Of Nigeria’s costly, time-wasting performative politics

Of Nigeria’s costly, time-wasting performative politics 15 Apr 2026

On 27 March 2026, Nigeria’s ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), held its national convention to elect party leaders. The event almost shut down the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja. Public servants in the FCT, especially those working in the vicinity of Eagles Square, the venue of the convention, were asked to stay home. Other residents and commuters throughout the business district were trapped in gridlock due to the massive movement of party members. It was a political party festivity. State delegates arrived in beautifully decorated buses and attired in special costumes for the show. 

The APC convention headlines a season of festivities as the other parties, particularly the big opposition parties, size up to match the APC’s carnival. The next day, the PDP mounted its own colourful show, rivalling the APC.

The problem is that the show is not worth it. Politics in Nigeria is expensive because we spend a lot and gain little. Sometimes, we spend a lot and lose a lot. Let us take another look at the convention. The convention was to elect party leaders. The electoral law prescribes that party elections must be either by consensus or through a direct primary election. The election ought to be democratic. Party members who intend to vie for political offices in the party will indicate their interest. Party members decide by voting. The electoral law provides that, where the party wants to elect its candidates by consensus, the aspirants to the offices would sign to step down in favour of one of them. If any aspirants refuse to sign a commitment to a consensus candidate, the election will be by direct primary. This procedure is to ensure internal democracy in the party. 

In the APC and the PDP conventions, none of these happened. We would expect the same for the other parties as they come along. In both conventions, the party’s leadership decides who occupies which office through strategic deal-making. In many instances, the President decides who occupies which offices, and in others, the powerful regional governors anoint candidates. The key point may not be the breach of procedure. The key problem is that the political godfathers spend a lot and go through an expensive rigmarole to do what could be done more simply and efficiently: coronate their favourite candidates.

Everywhere you see the same expensive but meaningless rituals. Democracy in Nigeria, as in many African countries, has turned into a ritual, an empty ritual. Credit to Lant Pritchett, Matt Andrew, and Michael Woolcock for giving us the luminous phrase, ‘isomorphic mimicry’ to explain the true nature of Nigeria’s electoral democracy. It is performative. We import the forms of electoral democracy from elsewhere, but hollow out their essence and context. This is partly a result of legal fetishism; the endless infatuation with enacting more and more laws, amending the electoral law each electoral cycle, but getting worse outcomes; and partly a result of obsession with big leaps, shock therapy. The Nigerian thinking is that we must have more laws, big leaps and discontinuities to maintain the illusion of progress.

But we are not making any progress in democratisation. Since 1999, we have not attained any real landmark of democratisation. In 1999, we had a former military ruler-turned-civilian president who governed with swashbuckling swagger and authoritarian logic, so one could be forgiven for thinking we were still under military rule. Obasanjo made some progress in advancing macroeconomic reforms, leading some to think that an authoritarian regime is a requirement for economic development. This notion of the utility of authoritarianism for economic development was aided by the wrong lessons from Asian economies, particularly Lew Kuan Yew’s Singapore. As President, Goodluck Jonathan was a moderate compared with Obasanjo. He embraced due process, and the result was the first and only instance of a ruling party’s electoral defeat at the national level. Nigerians are fond of noting that as the moment of democratic consolidation. But the truth is that democracy was not consolidated. Power calculus shifted, and an effective conspiracy, leveraging on ethnicity and religion, got Jonathan out of power. 

Electoral democracy in Nigeria has not improved since 1999. Today, Nigeria is rated an ‘electoral autocracy’, according to the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) report, down from a hybrid democracy. The story is that as Nigeria builds a more elaborate electoral system, its democracy declines. Our elections lose their democratic qualities each electoral cycle. The actual elections are undemocratic. The processes leading to them are undemocratic. But the rituals improve, and the regulatory landscape becomes more elaborate. 

The bigger problem is not isomorphic mimicry, where we just import features of a working system with no commitment to work on it. The real problem is that the shows crowd out commitment to other things. We endanger the lives of citizens when we convey them through dilapidated roads to political conventions sans democracy or accountability. The time and money spent on these shows could have been invested in executive and administrative actions that would improve citizens’ lives. At the end, it would be more coherent and prudent to allow a council of elders, howsoever selected, to anoint candidates for elections than to pretend that members of political parties who just registered (or are registered as members) the day before are about to elect their candidates in a direct primary.

The joke is sickening. And it adds to the idea that liberal democracy may not have taken root in West Africa, and that what we see as the decline of democracy in the subcontinent is just the blossoming of the incoherences of ‘isomorphic mimicry’. 

Sam Amadi, PhD, a former Chairman of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, is the Director of Abuja School of Social and Political Thoughts.