By Michael Oriade, Ph.D.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.
Something fundamental appears to have changed in the Nigerian conception of society.
The communal consciousness that once encouraged people to see themselves as members of families, neighbourhoods and communities with shared obligations has increasingly given way to a narrower outlook:
What is in it for me?
This is more than ordinary selfishness. It is a weakening of our ability to connect private choices with collective consequences.
A citizen watches injustice inflicted on another person and turns away because it does not affect him. A neighbour dumps refuse into a storm drain, then complains when the neighbourhood floods. A public official diverts public resources and may still be admired by people hoping that someday it will be their turn, or that of a relative or political benefactor.
The wrongdoing becomes secondary to the question of who benefits.
Until the thief is caught, he may be celebrated. Sometimes, even after he is caught, the celebration continues.
Nigeria’s problem may therefore be deeper than corruption or bad policy. It may be a crisis of social consciousness.
When Public Office Looks Like a Jackpot
Leadership helps define what society considers normal.
One revealing example is the triumphalism that often accompanies election victories and political appointments. Victory parties follow elections. Thanksgiving services are organized. Appointments are celebrated as major personal breakthroughs. Newly elected officials hurry to powerful sponsors and political patrons.
Celebration is not inherently wrong. Supporters may genuinely expect good government, and cultural gestures of respect should not automatically be interpreted negatively.
But the symbolism deserves examination.
After Monday Okpebholo won the 2024 Edo governorship election, he and his deputy were photographed kneeling before President Bola Tinubu during a post election visit.
Why does public office so often generate the atmosphere of someone who has won an extraordinary personal prize?
If office is genuinely a call to service, victory should also produce sober reflection:
What responsibility have I just assumed?
What sacrifices will this office require?
How will the people be better off when I leave?
Public office should look more like stewardship than acquisition.
Winning as Individuals, Losing as a Society
Professor Hilary Inyang captured this problem particularly well in a recent interview. Discussing young people, he suggested that he could often form a quick impression of their prospects from the way they understood success, particularly whether achievement was conceived entirely in personal terms or connected to the progress of a wider community.
A Nigerian students’ organization reflecting on that same interview summarized the dilemma memorably: Nigerians may be winning as individuals while losing as a community.
There is nothing wrong with ambition or wealth.
The problem begins when personal advancement becomes detached from social responsibility.
Inyang has also criticized leaders who surround themselves with agreeable loyalists rather than independent experts, describing some governors as behaving like “emperors of knowledge.”
Once such behaviour is rewarded, people learn.
The professional discovers that proximity to power may be more profitable than competence.
The adviser learns that disagreement may end access.
The appointee learns that loyalty to his benefactor may matter more than loyalty to the institution.
Sycophancy becomes an economic strategy.
Politics as Personal Survival
Nyesom Wike provides a remarkable illustration.
Although still a member of the PDP, Wike serves in President Tinubu’s APC administration and openly supports Tinubu’s reelection.
Cross party support is perfectly legitimate. What is revealing is Wike’s own explanation.
In September 2026, he said that if Tinubu lost, Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi would “come for my head,” and that he therefore could not afford to sleep while Tinubu might lose.
That is striking because the calculation is explicitly about political survival.
And once again we return to the central question:
What is in it for me?
When politics becomes primarily about personal protection, access and survival, principle becomes flexible and institutions become secondary.
When Winning Becomes More Important Than the Rules
There is also a troubling assumption in sections of Nigerian political discourse that an incumbent president possessing the “power of state” simply cannot lose.
In a democracy, incumbency naturally provides advantages. It must never confer ownership of electoral outcomes.
State power belongs to the state, not to the candidate occupying its highest office.
The International Republican Institute’s 2026 pre election assessment reported persistent concerns about politically motivated arrests, selective enforcement, perceived partisan use of state security institutions and declining public confidence in INEC.
That does not prove that an election will be rigged.
It does show why confidence in institutional neutrality matters.
President Tinubu has defended INEC as neutral and insisted that political competitors enjoy equal opportunity. Yet in the same political context he declared:
“All is fair in politics.”
But all is not fair in democratic politics.
Vote buying is not fair.
Intimidation is not fair.
Political violence is not fair.
Abuse of state institutions is not fair.
Winning cannot be the supreme political value.
The integrity of the process must be greater than the interests of the winner.
If my only concern is that my candidate wins, then irregularities become offensive only when they hurt my side.
That is simply another version of the same social failure:
If it does not hurt me, why should I care?
The Privatization of Survival
The problem extends beyond politics.
Electricity fails, so those who can afford it buy generators.
Public water fails, so we sink boreholes.
Policing fails, so estates hire private security.
Schools deteriorate, so families move their children elsewhere.
Hospitals fail, so those who can afford it seek private treatment or travel abroad.
Every decision is rational individually.
But collectively, something dangerous happens.
Those with the greatest influence gradually become insulated from failing public systems.
We become very good at privatizing survival.
But a nation cannot privatize its way to development.
A generator can power a mansion. It cannot power an industrial economy.
A borehole can serve a compound. It cannot replace a functioning municipal water system.
Private guards may protect an estate. They cannot create national security.
From Private Gain to the Common Good
Education should help citizens understand the relationship between private conduct and public outcomes.
The person who dumps refuse into a drain should understand the connection to flooding.
The citizen who excuses public theft because the thief shares his ethnicity should understand that the stolen money reappears as the school without equipment, the hospital without medicine and the road that was never maintained.
The student loan debate raises the same philosophical question. Loans may expand access, but if they gradually replace affordable public education, society risks transferring what was once understood as collective investment onto individual young people.
The deeper question is:
What responsibility does one generation owe the next?
Nigeria does not lack intelligent or successful people.
What it increasingly lacks is a sufficiently strong connection between individual success and collective success.
The neighbour must understand that the drain belongs to him even when it lies outside his gate.
The politician must understand that an election victory is an assignment, not an acquisition.
The supporter must value a credible election more than the victory of his preferred candidate.
And the successful Nigerian must understand that there is a limit to how successful anyone can truly be inside a society that is collectively failing.
The transition Nigeria needs is therefore one of consciousness.
From What can I get? to What can we build?
From access to responsibility.
From sycophancy to citizenship.
From winning at all costs to respecting the rules that bind us all.
From private gain to the common good.
Because when enough individuals succeed only for themselves, private gain eventually becomes public decline.
Dr. Michael Oriade is a lawyer, information technology expert, and public policy analyst based in the United States. He can be reached at ade.oriade@yahoo.com.
