Opinion: The Story of a Ruling Class – Abdul Mahmud

By Abdul Mahmud

Writing about the Nigerian ruling class often feels like opening an old storehouse to take inventory of what has disappeared. Each visit reveals more empty spaces than the last. What should have been preserved for collective prosperity has quietly vanished. The late Dr. Tunji Braithwaite once described the political predators of our public life as rats and cockroaches, creatures that thrive in darkness and feed on what belongs to others. The metaphor has endured because it captures with unsettling accuracy the long tragedy of a country whose wealth has been steadily consumed by those entrusted with its protection.

To recount the story of Nigeria’s ruling class is therefore not merely to describe a bandit ruling class, it is to narrate the long chronicle of squandered riches, as the late music empress, Onyeka Onwenu famously described it four decades ago.

At independence in 1960, Nigeria stood before the world with a confidence that seemed justified by the scale of its possibilities. It possessed immense agricultural resources, fertile lands that produced cocoa, palm oil, groundnuts and cotton, and energetic citizens who demonstrated considerable intellectual vitality. The early post-colonial imagination believed that Nigeria would soon become a leading force in Africa and perhaps a model for the newly liberated nations of the world. The pride of the black race. The language of that period spoke constantly of prosperity, unity and progress.

The ruling class promised development, industrialisation and the creation of a nation in which the benefits of independence would be shared by all. The decades that followed independence gradually replaced that early optimism with a reality so stark that it now appears almost surreal. Instead of prosperity, Nigeria has witnessed the steady expansion of poverty. Instead of unity, it has endured cycles of ethnic suspicions and violent conflicts. Instead of progress, it has experienced a pattern of underdevelopment so persistent that the country now frequently appears in global statistics not as a symbol of promise but as an illustration of failure. The story of the ruling class is inseparable from this regression.

A few facts capture the scale of the tragedy more clearly than the country’s status as the poverty capital of the world. For a nation blessed with vast natural resources, including some of the largest oil reserves in Africa, this distinction should have been impossible. Yet it is the logical outcome of decades during which public wealth has been diverted away from public purpose. Oil revenues that could have financed modern infrastructure, quality education, and universal healthcare have instead nourished a system of patronage in which political loyalty is rewarded while national development is postponed indefinitely.

One of the most painful features of this story is the collapse of the institutions that should have served as the foundations of national progress. Nigeria’s public education system once produced generations of scholars, professionals and public intellectuals who competed confidently with their peers across the world.

Today, many public schools operate in conditions that would embarrass even the most impoverished nation-states. Classrooms without roofs, or chairs and desks, have become symbols of a country that has been abandoned by those who claim to govern it. While the children of the ruling class attend elite schools abroad, the children of ordinary Nigerians struggle to learn in environments that communicate a single message about their worth, as I wrote in this column a few weeks ago. The same pattern is visible in the country’s healthcare system, where hospitals that should provide basic medical care often lack the most essential equipment.

It is now routine for members of the ruling class to travel abroad for medical treatment; a habit that quietly acknowledges the collapse of the health sector they oversee. This dependence on foreign hospitals is not simply a personal preference, it is an admission that the ruling class has ruined a country it never took seriously in the first place.

Infrastructure provides another chapter in the long narrative of neglect. Roads that connect major cities remain in a state of chronic disrepair. Electricity supply continues to fluctuate with an unpredictability that would be unimaginable in countries with far fewer resources. Businesses that should be engines of economic growth spend enormous sums generating their own power, a burden that discourages investment and stifles innovation. The paradox is difficult to ignore.

Nigeria has spent billions of dollars on electricity generation over several decades, yet millions of citizens still live in darkness. The gap between expenditure and outcome reveals a country where public funds disappear into private accounts with remarkable efficiency. Economic mismanagement has deepened these structural failures.

A country that once sustained vibrant agricultural production now imports large quantities of the food it consumes.

Manufacturing remains weak, unemployment continues to rise and young people increasingly view migration, fashionably dubbed japa, as the most realistic path to dignity. The result is a country in which hope itself has become a scarce resource. Security, which should be the most basic responsibility of any government, has also deteriorated dramatically. Large parts of the country are now under the control of insurgents, bandits and kidnappers. Villages are attacked, communities displaced and lives shattered with disturbing regularity. Ordinary citizens have become casualties in a country that increasingly resembles the theatre of war. The presence of violence in everyday life reveals the depth of the state’s failure to protect those who depend on it.

What makes this history especially troubling is the persistence with which the ruling class refuses to confront its own responsibility. Each election cycle produces fresh promises, new and renewed hope, slogans, and elaborate declarations of reforms while the underlying structures of misrule remain remarkably stable. Power circulates within a narrow circle of political actors who often move from one position to another without ever being held accountable for the consequences of their decisions. The endurance of this state of being has created a peculiar form of political culture in which mediocrity flourishes and excellence is treated as an inconvenience. Loyalty to powerful godfathers frequently matters more than competence. Public office is often regarded less as an opportunity for service than as a gateway to personal enrichment. In such an environment the incentives for genuine reforms are weak, while the rewards for maintaining the status quo remain substantially huge.

Nevertheles, the story of Nigeria cannot end with the failures of its ruling class. The resilience of ordinary citizens continues to challenge the narrative of despair. Across the country individuals and communities persist in creating opportunities where none appear to exist. Entrepreneurs build businesses despite crippling infrastructure. Teachers struggle to educate children in neglected classrooms. Civil society organisations defend democratic values in an environment that frequently discourages dissent. These acts of persistence represent a quiet refusal to surrender the future entirely to those who have mismanaged the present.

The real question that confronts Nigeria today is whether the distance between the aspirations of its citizens and the conduct of its ruling class can continue indefinitely. History suggests that no country can sustain such a contradiction forever. A country cannot remain permanently trapped between enormous potential and relentless disappointment without eventually demanding a different path. The story of Nigeria’s ruling class is therefore more than catalogues of failures. It is a warning about the consequences of power exercised without responsibility and wealth accumulated without accountability. It is also a reminder that the fate of a country ultimately depends not only on those who govern but also on the willingness of citizens to insist on a higher standard of leadership. If the storehouse of our national life still contains anything worth preserving, it will require vigilance, courage and collective determination to protect it from further decay.

The future of Nigeria will depend on whether the country continues to tolerate a bandit ruling class that feeds on its abundance or whether its citizens finally confront the ruling class.

“Total destruction is the only solution”, as Bob Marley famously sang.