There is a dangerous lie Nigerians tell themselves every election season: that the country is a democracy in the classical sense of the word. It is not. Elections happen, yes. Ballot papers are printed. Television stations host debates. Politicians crisscross the country in convoys longer than funeral processions for forgotten empires. But beneath the noise sits a far more honest governing philosophy, one captured perfectly in a phrase popularised during the rise of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu: Èmi ló kàn “It is my turn.”
That phrase was not a gaffe. It was not accidental. It was perhaps the most truthful political statement uttered in modern Nigerian politics. Because Nigerian politics is not fundamentally about ideology, policy, or governance. It is about entitlement to power. The contest is not over what should be done with power, but whose turn it is to wield it.
And once you understand that, Nigerian politics suddenly makes perfect sense.
No Nigerian Politician Ever Loses
In functioning democracies, candidates lose elections and return home to write memoirs, teach at universities, or become paid analysts on television. In Nigeria, defeat is treated as an existential injustice. Nobody ever truly loses. Instead, witches intervene. Ethnic conspiracies emerge. The media becomes biased. INEC becomes compromised. Foreign powers interfere. The judiciary is corrupted. Opponents become demons. Even God occasionally gets dragged into post-election excuses.
The one explanation rarely accepted is the simplest one: the people voted against you.
That possibility is considered almost insulting.
The reason is obvious. Nigerian elections are not merely contests for public service. They are contests for survival, immunity, wealth, influence, and access to the state treasury. Victory is not simply political success; it is winning the lottery of life itself.
Lose an election and the full machinery of the state may descend upon you. Win, and you suddenly become untouchable. Contracts appear. Security details multiply. Old sins are forgiven. New mansions emerge from nowhere like mushrooms after rainfall. Friends return. Enemies become loyalists overnight.
The stakes are too high for anybody to lose gracefully.
The Nigerian State as Prize Money
This explains the desperation that defines Nigerian politics. The office is not viewed as administrative stewardship but as conquest. Public office is treated as a private estate acquisition scheme financed by taxpayers.
The winner takes everything.
And the loser fears prison, irrelevance, or political extinction.
So politicians do not campaign as servants seeking consent. They campaign like rival claimants to a throne. Elections become less democratic exercises and more succession battles between elite factions convinced that destiny, tribe, or accumulated political sins entitle them to rule.
This mentality infects every party.
The Opposition Is No Better
Many Nigerians mistakenly assume the opposition represents democratic virtue while the ruling party embodies authoritarian tendencies. In reality, the opposition often mirrors the same culture, only without current access to federal power.
The recent behaviour within opposition circles demonstrates this perfectly. What should have been an opportunity to model internal democracy instead became another theatre of entitlement politics, ego wars, and money-fuelled influence.
The failure of the ADC and broader opposition coalition politics to present a coherent democratic alternative is not accidental. It reflects the same national disease: politics as ownership.
Money talks louder than principles. Unexplained wealth lubricates political ambition. Delegates suddenly discover “conscience” shortly after hotel meetings. Political ideology lasts only until the highest bidder arrives.
Rotimi Amaechi and the Politics of Entitlement
Take Rotimi Amaechi. In his own mind, he appears permanently entitled to power because he possesses what Nigerians call “a strong CV.” Former Speaker. Former governor. Former minister. Long political résumé. Yet Nigerian politics repeatedly demonstrates that a long résumé is not the same thing as democratic legitimacy.
Amaechi embodies a recurring Nigerian political archetype: the accomplished political operator who mistakes accumulated offices for automatic public affection.
His political style often appears combative, abrasive, and insufficiently disciplined. Yet the Nigerian system has historically bent over backwards for him. This is the same judiciary that once performed one of the most extraordinary legal acrobatics in Nigerian history by effectively making him governor after an election he did not personally contest.
Only in Nigeria could jurisprudence become interpretative dance.
Atiku and the Persistence of State-Capture Politics
Then there is Atiku Abubakar, the perpetual presidential candidate of the Fourth Republic.
Atiku represents another dimension of Nigeria’s democratic contradiction: the immense power of accumulated elite wealth. He has contested so many presidential elections that younger Nigerians may reasonably assume contesting is his full-time occupation.
Yet despite repeated failures at the national level, he remains capable of financing another attempt. That endurance is not powered merely by ideology or grassroots enthusiasm. It reflects the enormous influence generated by decades within the machinery of the Nigerian state and its patronage networks.
And what ideological transformation does he offer Nigeria beyond another variation of Èmi ló kàn? What fundamentally distinguishes his political ambition from the entitlement culture consuming the country?
Too often, the answer is unclear.
APC and the Mathematics of the Impossible
Meanwhile, the ruling All Progressives Congress continues to provide Nigerians with unforgettable lessons in political mathematics.
This is the party capable of producing delegate counts that appear to defy arithmetic itself. Nomination contests routinely feature figures that would embarrass secondary school mathematics teachers. Votes are counted at astonishing speeds. Television cameras capture miraculous numerical expansions in real time.
One minute the count appears manageable; the next, numbers begin reproducing like rabbits in a fertility laboratory.
The APC has effectively reinvented “fizzy maths” as a political science discipline.
At times, the party seems to possess more members than actual voters in Nigeria.
And yet the absurdity rarely shocks Nigerians for long because many have accepted the underlying philosophy already: power is not necessarily earned through persuasion but secured through structure, influence, money, and elite bargaining.
Democracy Without Democrats
The tragedy of Nigeria is not merely electoral malpractice. The deeper tragedy is the absence of democratic culture among both rulers and many citizens.
Democracy requires accepting loss. It requires believing opponents have a legitimate right to govern if elected. It requires institutions stronger than personalities. It requires restraint in victory and dignity in defeat.
Nigeria instead operates a political culture where losing is viewed as illegitimate and winning grants near-monarchical authority.
The language changes. The parties change. The alliances change. But the philosophy remains constant:
Èmi ló kàn.
It is my turn.
Not our future.
Not national development.
Not institutional reform.
Just turn-taking among elites feeding from the same exhausted national trough while millions of Nigerians watch from outside the banquet hall, clutching permanent invitations that never seem to grant actual entry.
Perhaps Tinubu’s greatest political contribution was not winning the presidency, but accidentally telling the truth about how the Nigerian political system really works.
Centre for Nigeria Progress 