The Nigerian politician and tomorrow

LEADERSHIP is the capacity to translate vision into reality.

Warren Bennis

The average Nigerian politician is, to put it mildly, pathetic. He/she is in politics for today, and not for tomorrow. For most of them, politics begins and ends with “winning” elections, holding office, and enjoying the privileges that come with it. If “tomorrow” exists in their vocabulary, it is only about the next election date and not as a future to be planned for or secured. Their concern begins and ends with how to win, and not what they would do with the victory. Most hardly prepare for governance.

They are more interested in the trappings of power, the long convoys, the sirens, and the endless praise singers. The people they govern are honestly not asking for much. Their demands remain heartbreakingly modest — potable water (not even piped into every home, just accessible), good roads, decent schools, functional hospitals that can actually treat patients, steady power supply, and jobs. These aspirations are not too difficult to meet. They haven’t asked to be sent to the moon, like India has triumphantly done — but why not? Yet even these basic expectations continue to be unmet, decade after decade.

And this is where the tragedy deepens. The average politician doesn’t seem to understand a very simple truth: that you can only govern a country if that country exists. Therefore, logic dictates that the first duty of every politician should be to preserve the integrity of the Nigerian state, to ensure that it continues to exist, because if the nation falls apart under the weight of insecurity, poverty, and hopelessness, then there will be no country left to govern. But that sense of urgency, that understanding that Nigeria’s survival is not guaranteed, seems completely lost on most of our political class; most tragically behave as if Nigeria’s survival is assured.

They behave as if the country will somehow fix itself while they are busy sharing contracts and appointments. Meanwhile, the signs of decay are everywhere. The economy is in shambles, insecurity has become our daily reality, our schools are failing, and millions of young people have lost faith in the system — hence the Japa syndrome.

There’s an old saying that you don’t have to tell a deaf and dumb man that a war is raging; because he can see people running in panic, he can smell the smoke, he can feel the earth tremble beneath his feet even if he cannot hear the sound of the bombs. That’s where we are today. The evidence of crisis is all around us, visible to anyone who bothers to look.

Yet, instead of rallying the nation to address these existential challenges, our leaders continue to bicker over power — fighting over party tickets, and who gets what in the next round of spoils (elections). Most continue to govern as though Nigeria were indestructible, as though our fragility were a myth. But nations do not die all at once; they erode slowly, eaten away by neglect, greed, and a failure of imagination.

The question is, when will the Nigerian politician wake up? When will they realize that leadership is not about occupying office but about vision and responsibility? Like Warren Bennis said, leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality. But how can a man without vision translate anything? Or the fact that they must plant trees under whose shade they may never sit. That is the essence of vision, the capacity that distinguishes leadership from mere office-holding. It’s obvious that Nigeria desperately needs leaders who can translate vision into reality — those who understand that the tomorrow they fail to build today will be the ruin of tomorrow.

The sad truth is that if most of our politicians continue to live only for today, there may tragically be no tomorrow left for any of us.

What started as a joke, yet, as always, our politicians have carried on as if nothing happened. It has been business as usual. They are not pretending, because they actually do not understand the seriousness of America’s decision — internally and externally — as the Catholic Bishop Matthew Kukah tried to warn. Rather, they are more concerned about winning the 2027 elections. Their silence is telling.

Why did the Americans hit us? This is a country that has perfected the art of misplacing its priorities. We chase white elephant projects while allowing basic systems to collapse. The existing roads across the country are in a terrible state of disrepair — riddled with potholes due to years of neglect — but instead of fixing what’s broken, we choose to embark on grandiose dreams of new superhighways when we have woefully failed to maintain the old ones.

Our priorities reveal our dysfunction. We ignore diplomacy — the lifeline of any serious nation — while pretending that poorly constructed roads, at dubious cost, can buy us respect. We neglect maintenance, transparency, and strategic engagement, and then wonder why other nations take us less seriously.

For example, despite Aliko Dangote building a world-class refinery, the bald-headed profiteers who have made insane money from the subsidy regime prefer that Nigeria continues to import fuel rather than meet its demands from a local refinery that is supplying its products to other countries. This is the unfortunate reality of Nigeria.

And when the world’s most powerful nation begins to label you a “Country of Particular Interest”, it is not a laughing matter. It is a red flag that comes with reputational damage, restricted cooperation, and deeper isolation.

But as usual, some of our leaders are utterly unbothered. They have mastered the dangerous art of denial. For them, governance is about today and not tomorrow. The rest of the world, unfortunately, is watching and it’s not amused.

Ado is a Kaduna-based public affairs analyst.