By Usman Sarki
“The state is the great fiction by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.” — Frédéric Bastiat
There are moments in the life of a nation when decline can no longer be explained away by rhetoric, postponed by political slogans, concealed beneath the fanfare of official optimism or justified by false patriotism. Nigeria appears to be living through such a moment. The evidence is stark and undeniable: deepening poverty, widespread discontent, social fragmentation and unrest, rising insecurity, rampant corruption, weakening institutions, collapsing public confidence, directionless politics and a growing sense among citizens that the country is being steadily driven towards an avoidable abyss.
What is unfolding is not a passing phase of hardship. It is the cumulative result of decades of economic mismanagement, political irresponsibility and social fragmentation that have combined to run Nigeria into the ground. The social conditions that have hindered the development of Nigeria as a consolidated national entity are well known.
Corruption has eaten deeply into the fabric of public and even private life. Ethnicity and tribalism continue to displace merit, justice and national purpose. Patriotism has been eroded by repeated betrayals of public trust. A general disillusionment with the country’s arrangement has taken root, particularly among the young, who increasingly see little reason to believe that the future will be better than the present.
Yet grave as these factors are, they are not the deepest causes of Nigeria’s malaise. Beneath them lies the more fundamental question of the country’s economic condition. Economics is the foundation upon which the health of any modern state ultimately rests. A nation may survive disagreements over identity or ideology, but when its economic base is weakened, every social and political contradiction becomes accentuated. In Nigeria, the persistent failure to build a productive, inclusive and stable economy has become the central driver of national decline.
It has intensified competition over public office, sharpened communal tensions, encouraged corruption, and eroded the meaning of citizenship. Where wealth is not genuinely created, politics degenerates into a desperate contest for the sharing of scarcity, and the state itself becomes the principal object of capture. Nigeria’s tragedy is that it is a country of immense natural and human endowments, yet its economic structure remains narrow, fragile and externally dependent.
For decades, crude oil revenues created the illusion of wealth without laying the foundation for durable development. Instead of using periods of high earnings to build durable infrastructure, strengthen institutions, diversify production and invest in human capital, the country embraced a culture of rent distribution. Oil made the state appear rich while leaving it structurally weak. It encouraged indiscipline in governance and dependency in public finance, breeding a political class more adept at sharing revenue than generating prosperity.
This rentier mentality gradually permeated the entire system. Federal allocations became more important than productivity. Consumption overtook production. Imports displaced local industry. Easy revenues from extractive resources weakened the incentive to develop agriculture, manufacturing, technology and other sectors capable of sustaining broad-based growth. In time, the economy became hostage to external shocks, exchange rate instability and mounting fiscal pressures.
The illusion of wealth persisted, but the material basis of national well-being steadily eroded. Nowhere is the limitation of the Nigerian state more starkly revealed than in the stubborn failure of the power sector. Since the 1960s, successive governments, whether military or civilian alike, have grappled with the problem of electricity generation, transmission and distribution. Vast resources have been expended, endless reforms announced, multiple agencies created and dissolved, unquantifiable contracts awarded and re-awarded, yet the outcome has remained depressingly constant. Grid collapses, blackouts, inadequate supply, unreliable distribution, and a chronic inability to meet the basic energy needs of the nation are the results.
This is not merely a sectoral shortcoming; it is a profound indictment of state capacity. When a country cannot, over more than six decades, resolve something as fundamental as power supply, it raises serious questions about its ability to undertake more complex tasks of development. Electricity is the lifeblood of modern economies. It powers industry, supports agriculture, drives services, enables education, sustains healthcare systems, underpins technological advancement and supports planned urban growth.
Without it, economic growth remains stunted, productivity is hampered, and the cost of living rises inexorably. The persistence of this failure reveals deeper structural weaknesses. It reflects a state unable to coordinate policy effectively, enforce accountability, sustain long-term planning or insulate critical sectors from corruption and political interference. It also points to the absence of a coherent development philosophy that prioritises foundational infrastructure over short-term political gains.
In effect, the Nigerian state has repeatedly demonstrated its limited capacity to translate resources into results. The consequences are far-reaching. Businesses are compelled to generate their own power at exorbitant cost, eroding competitiveness and discouraging investment. Small and medium enterprises, which are the natural backbone of economic expansion, are suffocated by energy costs. Households are pushed into hardship, spending a disproportionate share of their income on alternative energy sources.
The economy as a whole operates far below its potential, while society bears the burden of avoidable inefficiencies.
