Nigeria’s Broken System: Why True Change Demands Restructuring, Not New Leaders

EVERY effort Nigeria has made to tackle corruption or alleviate poverty has ended up worsening both. From the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) to fuel subsidy regimes, from anti-graft agencies like the EFCC to countless empowerment schemes, the story is the same: lofty promises, disappointing outcomes. The reason is simple—Nigeria has never changed the political system that produces corruption and poverty in the first place.

This is what Iyad El-Baghdadi calls an anti-paradigmatic aspiration—expecting progress within a framework that is designed to block it. It is like a dictatorship aspiring to be a cultural capital of the world while suppressing freedom of thought and speech, or a command economy trying to replicate Silicon Valley without free markets. Nigeria’s tragedy is not just poor leadership, but a refusal to confront the system that sustains failure.

The Origins of a Flawed System

To understand Nigeria’s political economy, we must go back to its roots. What we call the Nigerian state began as a business venture of the Royal Niger Company (RNC), chartered by Britain in 1886. The RNC was not concerned with governance or nation-building—it was created to extract resources and control trade routes along the Niger-Benue axis. When locals resisted, the company raised militias to suppress them, laying the foundation for a state that valued profit and coercion over people.

By 1900, unable to manage rival colonial pressures, the RNC sold its holdings to the British government for £865,000. Lord Lugard took over, using brute force to consolidate control from Kano to Brass. His job was to continue the RNC’s work—trade, profit, and resource extraction. The structure he left behind privileged government monopolies and foreign trade over grassroots prosperity.

By independence in 1960, an educated elite inherited this system but lacked the capacity—or the will—to reform it. Oil wealth later entrenched rent-seeking and patronage. Infrastructure became a reward system, education was politicized through quota allocations, and corruption flourished unchecked. From colonialism to independence, military coups, and now democracy, the system’s core remains the same: the state exists to enrich itself and its allies, not its citizens.

The Nature of the Nigerian System

Nigeria’s system is not just a set of leaders—it is a structure. It ensures that:

1. Government owns and controls all resources, distributing access through licenses, contracts, and patronage.

2. Political office becomes the gateway to economic opportunity.

3. Ordinary Nigerians are left to survive by self-provisioning—generating their own electricity, water, healthcare, and security—while being taxed without meaningful economic freedom.

This is why voting for “good leaders” within a bad system never works. Like Black Americans know that racism cannot be solved simply by electing a Black president, Nigerians must realize that electing one honest politician will not fix a system designed to serve elites.

Who Benefits from the Current Order?

Four groups profit from Nigeria’s political system:

1. Traditional ruling families who retained land and influence after colonialism.

2. Families of nationalist politicians, who converted early influence into lasting economic power.

3. The military class, which wrote Nigeria’s constitution and still wields influence.

4. The neo-democrats, today’s crop of political elites who inherited the military’s framework.

Everyone else is excluded. And when elections come, ordinary citizens only get to choose between candidates sponsored by these same four groups.

Why Reform, Not Leaders, Is the Answer

Over 50 years of experimentation with “reform from within” has shown one thing clearly: Nigeria’s system is incompatible with good governance. Anyone who emerges from within it must compromise with elites to survive. This is why even leaders elected on anti-corruption promises—like Buhari—end up perpetuating the same corruption they vowed to destroy.

The way forward is not another election cycle with recycled elites. It is structural reform—beginning with a new constitution that dismantles the colonial economic model, redistributes power away from Abuja, and restores genuine ownership of resources to the people.

What Must Be Done

1. Agitate for constitutional reform. Nigerians must demand a referendum that allows them to redesign the structure of governance.

2. Reject elite distractions. Corruption scandals, EFCC show trials, and party rivalries are theatre designed to keep the people divided while elites share the spoils.

3. Educate and mobilize. The political elite thrives because many citizens cannot see the system as their true enemy. Awareness is the first step toward collective action.

4. Restructure power. A new constitution must decentralize authority, protect citizens’ rights, and ensure that governance is participatory, not exploitative.

The Inevitable Struggle

The hardest battle Nigerians will ever fight is against their own political class. Unlike the colonial struggle, this will not be a fight against foreigners, but against neighbours, relatives, and friends who cling to the system because they benefit from it. Yet, as Victor Hugo said, “nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come.”

That idea is restructuring. Until Nigerians unite to see their true enemy—the political system itself—corruption and poverty will persist, no matter who is in power.

Now is the time to begin that fight. Not tomorrow, not after the next election—today.