By Stephanie Shaakaa
NIGERIA keeps repeating the same political calculation and wondering why the answer never changes.
At a polling unit on an ordinary election day, a voter stands in line clutching a ballot, unaware that far away, in quiet rooms of power, the outcome has already been “solved” without him.
Nigeria’s political class treats power like a math problem. Install a loyal successor. Retain influence. Multiply relevance. Control outcomes from a distance. They call it strategy. In reality, it is godfatherism pretending to be mathematics.
When your assumptions are wrong, the solution will always fail, no matter how confidently the equation is written.
Lagos is often cited as proof that the formula works. But even there, nuance matters. Babatunde Fashola did not govern as a puppet, and tensions emerged as independence asserted itself. Akinwunmi Ambode’s term exposed the limits of deviation, a dramatic subtraction within a tightly controlled system. Babajide Sanwo-Olu represents alignment rather than rupture. Even in success, godfatherism is never static. It must be managed, renegotiated, and constantly balanced because power refuses to remain a fixed constant.
That is the lie at the heart of the formula. Power does not behave like inheritance. Authority seeks autonomy. Loyalty depreciates. Ambition compounds. And the godson eventually realises that legitimacy comes from the ballot, not a private endorsement.
Outside Lagos, the arithmetic collapses faster.
In Kano, political succession was treated as a solvable equation, with loyalty as the dominant variable. Instead of stability, there was division. Authority split. Influence competed with legitimacy. The outcome was not governance but fragmentation, power multiplying into rival centres.
In Rivers State, the formula imploded entirely. Two men claimed the same variable. One held political ownership. The other constitutional authority. The state froze in endless paralysis, governance sidelined for supremacy. When godfather and godson both insist they are the answer, the people become the remainder.
Oyo offered a quieter lesson. Once power was secured, the godson recalculated. Authority consolidated. Informal influence diminished. The original sponsor discovered that relevance is not a lifetime guarantee. Political capital expires if not renewed by performance and consent.
Across these examples, the pattern is clear. Godfatherism fails not because of betrayal or ingratitude but because it ignores political reality. Obedience and ambition cannot coexist indefinitely. Submission cannot be demanded from someone elected to exercise authority. Citizens cannot be reduced to rounding errors and still expect legitimacy.
The arithmetic becomes dangerous when voters are treated as instruments, elections reduced to endorsements, and governance privatized. The public learns only after the calculation is complete.
Nigeria has changed. Public scrutiny is sharper. Media attention is relentless. Citizens are no longer passive variables waiting to be manipulated. Any political formula that excludes them will eventually collapse under its own weight.
What Nigeria needs is not better godfathers but better governance. Leadership is not a succession plan to be enforced. It is a responsibility to be earned and renewed. Power cannot be warehoused. Influence cannot be remotely controlled forever. Authority cannot be subcontracted without resistance.
Until Nigeria abandons this tired arithmetic, we will keep solving the same problem and arriving at the same answer: instability, distraction, and lost years. Politics is not mathematics. And any system that treats power like a private calculation will continue to fail the national test.
The lesson is as simple as it is urgent. Politics is lived by people, not equations. Calculations on paper cannot capture ambition, resentment, fear, or desire. Those who treat governance like algebra will always find the solution incomplete.
Power is messy. Influence is messy. Democracy is messy. And anyone trying to reduce it to a formula is destined to miscalculate.
Because in Nigeria, the people are never variables. They are the equation.
Shaakaa can be reached on:
shaakaastephanie@yahoo.com
