We keep searching for the next president, governor or political hero to fix Nigeria, while the institutions that should outlive them remain weak, politicised and dependent on personalities.
By Ademola Adekusibe
Nigeria has spent decades looking for the person who will finally fix the country. Every election produces a new favourite, someone presented as the messiah who will defeat corruption, fix electricity, create jobs, secure the country, reform education, strengthen the naira and somehow make government work. Once that person gets into office, expectations become enormous. Nigerians wait for presidential directives, governors’ orders and ministerial interventions to solve problems that should ordinarily be handled by institutions with established procedures, professional staff and clear responsibilities. When the expected transformation does not happen, the search begins again for another person. This has become one of the defining features of Nigerian politics: we change presidents, governors and ministers, but the machinery underneath them remains largely the same.
The problem is that Nigerian politics has become too personalised. The effectiveness of a ministry is often associated with the personality of its minister rather than the strength of the institution. A visible minister is praised for transforming a sector, while a less visible one is assumed to be doing nothing. Yet a properly functioning ministry should not depend entirely on its political head. The permanent bureaucracy, professional standards, administrative procedures and institutional memory should provide continuity when political appointees come and go. Instead, transitions can feel like institutional resets. New ministers arrive with new priorities, boards are replaced, senior officials are moved around, committees are established and existing programmes are reviewed, renamed or abandoned. Government begins to look like a succession of personal projects rather than one continuous national enterprise.
The same problem is visible at the state level. Nigerians often judge governors by the roads they construct, buildings they commission, flyovers they inaugurate and projects that carry the identity of their administration. These things matter, but they are only one part of governance. The more important question is whether a governor is leaving behind a state government capable of delivering services after he leaves. A governor can build classrooms, but if teachers are poorly managed and learning outcomes remain weak, the buildings alone do not improve education. A government can renovate hospitals, but without doctors, nurses, equipment, drugs, maintenance and effective referral systems, the building itself does not create healthcare. A governor can construct roads, but without proper planning, drainage and maintenance, those roads will eventually deteriorate.
Yet Nigerian politics often rewards the visible project more than the invisible institution. A bridge can be photographed, a school commissioned and a road named after a governor. An improved procurement system, professional planning department, reliable database or stronger civil service does not produce the same political spectacle. This creates an incentive to build things that can be displayed rather than systems that can quietly keep working for decades.
It also explains why policy continuity is so difficult. One administration begins a project and another may question it simply because it belongs to its predecessor. Sometimes the project is genuinely wasteful and should be stopped, but sometimes political ownership becomes more important than policy continuity. The new government wants Nigerians to associate progress with its own leadership rather than with the state itself. The result is that valuable programmes can become vulnerable whenever political power changes hands. Nigeria needs governments that understand that public projects and reforms belong to the country, not to the politicians who introduced them.
The Lagos experience offers a useful illustration of the importance of continuity. Whatever political arguments surround successive administrations, Lagos has been able to sustain certain long-term programmes partly because governments have inherited institutions, policies and projects rather than completely dismantling everything that came before. That does not mean every policy has been successful or that Lagos has solved its problems. It simply shows that development becomes easier when institutions and policies survive changes in political leadership. Nigeria needs that principle across the federation.
Our obsession with personalities is also visible in the political parties. In many cases, parties function less as ideological institutions and more as vehicles through which powerful politicians negotiate influence and electoral advantage. Politicians change parties, alliances shift, former enemies become allies and supporters frequently follow individuals from one political platform to another. This makes it difficult to build serious political institutions around ideas. A mature political system should allow parties to survive individual politicians, with recognisable philosophies, policy priorities, internal democratic structures and institutional memory. In Nigeria, however, political influence remains heavily personalised, and the strength of an organisation can depend on the political figure controlling it.
That culture affects voters too. Nigerians frequently campaign for individuals more passionately than they campaign for policies. Someone can support a politician because he is from their region, speaks their language, belongs to their religion, represents their political camp or is believed to be the only person capable of fixing Nigeria. The actual content of the person’s programme can become secondary. When citizens become personally attached to politicians, accountability becomes difficult. Criticism is interpreted as an attack, while supporters defend failures because admitting that their preferred politician has failed can feel like admitting that they themselves made the wrong choice. Nigeria then becomes trapped in an endless argument over personalities instead of performance.