These economic failures are now visible across every sphere of national life. Unemployment and underemployment have created a vast population of frustrated citizens, many of them educated yet excluded from the opportunity of becoming prosperous. Inflation has eroded incomes and pushed millions closer to destitution. The cost of food, transport, housing and basic services has risen beyond the reach of ordinary families.
The middle class, once a stabilising force, is steadily shrinking, while the poor are locked into a condition of permanent struggle. In such circumstances, social cohesion becomes difficult to sustain. Economic distress breeds resentment, and resentment seeks outlets. Communities retreat into ethnic, regional and religious identities in search of protection and advantage. Public discourse becomes bitterer, and national solidarity weakens. Citizens who no longer derive tangible benefit from belonging to the federation begin to question its value. The moral contract between state and society begins to unravel.
Corruption, in this context, is not merely a moral failing, though it undoubtedly is. It is also the political expression of an economy that has failed to provide legitimate avenues for wealth creation and equitable distribution. Where political or public office becomes one of the few reliable means of enrichment, corruption assumes a systemic character. It ceases to be an aberration and becomes a governing principle. Contracts are inflated, revenues diverted, institutions manipulated, and policy subordinated to private gain.
The state no longer serves the public; it serves those who have captured it. Equally damaging is the absence of a coherent national economic philosophy. Nigeria has oscillated between slogans rather than strategies. Successive administrations announce reforms, interventions and development plans, yet the underlying structure of dependency remains largely intact. There is little continuity, weak implementation, and an enduring reluctance to take the difficult decisions required for genuine transformation.
Government spending remains skewed towards recurrent obligations, borrowing continues to rise, taxes to increase and public resources are consumed by a state apparatus whose cost far exceeds its developmental or even ornamental value. The tragedy is compounded by a failure to understand that development is not an abstraction of statistics but a concrete reality. A country cannot claim progress while its schools are underfunded, its hospitals ill-equipped, its roads broken, its farmers unsafe, and its industries stifled.
Nor can it claim success when its young people are compelled to seek dignity elsewhere in foreign lands. Development must be measured by whether citizens can live secure, productive and meaningful lives in their own natural environment. On that test, Nigeria has been failing for far too long. One of the most troubling features of the present condition is the normalisation of hardship. Nigerians are rightly admired for their resilience, but resilience must not become an alibi for state failure.
A people cannot be endlessly praised for their endurance and resilience while the structures that impose suffering upon them remain intact. The growing tendency to present hardship as an inevitable by-product of reform risks eroding the legitimacy of governance itself, particularly when the burdens of adjustment fall disproportionately on those least able to bear them and is not shared by the political and bureaucratic classes.
If Nigeria is to be rescued from further decline, the first requirement is honesty and integrity of purpose. The crisis cannot be addressed through sloganeering, propaganda or sentiment peddling. It must be confronted as a structural problem rooted in economic weakness and governance failure. The state must return to its primary responsibility of creating the conditions for security, production, employment and social stability.
Agriculture must be rescued, secured and modernised. Industry must be revived through reliable power, infrastructure and access to finance. Education and healthcare must be treated as strategic investments. Public finance must be treated with prudence, respect and discipline, leakages blocked, and the cost of governance drastically reduced. Above all, leadership must recover a sense of national purpose. A country of Nigeria’s size and significance cannot continue to drift without direction.
There must be a deliberate effort to rebuild trust between state and society and leaders and the led through competence, accountability and a demonstrable commitment to the common good. Citizens are more willing to endure sacrifice when they see discipline and restraint at the top. What destroys confidence is not hardship alone, but the perception of inequality, impunity and indifference among those in authority.
Nigeria is not condemned by fate to be where it is today. It is endangered by choices. Its present condition is neither accidental nor inevitable. It is the result of decisions taken, and decisions avoided, over many years. To reverse this trajectory will require more than policy adjustment. It will demand a reordering of priorities and a renewal of the very idea of the state as an instrument of collective advancement rather than individual enrichment.
The Nigerian people have shown remarkable patience, but patience is not inexhaustible. Nations do not remain indefinitely suspended between promise and disappointment without consequence. The warning signs are already evident. A country that cannot provide economic hope, social justice, security and political confidence, risks losing not only stability, but also its moral centre of gravity.
To run a nation into the ground is a grave historical failure. To recognise the signs and refuse to change course would be graver still. Nigeria must now decide whether it will continue along this path of exhaustion and decline, or summon the courage, discipline and wisdom required to rebuild itself. That choice can no longer be postponed or buried under the noise of politics.
Usman Sarki can be reached via usmansaiki@dailytrust.com