulling entire communities and families into its deadly vortex, a failing government has linked insecurity to the efforts of its political opponent to take over power. It is also an open secret that in Nigeria, once the winds of elections begin to blow, governance winds down, replaced by a grind of incompetence and ineptitude.

This deadly disease of inept public officers choosing their successors is not new at all. In fact, Nigerians have watched with glee in the past as such attempts have provided spectacular fallouts. However, nothing makes it less troubling.

In Nasarawa State, for example, the outgoing incumbent A. A Sule’s public endorsement of Aliyu Wadada has not only fractured the ruling party, it has sent the state into an unfortunate frenzy at a time full focus should be on governance and political participation.
There have been similar ruses in Gombe and Kwara States, where governors who failed to make any meaningful impact in the lives of their people for eight years feel they are in the best position to divine continuity and decide who is best to become elected as governor.

This tendency, as odious, egregious, and objectionable as it is, is also unfailingly an enormous abuse of power. When a public officer abandons his primary responsibility and instead channels the resources of the state into substituting himself with his protégé, democracy is endangered.

The reason most governors want to install their cronies when they are leaving office is because they have skeletons in their cupboards and know that the secrets of those skeletons would be better protected by their protégés. A spectacular case study of this scenario unfolded in Kogi State in 2023 when the former governor was replaced by his crony in office. When the EFCC wanted the former governor for economic and financial crimes running into billions of Naira, the crony who was now governor went to unprecedented lengths to shield his benefactor from prosecution.

Nigeria cannot continue along this execrable path. Leadership is about the leverage people exercise, and that is the entire goal of democracy. A situation where do-nothing governors override the people’s will to impose their successors is simply not acceptable. It betrays the values of free and fair elections, which are foundational to democracy.

At all times, Nigerians should be able to choose those who would represent them so that when they fail, as they are predisposed to, they can be held accountable.

Ike Willie-Nwobu is a policy practitioner and social thinker. He can be reached at Ikewilly9@gmail.com.