Nigeria Still Needs a President

Femi AKintunde-Johnson

Four years ago, as Nigeria approached the 2023 elections, I posed a series of questions that now return with even greater urgency and discomfort. These questions concerned sacrifice, leadership, civic apathy, corruption, insecurity, institutional weakness, and the dangerous normalisation of suffering.

Looking back today is not an exercise in nostalgia; it is an autopsy. The fears I raised were not exaggerated, and in many cases they were conservative.

At that time, Nigerians were exhausted by the Buhari years – the drift, the excuses, the insecurity, the economic paralysis, and the endless wait for competence to emerge from polished propaganda. Citizens hoped that 2023 would provide a meaningful reset. Some prayed for competence; others simply begged for relief.

In 2026, the national mood is more complex. Anger remains, weariness has deepened, and hunger has taken on a more democratic tone.

No one needs elaborate economic explanations to understand Nigeria’s condition. The market woman, the commercial driver, the fresh graduate, and even the once‑comfortable middle class all grasp it with frightening intimacy.

When people who once debated investment portfolios now discuss the price of garri with visible anxiety, the country has entered dangerous emotional territory.

In 2022, many Nigerians still carried fragments of optimism. The elections seemed an opportunity to break the cycle of recycled incompetence and entrenched entitlement. Youth appeared energized, and political conversations moved beyond beer parlours into campuses, churches, salons, taxis, and market stalls.

Then came the elections, controversies, courtroom dramas, accusations, explanations, and finally the weary surrender that usually follows our political contests.

Nigeria moved on because it always moves on. But moving on is not the same as healing.

What has followed is a slow deepening of a dangerous national fatigue. Nigerians are no longer merely frustrated; many are emotionally exhausted. The country has stretched its citizens’ patience so aggressively that survival itself has become a profession.

The frightening thing is how quickly abnormality becomes culture here. We now celebrate things that should embarrass us. Citizens applaud uninterrupted electricity as though witnessing a scientific breakthrough. A stable fuel supply becomes breaking news. Bread price rises so often that consumers no longer react with outrage – only resignation.

Everything has become “management.” People manage transport, feeding, rent, healthcare, and hope. Perhaps that is the greatest tragedy of modern Nigeria: a nation blessed by nature but managed perpetually like an emergency ward.

The old middle class – once the emotional stabiliser of the country – is collapsing quietly. Salaried professionals now live from debit alert to debit alert. Families once planning holidays abroad are now debating whether to reduce the number of eggs in breakfast. Graduates with respectable jobs still depend on relatives to survive month‑end pressures.

Yet official language remains curiously detached from lived reality. Citizens are told to be patient, to sacrifice, to endure reforms.

Fair enough. Serious economic restructuring is never painless. But leadership loses moral authority when sacrifice appears one‑sided. Nigerians can endure hardship better than most nations; history proves that repeatedly. What citizens resent deeply is visible inequality in suffering.

The ordinary citizen is lectured about discipline while political office holders display extravagant comfort with theatrical confidence. Convoys multiply. Public luxuries expand. Government officials speak casually about figures capable of transforming entire communities.

And somehow, citizens are expected not to notice. But they do. That is why trust has become Nigeria’s scarcest national resource.

People no longer automatically believe politicians, institutions, parties, agencies or promises. Every announcement is interrogated for hidden meanings. Every policy is analysed for who truly benefits. Every speech competes against years of accumulated disappointment.

This distrust did not emerge overnight. It was cultivated across decades of broken promises, abandoned projects, selective justice, elite impunity, and political theatre masquerading as governance. Insecurity continues to feed this national anxiety.

Four years ago, we worried about kidnappings, terrorism, separatist violence, communal clashes, and the frightening erosion of public confidence in state authority. Today, those fears have not disappeared; they have merely evolved and spread.

Entire communities now live under permanent tension. Farmers fear their farmlands. Travellers rehearse emergency phone calls before interstate journeys. Parents investigate school security before educational quality. Rural economies shrink under fear and displacement.

Meanwhile, many official responses still sound suspiciously bureaucratic – as though the country is reading press statements while citizens are reading obituaries.

No nation can achieve meaningful prosperity while insecurity becomes psychologically normalised. But perhaps the most dangerous consequence of prolonged hardship is emotional hardening.

People become numb. Compassion weakens. Outrage fades. Citizens begin adapting to conditions that should provoke collective resistance. That is how societies quietly decay from within.

Once upon a time, Nigerians mobilised passionately around national issues. Students marched. Labour unions paralysed governments. Intellectuals confronted dictatorships. Journalists risked detention. Civil society organisations inspired ideological engagement.

Today, survival has reduced many citizens to exhausted spectators of their own decline. Not because Nigerians are naturally apathetic – far from it. Rather, repeated disappointments have convinced many that outrage changes little. After every scandal comes another scandal. After every promise comes another explanation. After every “new beginning” comes another recycled disappointment.

And politicians understand this fatigue perfectly. That is why emotional manipulation remains one of the most successful strategies in Nigeria. When performance becomes difficult to defend, they deploy identity, tribe, religion, region, and historical grievances.

Suddenly, elections stop being about competence and become spiritual warfare. The poor defend rich politicians simply because they share language or prayer patterns. And the elite smile quietly behind closed doors.

Yet beneath all the noise lies a simple truth many Nigerians now understand instinctively: this country desperately needs leadership with competence, courage, empathy and urgency. Not perfection. Not messiahs. Not miracle workers.

Just leadership genuinely interested in governance beyond election victories and power retention. Most importantly, Nigeria still needs leadership capable of restoring belief. Nations do not survive merely on budgets and policies. They survive on collective faith – the belief that tomorrow can improve through honest effort and fair opportunity.

That faith is weakening dangerously in Nigeria. Young people increasingly view relocation not as ambition, but as escape. Families encourage children to “find a way out” with the urgency once reserved for emergency evacuations. That should trouble any serious leadership class.

A country where hope becomes exportable eventually empties itself psychologically before it collapses economically. And still, despite everything, Nigerians continue enduring with astonishing resilience. Markets open every morning. Parents still sacrifice for their children. Small businesses improvise survival. Workers still report for duty.

Perhaps resilience remains our greatest strength. Or perhaps it has become the excuse leadership relies upon too comfortably. Because the more Nigerians endure silently, the easier it becomes to confuse survival with progress. But survival is not development. Endurance is not governance. And suffering is not patriotism.