THE PERMANENT CAMPAIGN: How Elite Politicians Mastered Power But Never Learned to Govern

By Samuel Ashiwel

Nigeria is not a country lacking ideas. It is a country lacking governance. Because we have killed governance and replaced it with permanent politics.

In every serious democracy, politics is seasonal and governance is continuous. You do politics to get power, then you stop politicking and start administering. You plan, you build institutions, you manage resources. In Nigeria, we have inverted the process. We do politics to get power, and then we do more politics to keep power. Governance never starts. The campaign never ends. The country is trapped in an endless election rally while the real work rots. That is why Nigeria moves a lot but never moves forward.

A SYSTEM BUILT FOR SURVIVAL, NOT FOR SERVICE

Our current leadership structure is not designed to administer a country. It is designed to survive politically.

From the ward to the federal level, the question is never "Who is the best administrator?" The question is "Who is the most loyal politician? Who can deliver his polling unit? Who never spoke against the party?" So we have elevated a dangerous breed: the elite politician who has mastered everything about winning elections and knows nothing about running anything.

These men are legends in politics. They know how to build structures, how to negotiate defection, how to mobilize crowds, how to settle delegates, how to turn an opponent into a supporter overnight. But ask for their administrative record — one institution they built, one reform they sustained, one economic model that worked under them — and there is nothing. Thirty years in public life, zero in public service. They are experts in acquiring power and illiterates in using power.

And when you hand a complex nation to men whose only expertise is politics, you should not expect development. You should expect exactly what we have: propaganda in place of policy, and motion in place of movement.

Look at the pattern: Every appointment is a political IOU. A Ministry of Works given not to an engineer or urban planner but to a loyalist who funded the election. A Ministry of Finance given not to an economist but to a political associate who must be "settled." A whole economic team assembled not around competence but around balancing political factions. So the government is full. The cabinet is full. The payroll is full. But the work is empty.

Because a man who bought his way into office with political loyalty cannot manage a budget. He can only share it.

THE THREE CASUALTIES THAT HAVE CRIPPLED US OVER TIME

This permanent politics has not just failed us today. It has accumulated casualties over twenty-four years, and those casualties are why we are where we are.

1. The Death of Planning

Governance thinks in decades. Politics thinks in days.

No serious country develops without a 20 or 30-year plan that outlives any one leader. Singapore had it. Rwanda has it. Even Ghana is building it. Nigeria has none. What we have are slogans that change every four years. One administration says "Renewed Hope," the next will say "Fresh Direction," and all the plans, files, and roadmaps of the previous one are thrown into the dustbin for political reasons.

So we start afresh every four years. Which means we never really start. Projects are initiated not because they fit into a national plan, but because they fit into a political timeline — something to commission before the next election. That is why you see roads hurriedly flagged off three months to an election, and abandoned three months after. There is no master plan, only a campaign plan.

2. The Death of Institutions

Governance needs institutions that are stronger than individuals. Politics needs individuals that are stronger than institutions. Over time, we have systematically weakened our institutions to make them serve politicians. The civil service, which should be the engine room of continuity and expertise, has been turned into an extension of the party secretariat. A director who insists on due process is labelled "saboteur." A permanent secretary who says "this is against procurement law" is posted to a ministry with no portfolio. So everyone learns the new rule: don't follow the book, follow the body language.

Once that happens, institutions collapse. You no longer have a Ministry; you have a man. When that man leaves, the ministry dies with him. Files disappear. Institutional memory is wiped. That is why you can go to some state ministries and find that there is no record of what was done for eight years. Nothing survived except the loyalty of the staff to the former boss.

3. The Death of Continuity and the Rise of the Empty Elite

This is the most dangerous casualty.

Governance builds on what was there before. Politics demolishes what was there before so that it can claim to be building something new. A governor abandons his predecessor's hospital, not because it is a bad hospital, but because completing it will give credit to his predecessor. A president abandons his predecessor's agricultural policy, not because it failed, but because it bears another man's name. So we have a graveyard of abandoned projects across the country — projects that cost billions, that could have saved lives, killed purely by political ego.

And this graveyard has produced a specific class of Nigerian leader: the permanent elite politician. He has been senator, minister, governor, party chieftain. He has been in corridors of power since 1999. His name is everywhere. His face is on every billboard. His political network spans the country. But check his record. Which school did he build that still stands? Which civil service did he reform? Which economy did he grow? What is his signature as an administrator? Nothing. His only achievement is that he has remained relevant in politics.

He can win any election. He cannot run any institution. He can negotiate any defection. He cannot manage any economy. He is a master of the game and a failure at the job.

And because we have rewarded this emptiness for so long, our young people now believe that politics is the career, not administration. They no longer want to learn how to manage; they want to learn how to win. So we are breeding more elite politicians and fewer administrators. More talkers and fewer builders.

WHERE THIS IS TAKING US

If we continue on this path, we are not just heading for bad governance. We are heading for a hollow state — a state that has the full appearance of a democracy with the full absence of governance.

First, citizens will stop seeing themselves as Nigerians and start seeing themselves only as party members. A bad road will be tolerated if it was built by "our party" and a good road will be rejected if it was built by the opposition. That is how a nation fractures.

Second, incompetence will become permanent. When loyalty is the only currency, the most incompetent loyalist will always defeat the most competent outsider. And a country managed by incompetent loyalists will produce only two things: hardship for the people and propaganda to cover it.

Third, governance will become theatre. Because in a permanent campaign, perception is more important than reality. Leaders will invest more in media teams than in technical teams. More money will be spent on defending failure online than on fixing failure offline. You will see commissioning of projects that have not been completed, ribbon-cutting for projects that have already been commissioned, and announcements of investments that never arrive. All performance, no performance.

THE WAY BACK

Nigeria does not need more politics. Nigeria needs to be governed.

We must draw a hard line between party and state. A governor is governor for all citizens, not chairman for his party faithful. Public appointments must return to merit, not as a reward for political foot-soldiering. The civil service must be insulated by law from partisan punishment, so that professionalism can survive.

And we must demand, as citizens, that every government be bound by a long-term development plan that is backed by law, not by slogan. So that no matter who wins, the plan continues. A man can change, but the blueprint must not change.

Until we do that, we will continue to have elections without choices, governments without governance, and elite politicians with no record of administration, men who are famous for winning but have never actually worked. We have had enough politics, It is time to administer a country.