“If you do not take an interest in the affairs of your government, you are doomed to live under the rule of fools.”
In Nigeria, this is not a philosophical warning. It is a daily news bulletin.
The elections of Monday Okpebholo in Edo State and Ahmed Usman Ododo in Kogi State are not isolated democratic mishaps. They are symptoms of a system that thrives on citizen disengagement and elite impunity. When politics becomes something ordinary people “leave to God,” the worst people leave nothing to chance.
Let us be honest: these outcomes were not driven by excellence, vision, or public persuasion. They were driven by machinery—party structures captured by godfathers, security agencies looking the other way, institutions performing obedience rather than duty, and a public so battered by poverty and cynicism that participation feels futile.
That is how fools rise—not because they are brilliant, but because resistance is tired.
At the federal level, the same logic explains the elevation and continued dominance of figures like Senator Godswill Akpabio and Nyesom Wike. These are not men who represent the triumph of ideas or policy depth. They represent the triumph of political survivalism: loyalty to power over principle, spectacle over substance, and noise over nation-building.
Akpabio’s political career is a masterclass in failing upwards—gliding from controversy to promotion with the confidence of someone who knows that consequences are for other people. Wike, on the other hand, embodies the dangerous Nigerian myth that belligerence is strength and that governance is a personal theatre in which institutions exist merely as props.
Yet, these men do not rule alone. They rule because the system permits them to, and because the citizenry has been conditioned to accept dysfunction as normal. We argue over personalities while ignoring processes. We defend our “own” even when they embarrass us. We mistake patronage for performance and confuse intimidation with leadership.
This is what happens when politics is reduced to ethnicity, party colours, and strongman worship. Competence becomes optional. Integrity becomes suspicious. Silence becomes wisdom. And mediocrity, wrapped in arrogance, becomes leadership.
The real scandal is not that such individuals occupy high office. The real scandal is that Nigeria has recalibrated its expectations so low that their presence barely shocks anymore. Elections are won without persuasion. Power is exercised without accountability. Failure is rewarded with new appointments.
Plato’s warning was clear: disinterest in governance does not produce peace or neutrality; it produces domination by the least suitable. Nigeria today is governed not just by bad actors, but by a culture that tolerates them, excuses them, and occasionally celebrates them.
Until Nigerians take governance seriously—beyond elections, beyond social media outrage, beyond ethnic loyalty—the rule of fools will continue to feel inevitable.
And fools, unlike patriots, are very serious about ruling.
Centre for Nigeria Progress 