Viewpoints Africa How institutional failure, corruption, and diplomatic drift are eroding Nigeria’s standing at home and abroad.
Nigeria is governing itself into chaos. What looks like drift is in fact the outcome of choice, democratised incompetence sustained by corruption that is no longer hidden but normalised. The country has politicised everything, including peace, and hollowed out the institutional foundations required for progress. This is not a sudden collapse. It is cumulative failure.
Nations do not fall because they fail to achieve perfection. They fall when they abandon aspiration. Nigeria has done worse than miss its ideals. It has stopped pretending they matter. Planning is treated as optional, foresight as indulgence, and the future as someone else’s problem. The belief that order will emerge from sustained disorder is not hope. It is denial dressed up as patience.
The recent federal budget presented by President Tinubu makes this plain. Presented as a reset, it is instead an exercise in fiscal escapism. Opacity replaces clarity. Priorities blur. Accountability is deferred again. Debt servicing now absorbs most federal revenue, leaving little space for investment or protection. When borrowing exists mainly to service past borrowing, fiscal policy stops being developmental and becomes existential.
Politics reflects the same decay. Multiparty democracy survives largely as form. Opposition exists, but without force. Elections feel managed. Outcomes feel settled in advance. Institutions remain standing, but legitimacy thins with each cycle. It also explains the mass exodus into the ruling party, which has taken on the character of a political pilgrimage, where yesterday’s sins are immaculately forgiven upon arrival. In a system where power guarantees absolution, principle becomes a liability and defection a survival strategy.
The rot extends into the legal system, where justice has become slow, selective, and negotiable. Courts remain open, judgments are delivered, and procedures are observed, yet outcomes inspire little confidence. High profile corruption cases drift for years like abandoned files, injunctions are weaponised as shields for the powerful, and accountability is diluted by delay. The law still speaks, but it speaks in a whisper, not with authority. When legality and justice no longer align, the rule of law becomes theatre rather than restraint. In such conditions, wrongdoing is not deterred. It is merely managed through litigation, and impunity learns to wait.
Daily life absorbs the cost. In Ekiti State, a surgeon accused of removing a patient’s kidney was dismissed amid public outrage. The shock faded quickly into familiarity. Nigeria’s health system has become a site of avoidable harm, underfunded, weakly regulated, and shielded by selective enforcement. Trust has collapsed and has not been rebuilt.
Security follows the pattern. Despite heavy spending, insecurity has spread. Kidnapping is routine. Rural displacement continues. Major roads are no longer assumed safe. Ordinary travel now requires calculation, escorts, or luck. Fear has been normalised. The state’s monopoly on violence has weakened.
This erosion now defines Nigeria’s standing abroad. Recently, Ghana responded firmly after its citizens were mistreated and deported by Israel. Accra acted reciprocally and forced a diplomatic retreat. Respect followed. The lesson was simple. When a nation insists on the path of ignominy, the world honours that choice and treats it accordingly. No country is respected beyond the standards it sets for itself. Nigeria’s contrasting experience, reinforced by an infamous ambassadorial list that prioritised loyalty over competence, signals a state increasingly treated with caution rather than regard. Passports lose power, protests lose urgency, and diplomatic goodwill evaporates when a country appears unwilling to respect itself.
More damaging still is the collapse of identity. Nigeria has lost coherence to the point where even other African states now treat it with suspicion, disdain, or both. Among peers, it is increasingly viewed not as a principled continental anchor but as an unreliable giant, quick to align with French, British, or American interests when incentives align. At best, Nigeria is seen by Western capitals as pliant and predictable. At worst, it forfeits honour on the continent and credibility globally. The world has little regard for a nation whose will is easily bent, negotiated, or outsourced.
Yet Nigeria does not act like a country seeking repair. The ruling class appears invested in the disorder. Chaos enables access to power, patronage, and privilege. Dysfunction becomes an operating system. The mistake is believing collapse discriminates.
It does not. Wealth delays exposure but does not prevent it. When institutions fail, money offers no shelter from breakdown. At that point, distinctions between rulers and ruled become academic.
Nigeria happens to everyone eventually. Some feel it now. Others will later. The remaining question is not whether decline is visible, but whether it will be arrested, or merely managed, until it hardens into destiny.
Abayomi Ojo, Governance and Public Policy Analyst
