Service or Survival? What Exactly Is Politics For in Nigeria? -By Isaac Asabor

In Nigeria’s political landscape, it is a familiar spectacle to see professors, engineers, lawyers, architects, journalists, and other distinguished professionals parade themselves as candidates for elective offices. On the surface, this should be a cause for celebration. After all, who would not want a professor of economics managing the nation’s treasury, or a seasoned engineer supervising public works, or a courageous journalist holding the executive accountable? These are individuals who have demonstrably excelled in their first loves, their original professions. They have built roads, designed buildings, won landmark cases, educated minds, and exposed corruption.

Yet, something strange happens the moment many of them cross the bridge from profession to politics. The brilliant professor becomes a bench-warmer in the legislature, speaking only to collect sitting allowances. The accomplished engineer turns into a contractor’s friend, signing off on collapsed bridges and death-trap roads. The crusading journalist suddenly loses his or her voice”W trading investigative reports for government handouts. The lawyer who once fought for justice now deploys legal technicalities to shield corruption.

This paradox forces every thinking Nigerian to confront a fundamental question: “What exactly is politics for in this country?”, “Is it a means of service to humanity, or has it merely become another survival strategy, “a meal ticket, a career path, a lucrative profession stripped of any moral weight?”

To understand the problem, one must first appreciate the economic and social pressures that drive professionals into politics. Nigeria is a difficult country for even the most successful professionals. The best engineer may go months without a contract. The finest lawyer may struggle to pay chamber rent. University professors are notoriously poorly paid, often earning less than a mid-level civil servant. In this context, politics appears as a life raft. A single local government chairman can earn more in allowances in one year than a professor makes in a decade. A legislator’s “furniture allowance” alone can dwarf an architect’s annual income.

Thus, politics becomes a survival strategy. It is not entered into with a burning desire to fix potholes, reform curricula, or provide clean water. It is entered into to escape financial distress. Once this survivalist mentality takes hold, service becomes an afterthought, if it is thought of at all. The politician’s primary allegiance shifts from the electorate to his or her own bank account, from the nation to his or her network of cronies and contractors. Once in elective or appointive position, typical politicians in Nigeria begin to see their constituents not as people to serve but as voters to manage, manipulate, or simply ignore.

This is why we see politicians who have been in office for ten, fifteen, even twenty years with nothing to show for it except personal mansions and foreign university degrees for their children. They did not come to serve; they came to survive. And having survived, they now seek to thrive. Service never enters the equation.

Some may argue that the question itself is flawed. Why must politics be either a profession or a platform for service? Cannot it be both? In many advanced democracies, politics is indeed a profession for some, career civil servants, long-serving legislators, policy experts who have spent decades in public service. But the key difference is that in those systems, the profession of politics is built upon a foundation of service. A British MP who fails to hold surgeries for constituents, who does not respond to letters, who votes against the interests of their community, will not be re-elected. Their professional survival depends on their service record.

In Nigeria, the reverse is often true. Politicians’ professional survival depends on how well they serve themselves, their party godfathers, and their ethnic or religious base. Service to the broader public, especially to those who did not vote for them, is seen as optional or even naive. Constituency projects are either nonexistent, shoddily executed, or awarded to companies owned by the politicians’ relatives. Public hearings are skipped. Oversight functions are performed for a fee. The legislator who asks too many questions is quickly marginalized.

Thus, the Nigerian political class has successfully redefined politics as a survival profession, one where the primary skills required are not policy analysis or ethical leadership but rather networking, looting, and vote-buying. In this twisted framework, the professor who once published groundbreaking research is now celebrated for securing a “juicy committee” assignment. The engineer who once built bridges is now respected for how many contracts he can siphon. The journalist who once exposed corruption is now admired for how much government advertising his media house receives.

The cost of this confusion is borne by ordinary Nigerians every single day. When politics is about survival rather than service, there is no incentive to fix the national grid because a reliable grid does not sell generators or diesel. There is no incentive to reform public universities because a well-funded tertiary system does not produce desperate graduates willing to work for slave wages or engage in cybercrime. There is no incentive to build functional primary healthcare centers where politicians can simply fly abroad for treatment themselves.

Consider the numbers. Nigeria has over 10 million out-of-school children, one of the highest in the world. Its maternal mortality rate is among the worst globally. Over 40 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. These are not natural disasters. They are policy choices, or rather, the absence of service-oriented policy. They are the direct result of a political class that sees public office as a means of personal survival rather than a platform for collective upliftment.

And the irony is that many of these politicians are not pushovers. In their original professions, they demonstrated intelligence, creativity, and hard work. The professor who cannot fix the education sector wrote dozens of brilliant papers on pedagogy. The engineer who cannot maintain roads once supervised complex construction projects. The lawyer who cannot draft sensible legislation once won cases that required deep legal reasoning. The problem is not lack of capacity. The problem is lack of will, a will that has been corroded by the survivalist culture of Nigerian politics.

If politics in Nigeria is to be reclaimed as a platform for service, several things must change. First, the obscene remuneration and allowances that make politics a survivalist magnet must be drastically reduced. A senator should not earn more in a month than a nurse earns in ten years. Public office must be made financially unattractive to rent-seekers. Second, citizens must begin to vote not based on party or ethnic identity but on a candidate’s demonstrated track record of service outside politics. Has this professor volunteered in his or her community? Has this engineer fixed local roads pro bono? Has this journalist refused bribes to kill stories?

Third, civil society and the media must hold politicians accountable in real time, not just during elections. Names, photos, and voting records should be published. Empty promises should be followed. Constituency projects should be geo-tagged and audited publicly. Fourth, professionals who enter politics should see it as temporary posting, not a permanent career. A system of term limits and mandatory cooling-off periods could help ensure that politics remains a service platform rather than a lifelong survival profession.

Nigeria stands at a crossroads. The professionals who dominate its political landscape have a choice to make by either continuing to treat politics as a survival strategy or rediscover the original purpose of public office as service to humanity. So far, the evidence suggests the former. But it does not have to be this way. Citizens, too, have a choice. We can continue to applaud professors and engineers simply for showing up on ballot papers, or we can demand that they show up for us, not with allowances in their pockets but with results in their hands.

At this juncture, it is germane to ask, “What exactly is politics for in Nigeria?”  The answer will determine not just the fate of this generation but of generations yet unborn. If it is for survival, then Nigeria will continue to stumble from crisis to crisis, blessed with brilliant professionals but cursed by their ethical abandonment. If it is for service, however, there is still hope. That hope lies in asking the question loudly, repeatedly, and without apology, until every politician is forced to answer. Service or survival? Nigeria is waiting for an answer.