BY ABADOM LAWRENCE AMECHI
PEOPLE elected to provide good governance are increasingly diverting public resources into what they call empowerment—distributing inconsequential gift items to selected individuals, often those who help them mobilise votes, manipulate elections, or sustain their political structures.
The idea of empowerment, as it is practised in our political environment, has become a selective administration of the benefits of democratic leadership. It is increasingly being used as an instrument of political patronage, a form of divide-and-rule governance in which public resources are distributed selectively to political supporters rather than used to provide services and infrastructure for the generality of the people.
When privileged people in government takes public resources and distribute them selectively as political gifts, the citizen is no longer being treated as a rights-bearing participant in a democracy. The citizen is being reduced to a political client whose loyalty must be purchased.
The politics of selective empowerment creates division, deepens hatred and widens inequality. It encourages strife, promotes mistrust and turns governance into a tool for rewarding political loyalty rather than serving the entire population.
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At a time when the cost of living is rising daily and millions of citizens are struggling to survive, what is often presented as empowerment has become a mockery of the difficult realities people face.
Good governance requires more than the distribution of a few items or financial handouts to selected individuals. It requires the provision of public infrastructure and sound economic, social and political policies that create an enabling environment for every citizen to use their skills, time and abilities to provide for themselves and their families.
A government that creates a safe environment, free from insurgent attacks and criminal violence, is empowering its people. A government that allows farmers to go to their farms without fear, traders to move their goods safely from the source to the market, and students to remain in school and study without fear is providing genuine empowerment.
The best form of empowerment people in government can give its citizens is not a temporary gift that disappears after an election. It is an environment in which people can work, create, produce, earn and live with dignity.
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The Western nations from which we borrowed the modern democratic system do not practise democracy this way. I have never seen an American senator or congressman going from community to community sharing bags of rice, burger, noodles, bread, cooking-gas cylinders, pepper-grinding machines or motorcycles as a substitute for governance. Nor do we routinely see members of Parliament in the United Kingdom or South Africa turning public resources into political gifts for selected supporters.
Democracy is not supposed to be a reward system for members of political parties. Everybody cannot belong to a political party, but every eligible adult has the right to participate in democracy by voting. Once elected, a political leader is expected to govern for everyone—not just for party members, campaign loyalists, relatives, friends and political associates.
The resources of government come from tax payers and it belongs to the people. They are supposed to be used to provide good roads, functional schools, quality healthcare, electricity, water, security, employment opportunities and other public infrastructure and services that benefit the wider population.
When privileged people in government takes public resources and distribute them selectively as political gifts, the citizen is no longer being treated as a rights-bearing participant in a democracy. The citizen is being reduced to a political client whose loyalty must be purchased.
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This is one of the reasons our democracy has become increasingly commodified. Political power is no longer simply about ideas, competence, character and the ability to govern. It has become an expensive marketplace where money, influence and political structures often determine who can compete effectively.
And once politics becomes a marketplace, those who have accumulated enormous amounts of questionable wealth gain an advantage over those who depend solely on legitimate income.
This is where the tragedy becomes even deeper. Because some of the people who were once involved in advance-fee fraud—popularly known as 419—drug trafficking, internet fraud, people who had the opportunity to loot our common treasury, and other criminal enterprises have found ways of converting illicit wealth into political influence. The language may have changed, the clothes may have changed, and the environment may have changed, but the underlying principle remains the same: money acquired outside legitimate economic activity is being converted into power.
It did not surprise Nigerians when the late Police Commissioner Fidelis Oyakhilome, the pioneer Chairman of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), warned some years ago that drug dealers would one day take control of our political space, he was speaking from a position of knowledge and experience.
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He understood and was re-echoing something that many people noticed then, but did not know the enormity of the challenge. Once politics becomes commodified, the political space will inevitably become vulnerable to those with enormous financial resources to throw around. At the time Oyakhilome made that observation, drug dealing and advance-fee fraud, popularly known as 419, were among the major avenues through which some individuals accumulated enormous wealth.
A democracy in which public resources are converted into political gifts, elections are treated as commercial transactions and illicit wealth can purchase political influence is gradually destroying the distinction between governance and patronage.
His warning was not merely about drug dealers becoming politicians. It was about the gradual transformation of political power into a marketplace where money, rather than character, competence and integrity, could determine who gains access to power.
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Years later, during the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan, an incident in the Senate appeared to lend weight to the concerns Oyakhilome had raised. A serving Senator and a retired Deputy Inspector General of Police, Nuhu Aliyu Labbo, who represented the Niger North senatorial district stood up in the Senate and, after looking around the chamber, remarked that many of the people sitting there were individuals he had previously interrogated in the course of his police career.
Unfortunately, the late Fidelis Oyakhilome did not name the illicit drug dealers he was referring to, just as DIG Nuhu Aliyu Labbo did not identify some of the people in the Senate at the time whose pasts, according to him, were questionable.
But the truth is that Nigerians are not unaware of the growing influence of people with questionable backgrounds and enormous financial resources in our political space. Some of our political elites have accumulated immense wealth and have turned democracy into a marketplace where political influence, loyalty and even electoral support can be bought and sold.
The consequence is devastating. When political power becomes a commodity, the poor become vulnerable to manipulation. Citizens who should be empowered to make independent political choices are deliberately kept economically weak, making them easier to influence and, ultimately, easier to purchase during elections.
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Today, a bag of 10kg rice, or 100g loaf of bread can buy political loyalty. This is very unfortunate. What it portends is that, so long as poverty continues to rise, we may never be able to get out of the vicious circle of political manipulations by the ruling elites.
The grave danger ahead is that another generation of criminals is already emerging from the forests and other criminal networks, accumulating enormous wealth through kidnapping and other violent crimes. Some of them now have enough money to project themselves into respectable society. They can move around, acquire property, sponsor activities, travel through our airports and, in some cases, reportedly undertake religious pilgrimages.
The danger is not simply that criminals are making money.
The greater danger is that a society that has commodified political power may eventually provide them with a pathway into political leadership.
They have the money. They have the networks. Some have the capacity for violence. If institutions remain weak and elections continue to be treated as commodities that can be bought, what prevents today’s kidnappers from becoming tomorrow’s politicians?
This is why the real battle is not merely about who wins the next election. It is about what kind of political system we are building.
A democracy in which public resources are converted into political gifts, elections are treated as commercial transactions and illicit wealth can purchase political influence is gradually destroying the distinction between governance and patronage.
The ultimate victims are the ordinary citizens.
They receive a bag of rice today but lose a functioning hospital tomorrow. They receive a motorcycle but continue to travel on terrible roads. They receive a small cash gift while their children attend schools without adequate facilities. They receive a grinding machine while electricity remains unavailable to power businesses. That is not empowerment. That is the substitution of charity for governance.
And until Nigerians begin to demand institutions, infrastructure, accountability and equal citizenship instead of political gifts, the cycle will continue—and the criminals of today may very well become the political leaders of tomorrow.
