What do Nigerians Really Want; Governance or Patronage?

Nigerians, sharing their unity in diversity.

Politicians all over the world usually fall into two categories. These are the transactional and the transformational politicians. Transformational politicians are the humanist who sees need and goes into office to rectify those needs and create comfort and peace for their people. Their primary objectives are the welfare and security of their subjects. They react demand and complains from their electorate.


However, transactional politicians are not interested in their subjects or their needs. They do not desire to please or even help them. They only seek avenues to help promote their own self interest. So to achieve this, they behave like a businessman who is after the profit in a business. They invest in the people by giving them gift and promises, things the people need to hear, not things they are able or even willing to give them.

Unfortunately, the latter lot is where majority of the Nigerian politicians fit in. Our politicians both past and present are not interested in the well being of their constituencies or the betterment of the nation at large but rather in the gain they stand to profit. Sometimes when it favours them, they provide a listening ear to the people to shut them up or protect and strengthen their hold on power.

Nigerians, like every other people in the universe require and need basic social amenities like good roads, constant power supply, portable drinking water, good and affordable healthcare and so on. But unlike the rest of the world. Everyone would naturally expect us to find solidarity in our common sufferings and press these politicians for the provisions of these needs.

But this is not what is obtainable in Nigeria. When the opportunity comes to demand the provision of these amenities, we fracture. We become tribalized and then ethnicize issues. We demand for trivial things like a position on the board of one agency for a kin from our community or the seat of a permanent secretary of a federal parastatal, or maybe even seek for a ministerial slot for our village. We forget the enduring nights we have to bear in heat without light, we fail to remember the dilapidated school that our children attend or the terrible road that causes so many deaths in our villages. We fail to seize the moment.

The irony of the whole affair is that the transactional politician will actually grant these requests thrown at them. They prefer to respond to those demands because it does not really put any pressure on them to govern. Since the citizens are not discussing governance or accountability, they are at ease and they know that giving in to these demands helps to strengthen their hold on the power they so crave for. All they have to do, is seek out an individual who is bendable and appoint them.

This is exemplified in the fact the Niger Delta area suffered most when an indigene of the area became the petroleum minister. You could also argue that the north as a whole has never really progressed despite the fact that it has produced most of Nigeria’ leaders. There are several other examples from virtually every corner of the nation. And by granting your demands, they have achieved something, which is the fact that they cannot now be accused of in deference to their people’s demand. However, the material demand of your community will always remain in a sorry state.

A farmland destroyed by oil pollution in the Niger Delta.

In essence, what we need is governance but what we demand is patronage. That’s why we keep complaining. And these complains are the same ones our father’s voiced out fifty years ago. But you wonder, if the complains have not changed in fifty years, why have the people not changed their ways and force the politicians in government at all levels to deliver u these things?

The answer is simple; at the point of demand, we all go our separate ways. We allow religion and ethnicity to rule us. We forget the fact that, a Yoruba man attends the same dilapidated health care centre as a Fulani man. Or that an Igala man plies the same pot hole ridden road as an Igbo man. Until we decide to unite and allow the things that binds us together drive us, Nigerians will always complain.