There is something peculiar about Nigerian government.
It is everywhere, yet nowhere.
It issues pronouncements, launches programmes, commissions projects, publishes budgets, announces reforms and produces an endless supply of political speeches. Ministers hold press conferences. Governors commission flyovers. Presidents announce ambitious economic transformations. Political parties publish manifestos promising a better Nigeria.
Yet, when one asks the most basic question of government, “Where is the data?”, the entire edifice begins to look rather like a mirage in the harmattan.
You can see it from a distance. You can even drive towards it.
But try to touch it and it disappears.
That is why the demand from journalists, researchers and citizens for detailed information about the policies and programmes of political parties is often treated as though it were an exercise in intellectual sophistication. In a functioning democracy, it is not. It is elementary.
A government should know what it is doing because it should know what it has, what it owes, what it earns, what it spends, how many people it employs, what projects it is running and whether those projects are actually producing the promised results.
Nigeria too often appears unable to answer these basic questions with confidence.
And if the state does not know, how can the citizen know?
Government by assertion
The problem is deeper than the familiar complaint that Nigerian governments do not keep proper records.
The problem is that we increasingly govern by assertion rather than evidence.
A politician announces that billions have been spent.
Another politician says billions were inherited.
A government announces that thousands of jobs have been created.
Another administration says the figures are inflated.
A governor claims to have left money in the treasury.
His successor says the treasury was virtually empty.
A minister announces a programme.
Nobody can quite establish how many people benefited from it.
The argument continues on television.
The politicians produce competing numbers.
The public chooses whichever number confirms what it already believes.
And everyone goes home.
That is not data-driven government. It is political karaoke.
The recent dispute over the financial position inherited by the Anambra State Government from Peter Obi illustrates the problem. Obi has referred to money he says he left in government coffers, including a figure of about $154 million. The current administration has disputed the claim or its interpretation.
The important point is not for the citizen to pick a favourite politician and declare him the winner of the argument.
The important question is much simpler:
Where is the authoritative public record that settles the matter?
If the relevant bank statements, audited accounts, treasury records, certificates of balances and other supporting documents are readily available, the argument should be capable of being resolved by evidence.
If they are not, we have a much bigger problem than an argument between Peter Obi and the Anambra Government.
We have a state whose institutional memory is apparently stored in political speeches.
Even debt becomes a moving target
Debt should be one of the easiest things for a modern state to measure.
A country borrows money.
There is a lender.
There is a principal.
There is an interest rate.
There is a maturity date.
There is usually a legal instrument behind the transaction.
There should therefore be an identifiable trail.
Yet public debate about Nigeria’s debt frequently produces competing figures and competing definitions. Federal debt, state debt, guaranteed debt, contingent liabilities, domestic debt, external debt and other obligations can all enter the conversation.
The ordinary citizen is then left attempting to determine what Nigeria actually owes.
The problem is not necessarily that every published figure is wrong. The problem is that the information environment is sufficiently fragmented and opaque that citizens struggle to establish the complete picture.
And that is fatal to serious democratic debate.
A country cannot have an intelligent conversation about taxation, borrowing, infrastructure or social spending if its citizens cannot readily establish the starting numbers.
You cannot build a credible economic plan on an argument about what the balance sheet says.
The balance sheet should end the argument.
The Freedom of Information paradox
Nigeria has a Freedom of Information Act.
In principle, therefore, the citizen possesses a legal route to information held by public institutions.
In practice, obtaining information from government can feel like applying for a visa to another planet.
Ask a ministry for information and the request can disappear into the bureaucratic Bermuda Triangle.
There may be no meaningful acknowledgement.
No timetable.
No substantive response.
No explanation for refusal.
Just silence.
And silence, in government, is remarkably efficient.
It costs nothing and produces no paperwork.
This is particularly damaging because information is not a luxury in a democracy. It is the raw material from which accountability is made.
The citizen cannot scrutinise what the citizen cannot see.
The journalist cannot investigate what the journalist cannot obtain.
The lawyer cannot properly challenge what the state refuses to disclose.
The researcher cannot verify what cannot be independently examined.
The legislature cannot effectively oversee what it cannot reliably measure.
And the electorate cannot properly judge a government whose performance cannot be established.
Even correspondence becomes archaeology
There is another curious feature of Nigerian public administration.
Formal communication from government can sometimes feel like an archaeological artefact.
Ask ordinary Nigerians about formal letters they have received from government and many will recount the experience as though they had encountered an endangered species.
Court papers are different.
Court papers are treated as precious objects.
They arrive in hard copy. They are stamped. They are filed. They acquire dates, numbers and signatures. Lawyers preserve them because the judicial process demands an evidential trail.
The irony is striking.
The Nigerian state is perfectly capable of producing an evidential paper trail when a judge is involved.
