Nigeria: Being Milked Dry By Politicians, Urged On By Blind Followers

There is something profoundly disturbing about Nigeria’s political experience: the country is being drained by politicians while millions of citizens cheer from the sidelines, defend the indefensible and fight one another over the very people presiding over their collective impoverishment.

Nigeria is not merely suffering from bad leadership. It is increasingly suffering from a dangerous partnership between political elites who exploit public institutions and citizens who, because of party loyalty, ethnicity, religion, regional sentiment or personal attachment, defend them at almost any cost. This is how a country can be milked dry while its people argue over which political cow deserves protection.

The tragedy is that Nigeria possesses enormous resources, human capital and economic potential to provide a considerably better standard of living for its citizens. Yet the ordinary Nigerian continues to struggle with expensive food, unreliable electricity, inadequate healthcare, poor infrastructure, insecurity, unemployment and declining purchasing power.

The World Bank estimates that more than 60 per cent of Nigerians were living below the national poverty line in 2025, with its latest country overview putting the figure at about 63 per cent. It also estimates that about seven million additional Nigerians fell into poverty in 2025. That should be enough to make every Nigerian angry. Instead, too many remain preoccupied with defending politicians.

The problem is not that Nigerians should not support political parties or politicians. Democracy permits political choice. The problem begins when political loyalty becomes so absolute that citizens lose the capacity to distinguish between governance and propaganda.

A politician can fail spectacularly, and supporters will insist that the failure is the fault of the opposition. A government can increase taxes, electricity tariffs or the cost of living, and supporters will describe the pain as evidence of patriotism.

A public official can be accused of wrongdoing, and supporters immediately ask whether previous administrations were saints. A politician can make promises and fail to deliver them, yet supporters will celebrate another speech as though speeches were infrastructure.

This is not democracy at its best. It is political tribalism, and political tribalism is one of the reasons Nigeria remains trapped in a cycle of underdevelopment.

Citizens have every right to defend leaders they believe in. But democracy was never designed to turn citizens into unpaid public-relations officers for politicians. The citizen's responsibility is not to protect a politician's reputation. It is to protect the public interest. That distinction appears to have been lost.

Expectedly, the result is a political culture in which appointments, political defections, rallies, endorsements and photographs with powerful individuals are sometimes celebrated as though they were economic achievements. Meanwhile, the real indicators of national welfare tell another story.

Nigeria's population stood at about 237.5 million in 2025, according to World Bank data. The economy grew by about four per cent that year, but GDP per capita was only about $1,224. Economic growth, therefore, cannot be celebrated in isolation. The more important question is: What is that growth doing to the life of the ordinary Nigerian? If GDP expands while households struggle to afford food, rent, transportation, healthcare and education, politicians cannot simply point to a growth figure and declare victory.

The World Bank's April 2026 Nigeria Development Update said macroeconomic stability had improved, but household incomes had not fully recovered and poverty remained high. It stressed the need to translate economic stabilization into improvements in people's livelihoods. That is the real test of governance.

Not how loudly supporters celebrate a president. Not how many people attend a political rally. Not how impressive a campaign poster looks. Not how many defections a political party attracts. The test is whether ordinary citizens can live with dignity.

Without resort to exaggeration in this context, it is germane to opine that politicians are not the only problem. It would, however, be intellectually dishonest to blame everything on politicians. Politicians are products of the society from which they emerge. They understand what voters reward. They know that ethnicity can mobilize voters, religion can mobilize voters and poverty can make people vulnerable to political inducement. They also know that distributing small amounts of money at election time can sometimes produce greater political returns than building sustainable institutions. And they know that many citizens will defend them regardless of their performance. This is where the Nigerian follower becomes part of the problem.

When a citizen receives a few thousand naira from a politician and subsequently defends that politician against evidence of poor governance, the politician has effectively purchased more than a vote. He has purchased silence.

When supporters attack journalists for reporting uncomfortable facts about their preferred politicians, they are not defending democracy. They are weakening one of its most important safeguards.

When citizens threaten or insult critics simply because they disagree with their political preferences, they help create the atmosphere in which public officials become less accountable. And when Nigerians accept that "our own" must be defended whether right or wrong, the country loses while the politician wins.

In fact, Nigeria's position on corruption should also concern every citizen. Transparency International's 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index gave Nigeria a score of 26 out of 100, placing the country 142nd among 182 countries. Whether one agrees with every aspect of international corruption rankings or not, the broader problem cannot be dismissed.