The problem is particularly dangerous because Nigeria is far too large and complicated to be governed through personal intervention. A country of more than 200 million people, 36 states, the Federal Capital Territory and hundreds of local government areas cannot depend on the president personally solving every problem. The president cannot supervise every federal hospital, the governor cannot monitor every school and the local government chairman cannot personally provide every public service. That is precisely why institutions exist. The police should maintain public safety through professional systems. Courts should operate according to law. Procurement systems should protect public money regardless of who is in office. Tax agencies should collect revenue through predictable procedures. Planning authorities should enforce regulations consistently. Public hospitals should function because the health system works, not because a politician happened to visit.
There is also a Nigerian contradiction we rarely discuss honestly. Many citizens complain about corruption, nepotism and political patronage while participating in the same system when it benefits them. We complain that government jobs are given to political connections, yet many people hope to use their own connections to secure positions. We condemn politicians for giving contracts to friends while celebrating when someone from our community receives an appointment. This is not an excuse for corruption. It helps explain why weak institutions become socially entrenched. When public institutions cannot be trusted to work fairly, people naturally look for personal connections. The political godfather becomes powerful, the well-connected civil servant becomes valuable and the person who “knows somebody” gains an advantage over those who rely solely on formal procedures.
This creates a vicious cycle. The more Nigerians rely on connections, the less pressure there is to make formal systems work. And the weaker those systems become, the more valuable connections become. Breaking that cycle requires citizens to demand institutions that work for everyone, rather than simply hoping to become one of the people who can bypass them.
That is why the conversation about leadership must become more demanding. Nigerians should not only ask whether a politician is hardworking, charismatic or accessible. They should ask what happens to the institution after that politician leaves. If a governor introduces a successful education programme, can the next governor continue it? If a minister introduces a major reform, does the ministry have the capacity to maintain it? If a president launches an economic programme, is there a legal and institutional framework strong enough to survive a change in administration? Those are better measures of governance than the number of billboards carrying a politician’s photograph.
Nigeria also needs to reconsider what it means to be a successful political leader. We have become accustomed to measuring politicians by what they personally distribute, commission or announce. But the greatest achievement of a leader may be something less visible: building a system that continues to function without them. A governor who leaves behind a professional civil service has achieved something more durable than a governor who simply leaves behind impressive photographs of projects. A minister who improves the institutional capacity of a ministry has done something more lasting than one who dominates the news cycle. A president who strengthens the rules of government leaves behind something future administrations can build upon.
This matters because Nigeria’s development cannot depend on political luck. If national progress depends on finding one exceptionally competent president every eight years, then the country is gambling with its future. One good administration may produce progress, followed by another that reverses it. One reform-minded governor may build something valuable, followed by a successor who dismantles it. That is not sustainable development. Strong institutions do not eliminate bad leadership, but they reduce the damage any individual can do and make it easier for good policies to survive beyond the people who introduced them.
As Nigeria moves towards another major political cycle, the temptation will again be to reduce the national conversation to personalities. Nigerians will argue about who should become president, which governor should succeed another and which political figure can rescue the country. Social media will fill with campaign materials, endorsements and arguments about individual politicians. But Nigerians should ask a harder question: What happens to Nigeria after the politician leaves?
That question exposes whether we are building a country or merely changing managers.
Nigeria will always need capable presidents, governors, ministers, lawmakers and public officials. Leadership matters. But leadership should also be measured by its ability to strengthen the institutions that make government work beyond the leader’s tenure. The goal should not be a Nigeria where citizens have to know someone before they can get something done. It should be a Nigeria where the system works because the system is designed to work.
We should not need a powerful person to get a passport processed, a court case heard, a business registered, a hospital functioning, a public school teaching or a government contract properly monitored. We should not need to know somebody. We should be able to trust something.
That something is the institution.
Until Nigeria makes that transition, we will continue searching for the next hero, reformer, strongman or political messiah. We will celebrate them when they arrive, defend them when they fail and blame their successors when the problems return.
Then we will start the cycle all over again.
Nigeria does not need another political saviour. It needs leaders who understand that their greatest responsibility is to build institutions stronger than themselves.
Until then, we will keep changing leaders while Nigeria’s most important problems remain.