Yet the citizen seeking ordinary administrative information can encounter an altogether different state.
This matters because a government that does not communicate properly cannot be properly audited.
Modern government is not merely the exercise of power. It is the maintenance of records.
The ghost-worker problem
Then there are ghost workers.
Every few years, another government discovers them.
They are everywhere.
On payrolls.
In ministries.
In agencies.
In local government.
Sometimes they are supposedly dead.
Sometimes they are supposedly retired.
Sometimes they apparently exist only on paper.
The government announces another verification exercise.
Thousands disappear from the payroll.
The government congratulates itself.
But the same phenomenon returns.
This raises an embarrassingly basic question:
If the government does not know how many people it employs, how does it know how much it should spend on salaries?
More fundamentally, how does it plan?
You cannot sensibly plan education expenditure without knowing how many teachers you employ.
You cannot sensibly plan healthcare without reliable information about health workers.
You cannot reform the civil service without knowing who actually works in it.
You cannot budget accurately if the payroll itself is uncertain.
The ghost-worker saga is therefore not merely a corruption story.
It is a data failure.
The state cannot count its own people.
The manifesto problem
And this brings us back to political parties.
Journalists frequently ask politicians to provide detailed policy programmes.
What exactly will you do?
How much will it cost?
Where will the money come from?
How many people will benefit?
What is the implementation timetable?
What measurable outcome will determine success?
These should be ordinary questions.
Instead, Nigerian political manifestos often resemble Christmas wish lists.
Free education.
Better healthcare.
Millions of jobs.
Industrialisation.
Affordable housing.
Improved infrastructure.
Security.
Food security.
A stronger currency.
A larger economy.
More investment.
Less poverty.
The list can be magnificent.
The spreadsheet is usually less magnificent.
A serious policy programme requires a baseline.
How many people currently have access to the service?
What is the present cost?
What is the gap?
What resources are available?
What will the intervention cost?
What institutional capacity exists?
What are the measurable targets?
Who is responsible?
What happens if the target is missed?
Without those questions, a manifesto is not necessarily a plan.
It is an aspiration wearing a tie.
The missing foundation
This is why Nigeria’s governance problem is more fundamental than corruption, incompetence or even political ideology.
It is the absence of a sufficiently reliable information infrastructure of the state.
Before a government can govern effectively, it must be able to count.
It must know its population.
It must know its workforce.
It must know its assets.
It must know its liabilities.
It must know its revenues.
It must know its expenditure.
It must know its debts.
It must know its projects.
It must know who benefits from those projects.
It must preserve records so that one administration can inherit knowledge rather than begin another round of political archaeology.
And citizens must be able to access enough of that information to hold government accountable.
Otherwise, every new administration enters office with a convenient opportunity to say that the previous administration left behind a disaster.
The previous administration says the opposite.
And the citizen is left standing between two competing narratives, wondering which government account to believe.
The state as a mirage
This is what makes the Nigerian state sometimes resemble a mirage government.
Not because there is literally no government.
There clearly is.
There are ministries, departments, agencies, commissioners, ministers, permanent secretaries, directors, advisers and thousands upon thousands of officials.
The machinery exists.
What is missing is often the reliable information connecting the machinery to reality.
And that produces a peculiar form of government.
A government that announces rather than demonstrates.
A government that promises rather than measures.
A government that spends without always making the evidence easily accessible.
A government that discovers ghost workers without apparently knowing how they got onto the payroll in the first place.
A government that argues about inherited balances because the public record does not decisively settle the question.
A government that publishes budgets while citizens struggle to determine what was actually delivered.
That is not merely an accountability problem.
It is a governing problem.
Democracy needs receipts
The modern state should not require citizens to believe it.
It should provide receipts.
If a government says it borrowed ₦X, there should be a document.
If it says it spent ₦Y, there should be an auditable trail.
If it says it employed 100,000 people, there should be a verifiable payroll.
If it says it built 500 schools, there should be identifiable schools.
If a governor says he inherited $154 million, there should be records capable of establishing what was actually inherited.
If a successor says there was no such balance, there should likewise be records capable of demonstrating that proposition.
The answer should not depend upon which politician speaks more confidently on television.
Government should be evidence with politicians attached, not politicians with evidence occasionally attached.
Until Nigeria develops that culture, political manifestos will continue to be treated as promises rather than plans.
And the citizen will continue to be asked to make a remarkably difficult choice at election time:
Not between two competing programmes supported by reliable data, but between two competing stories about a country whose government cannot always produce the receipts.
That is how a republic becomes a mirage.
You can see the government.
You can hear the government.
You can vote for the government.
But when you ask it to show you the books, the records, the numbers and the evidence, the thing begins to evaporate.