Corruption becomes powerful where institutions are weak and citizens tolerate impunity. The political class does not operate in a vacuum. It operates within an environment in which public outrage is often selective.

Some Nigerians become furious when a politician from another party is accused of corruption but suddenly become legal scholars, investigators and defenders of due process when the accused belongs to their own political camp. This selective morality is dangerous.

Corruption is corruption regardless of the political party of the person involved. A stolen naira does not become less stolen because the person accused belongs to one's ethnic group. A failed project does not become successful because the governor who commissioned it belongs to one's political party. A bad policy does not become good because it was introduced by one's preferred president. Facts should not have political parties.

Nigeria has gradually developed a political culture in which politicians are sometimes treated like celebrities, fathers, messiahs and community saviours. A politician is not doing citizens a personal favour by using public money to provide public services. A governor constructing a road is not giving citizens a gift. The road is being constructed with public resources.

In the same vein, a president providing infrastructure is not performing a personal act of charity. Government exists to provide public goods. A legislator attracting a project to his constituency is not spending personal money. The money belongs to the public. Yet political communication often deliberately blurs this distinction. Citizens are encouraged to feel indebted to politicians for services they are already entitled to receive. That is how political patronage becomes entrenched. And once citizens begin to see public services as gifts from politicians, accountability disappears.

Given the foregoing shenanigans attributed to followers, Nigeria therefore needs a new political culture. Politicians must be held accountable, but citizens must also accept responsibility for the kind of politics they encourage. The Nigerian voter must graduate from being a political supporter to becoming a political customer. And customers ask questions. How much did you promise? How much did you deliver? How much did it cost? Where did the money come from? Why did the project fail? Why has electricity remained unreliable? Why are schools inadequate? Why are hospitals poorly equipped? Why is insecurity persistent? Why are young Nigerians leaving the country in search of opportunities elsewhere? Why are we borrowing more? What are we borrowing for? What measurable improvement has occurred?

These questions should not be considered disrespectful or oppositional. They are the foundation of responsible citizenship. Nigeria does not need citizens who worship politicians. It needs citizens who scrutinize them. It does not need followers who defend everything. It needs citizens who can say: "I support you, but you are wrong." That may be one of the most important sentences Nigeria's democracy needs to hear.

There is perhaps no greater absurdity in Nigerian politics than a poor citizen violently defending a wealthy politician against another poor citizen. The two citizens may be arguing about APC, PDP, Labour Party or another political platform. Meanwhile, political elites may be dining together, negotiating alliances, switching parties and pursuing their interests. The ordinary citizens remain divided. This is the great political trick: keep the people fighting among themselves and they may never unite to demand accountability. Make them believe that their ethnic group must defend "its own" and they may overlook incompetence. Convince them that criticism of a politician is an attack on their region or religion and they may stop asking questions.

Without a doubt, Nigerian politicians are good at turning politics into identity, and allowing performance to become secondary. Nigeria cannot afford this anymore. With more than 200 million people, a rapidly growing population and about 3.5 million people entering the labour force every year, according to the World Bank, Nigeria must create jobs and improve productivity at a scale that political rhetoric alone cannot achieve. The stakes are enormous.

Nigeria is not being milked dry only because politicians take too much. It is also being milked dry because too many citizens allow themselves to be distracted from the central question: What are we getting in return for what government takes from us? Taxes are collected. Borrowings are incurred. Oil and gas revenues are earned. Customs duties are collected. Government agencies generate revenues. Yet citizens still struggle to obtain basic services. That contradiction should provoke serious national reflection.

The country does not need another generation of blind followers. It needs citizens who understand that loyalty to Nigeria must always come before loyalty to politicians. Politicians will come and go. Presidents will leave office. Governors will complete their terms. Legislators will lose elections. Political parties will rise and collapse. But Nigeria will remain.

And if Nigerians continue to defend politicians more passionately than they defend their own economic interests, the country will continue to pay the price. The time has come to stop treating politicians as masters and citizens as beneficiaries. They are public servants. We are the public.

And if Nigeria is being milked dry, the responsibility does not rest entirely with those holding the bucket. It also rests with those standing beside them, cheering, defending them and insisting that the bucket is empty when everyone can see the milk dripping from it.