Nigeria’s governance crisis and the recolonisation question

BY IMOH UWEM

This question is neither nostalgic nor submissive. It is a lament for a nation whose leaders have made the unimaginable sound possible. When Donald Trump recently threatened to “invade Nigeria,” his crudeness provoked outrage, yet beneath it lay a mirror reflecting a painful truth — a nation so crippled by misrule that even recolonisation can be spoken of without irony.

For more than six decades, “independent” Nigeria has endured governance failure, driven by a political class that inherited a state without embracing stewardship. Frantz Fanon foresaw this tragedy when he warned that “the national bourgeoisie … is devoid of national consciousness.” Chinua Achebe said it bluntly: “The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership.” From military “jackboots” to packaged civilian democracy, leadership remains — in Fela’s words — a “soldier go, soldier come” cycle.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in The Social Contract that “the people, being subject to the laws, ought to be their authors.” Yet the reverse is true in Nigeria, where a handful of greedy cartels drain the nation’s lifeblood. A country rich in resources and talent has become home to some of the world’s poorest people. Citizens, trapped in mental slavery and afflicted by a kind of political Stockholm Syndrome, are fed falsehoods about tribe and faith, defending their oppressors in the name of loyalty. Voltaire’s warning rings prophetic: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

A corrupt elite — suffering from what may be called political ischaemia, a loss of moral and ethical function — has stripped the nation bare. Obsessed with amassing riches for unborn heirs, they ignore the chaos their children will inherit. Their visas are secured; at the first sign of “wahala,” they japa. To preserve power, they dismantle opposition, perfecting divide-and-rule tactics more ruthless than those of the colonial masters.

Since the “Ali Must Go” riots of 1978, Nigeria’s rulers have systematically sabotaged education. As Steve Biko warned, “The greatest weapon in the hand of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” Endless ASUU strikes and obsolete curricula have produced graduates with diminishing critical depth. Some professors, once moral beacons, now aid and abet electoral malpractices, serving the same corrupt politicians who deny them fair pay — proof that intellectual surrender precedes national collapse.

Institutions mirror this decay. Hospitals lack equipment; doctors emigrate in droves. Banks enable corruption through shadow transactions and unrestricted cash flows. Roads crumble, electricity flickers. In many communities, citizens build their own roads, buy transformers, and dig boreholes, while politicians hire touts to extort commuters. Poverty has been weaponised — noodles and a few naira now buy votes. As Thomas Sankara warned, “He who feeds you controls you.”

Meanwhile, the clergy, judiciary, and political class form a new cartel — the PPPJT: Preachers, Politicians, Police, Judiciary, and Traditional Rulers. They speak in many tongues — even “in tongues” — but share one mission: obedience, silence, and control. Through fear, manipulation, and moral decay, they tighten the noose of subjugation. Gustave Le Bon once observed, “The masses have never thirsted for truth … whoever supplies illusions is easily their master.” Nigeria’s rulers understand this too well.

The nation stands on a precipice. As Achebe lamented, “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” Across Africa — from Mobutu’s Congo to Nigeria’s dysfunction — the tragedy remains the same: the betrayal of leadership. It is no wonder that Bruce Gilley’s provocative recolonisation thesis or Trump’s reckless bluster resonates among the disillusioned. The tragedy is not that “outsiders” voice such ideas, but that Nigeria’s failures have made them sound conceivable.

In truth, the world often says what Africans fear to whisper. Trump’s apparent arrogance, stripped of its racism and hyperbole, mirrors a verdict born not of malice but of evidence — that misrule, insecurity, and institutional decay have defined the post-colonial era. Our forefathers used to say that when a stranger tells you your house is on fire, you do not curse him; you fetch water.

Yet salvation cannot come from without. Nigeria, like much of Africa, has lacked revolutionary visionaries — Nkrumah, Rawlings, Sankara, Lumumba, and Traoré — leaders grounded in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s philosophy of decolonising the mind: reclaiming political consciousness, ethical leadership, and institutional integrity. As Bob Marley sang, emancipation begins with freeing oneself from mental slavery.

The path forward lies not in external guardianship but in inner rebirth — a moral and spiritual awakening rooted in justice, accountability, and service rather than greed, exploitation, and control.

“We prefer freedom with poverty to wealth with tyranny.” — Patrice Lumumba.

Imoh Uwem, a red-pilled enlightenment thinker, writes from the House of Exile. He can be contacted via [email protected]