By Dr Zainab Suleiman Buhari
Every election season in Nigeria, the same ritual returns. Rice. Beans. Maggi cubes. Plates. Wrappers. ₦2,000. ₦5,000. And after sharing these things, many politicians return to office smiling.
Then four years later we gather again under the sun and ask: “Why is Nigeria not moving?”
But maybe that is the wrong question. Maybe the harder question is: What exactly are we rewarding? Because leadership is not magic. A country becomes what its people repeatedly tolerate.
Look around your community. Go to the nearest public primary school. Look at the broken windows. Look at children sitting on floors. Look at classrooms with no innovation, no libraries, no technology, no vision.
Ask yourself: How many Ministers of Education have existed? How many Commissioners? How many boards? How many education secretaries? How many legislators stood and promised transformation? Now ask: What changed?
Walk your roads. Some roads were bad before you were born. They are still bad. Entire communities still struggle for clean water in 2026. Hospitals lack equipment. Primary healthcare centres become referral centres because there is little inside them. Young people graduate into uncertainty. Markets expand but opportunities do not.
Governments change. Slogans change. Faces change. But somehow outcomes remain familiar.
And yet election comes. Someone arrives with bags of rice. Someone distributes cash. Someone sponsors events. Someone gives temporary relief. And suddenly years of neglect become invisible. For a moment hunger defeats memory. Then we vote.
But there is something painful Nigerians rarely admit. Many people no longer believe government can truly change their lives. Read that again. Some people do not collect rice because they are greedy. Some collect because they have learned not to expect anything bigger. When a mother has no food. When school fees are due. When transport becomes impossible. When hospitals demand payment before treatment. When salaries cannot sustain life— democracy begins to look like an emergency market. And emergencies make people think about today, not tomorrow.
That is the tragedy. People are not always selling votes because they are corrupt. Sometimes they are buying survival. But survival cannot build a nation. If your future costs ₦5,000— someone else will own your tomorrow. If one plate of rice equals four years— then we have quietly told our children their future is cheap. That is not poverty. That is surrender.
The politician understands this psychology. He does not need to build institutions. He only needs to manage emotions. Keep people tired. Keep people divided. Keep people dependent. Give little. Take much. Return again. Repeat.
And every cycle teaches a dangerous lesson: That public office is not service. It becomes investment. Spend millions to get elected. Recover billions after. People complain. But still vote. Then complain again.
If a child grows up seeing this repeatedly, what lesson do they learn? That integrity is for speeches. That performance does not matter. That elections are seasonal markets. That leadership is not accountability but access.
That is how values weaken. A society rarely loses values in one day. It loses them slowly. When roads stop mattering. When schools stop mattering. When hospitals stop mattering. When competence stops mattering. When conscience becomes negotiable. And eventually we start calling survival “wisdom.”
But there is another painful truth. No senator sends his children to the schools he neglected. No powerful official drinks from the water ordinary people struggle to find. No one in power drives daily on the roads ordinary citizens endure. Yet ordinary people continue carrying the consequences while leaders carry the benefits.
Why? Because somewhere along the line, many of us accepted suffering as normal. We praise survival more than systems. We celebrate generosity more than governance. We thank leaders for doing what public resources should already provide. We clap for projects that should have existed years ago.
Slowly— citizens became supporters. Supporters became defenders. Defenders became victims. Then victims became campaigners. Then the cycle started again.
This reflection is uncomfortable because responsibility is uncomfortable. Government carries enormous responsibility. But citizens also shape incentives. Politicians are mirrors. They reflect what voters reward. If we reward performance, performance grows. If we reward distribution, distribution grows.
Imagine a different Nigeria. Where before voting we ask: Show us the schools. Show us clean water. Show us functioning hospitals. Show us jobs created. Show us public spending. Show us measurable outcomes. Imagine politicians becoming afraid of citizens instead of citizens being afraid of politicians. Imagine communities rejecting gifts but demanding systems. Imagine parents teaching children: “Your future is worth more than one bag of rice.”
A nation does not die when people become poor. A nation begins to die when people stop demanding better. The day Nigerians stop asking: “Who gave us rice?” And start asking: “Why are we still hungry?” Politics in this country will never remain the same.
Until then – the rice finishes. The money finishes. But the roads remain. The schools remain broken. The hospitals remain empty. And another election season arrives.
