There is a brutally efficient African proverb that cuts through political spin faster than a devaluation memo: When the wind blows, the chicken’s anus is exposed.
For two decades, Nigerians were treated to a magnificent political fairy tale. It was packaged in sleek boardroom parlance, cheered on by an army of well-fed surrogates, and set against a backdrop of land-reclaimed beachfronts and extortionate toll gates. We were told to bow before the “Lagos Model” that legendary engine of administrative wizardry. And at the center of this myth sat the supreme architect himself: the “City Boy,” a financial maestro so gifted he could apparently manifest prosperity out of thin air, provided that air was properly taxed by a private consultancy.
The trouble with fairy tales, however, is that they tend to hit a wall when subjected to actual atmospheric pressure.
Running a single state with a captive economy, a guaranteed river of internal revenue, and a legislature so obedient it makes a rubber stamp look like a fiery dissident is a cozy gig. You can play grand strategist when every local critic can be managed, co-opted, or gently nudged out of the frame.
But then the City Boy took his talent show to the national stage. The federal wind blew. And suddenly, the country realized the grand maestro was wearing no clothes just a very expensive, custom-tailored patronage network.
Privatizing the Republic
The fundamental joke the one Nigeria fell for with open eyes is that the “Lagos Model” was never actually about public governance. It was an masterclass in corporate extraction disguised as statecraft.
In the old enclave, “development” meant building things at five times the market rate, quietly funneling public utility into private conduits, and calling it a public-private partnership. It worked splendidly in a closed ecosystem where the middle class was too busy wading through floods to audit the state accounts.
Naturally, transplanting this “magic” to a complex federation of 200 million people went about as smoothly as driving a tricycle onto a runway:
- Voodoo Economics: Shock therapy administered on a whim, entirely unencumbered by secondary thoughts, tertiary planning, or trivial details like “how people will eat.”
- The Nepo-Lagosian Cabinet: Assembling a national brain trust whose primary qualification is thirty years of nodding in unison at private parlors in Bourdillon.
- Spin Doctors in Overdrive: Attempting to put a cheerful PR bow on national starvation, using the same tired media playbook that treated state-level dysfunctions as visionary sacrifices.
The Punchline Nobody Asked For
The late, great Maya Angelou warned us to believe people when they show us who they are the first time. Nigeria didn’t just get a warning; we had a twenty-year pilot episode.
We were shown a system powered by opaque accounts, institutionalized favoritism, and an utterly majestic contempt for the ordinary citizen. Yet, through a mix of collective exhaustion and heavy-handed political engineering, the entire nation was persuaded to sign up for the full-season syndicate.
Now, the punchline has landed, and the audience is too broke to applaud.
Macroeconomics, as it turns out, is terribly impolite. It doesn’t care about political godfathering, it doesn’t bow to local kingmakers, and it refuses to be pacified by aggressive press releases. As the currency executes a historic nose-dive and daily survival becomes an extreme sport, the myth of the political genius has unraveled into pure farce.
The wind isn’t just blowing anymore; it’s a gale-force hurricane. And no amount of slick PR can cover up what is currently sitting out in the open.
Centre for Nigeria Progress 