What motivates Nigerians living in Nigeria today? It will be interesting to know. What drives Nigerians to patriotism? Could it be the country’s leaders? Or can we say that the institutions through which the people are governed give them reasons to stay motivated and want to embrace patriotism? Look at the Nigeria Police Force. What impressions do people have of that very vital institution of Nigerian society? How do Nigerians perceive the Nigerian Judiciary? Remember, the Judiciary is often referred to as ‘the last hope of the common man’. The two chambers of the Nigerian parliament – the National Assembly are also there as a reflection of the country. The legislature is the first arm of a people’s government, and that is when democracy is taken as ‘the government of the people by the people and for the people.’
This early second quarter of 2026, Nigeria is fervently gearing up for the 2027 general election. The elections are coming in 2027 but the country is currently so fired up that people now think less of 2026 and its other potentials. All the instruments and apparatuses available to the country are currently mobilised towards the coming elections. Think about it and you will see that perhaps, the only source of motivation in the country at the moment is politics, politicking, elections and sundry matters.
Preparations for the next elections have brought the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to the front burner of hot topics in the country. Also, the Chairman of the Electoral Commission, Professor Joash Amupitan, is now a household name. He had his baptism of fire only recently. Quite uncharacteristically, the hitherto (or, should we say otherwise) unknown Professor of Law and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) had to devise means to protect himself when he recently came under hot lava which flowed from that unrestrained volcano called social media.
The volcanic eruptions around his personality and his integrity have now only temporarily stopped. We can all see the path the lava has created. This does not mean that the volcano is no longer active because the path is laced with questions that are still unanswered. Of course it is still very active and is rumbling, and that means that there could be more eruptions. So, the fire around the man at the helm of our ultra-sensitive INEC has only just subsided, it is not extinguished. In fact, it is smouldering, it is angry, it is combustible.
So, imagine how much positive and negative activity we have around a man that heads an institution like INEC. It is simply unhealthy for the job he was appointed to do. Professor Amupitan ordinarily should stand as a model of integrity and veracity, but he has questions dangling around his neutrality. That is a blight on the institution he is heading. It is a detraction from the respect such institutions should enjoy. And this signposts a lack of trust which could trigger voter apathy. Voter apathy signals failure on the part of INEC. But do they care?
Let’s just leave the Judiciary out of today’s discussion. The Judiciary is one institution that has received its share of angry bashing by Nigerians, through the instrumentality of the activities of political parties and politicians. It is even a consideration among millions of keen observers that, in Nigeria, there is no line separating the two arms of government. Some still insist that there is a blurred line of separation among the three arms of government. How blurred or pronounced the lines are has remained a lively and active debate – is there even a line? The conclusion among millions of tired Nigerians is that the third arm of government cannot be disentangled from the Executive because the executive serves as its fingers. So, without the fingers, the arm might just be less than useful.
The Police? That institution, in terms of morals, is currently a ‘no-go area’, apologies to General Ibrahim Babangida. In 1994, General Babangida convened a constitutional conference and gave the conference two areas it could not discuss – unity of Nigeria and the corporate existence of the country. It called those a ‘no-go area’. So, with what he did at that time, Babangida shook hands with a clenched fist, and today, we are still trying to unravel what it means to be a motivated Nigerian. Discussing the Nigeria Police Force which we see and which we read about would be a deliberate plunge into a known crocodile-infested water. So, it is a no-go area for me.
I will leave you, dear reader, to your opinion on the activities of officers and men of the Nigeria Police Force. They are our sons, daughters, brothers, fathers, mothers, friends and associates. The personnel are from the same society like all of us, including that gang among the Police Force whose member, ASP Nuhu Usman, shot a suspect already tied and subdued like a game, in Effurun, Delta State.
The Nigerian Armed Forces as another of our institutions which might also have been a no-go area, but we are in such a situation in which we must keep shouting to be able to get help. However, we might need to look outside the Nigerian Armed Forces to know where the help would come from for beleaguered citizens in various IDP camps scattered around the country. Nigerian soldiers from all the branches of the Armed Forces are doing well on the field, but the Nigerian Armed Forces are not doing well in the offices where decisions on how to tackle the growing insecurity are taken.
Meanwhile, have you noticed the new narrative in government circles about our thriving insecurity? Nigeria’s government officials at various levels have started pushing the description of our security plight as a product of political shenanigans of the opposition to the ruling party. Those who should provide security of life and property have now resorted to blaming opposition politicians as the cause of Nigeria’s insecurity! The condescension is both alarming and disheartening. The Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, said Nigerians are being murdered everywhere, every day as a result of the activities of opposition politicians preparatory to the 2027 elections. Akpabio is the head of that institution which is the bastion of democracy. He said that Nigerian citizens who are daily losing their lives to terrorism and banditry should beg opposition politicians to desist from killing them, rather than turn to the government whose primary responsibility is to provide security.
How is Akpabio’s National Assembly encouraging patriotism? How could Nigerians tap motivation from the kind of things their political leaders say? At the sub-national level, Governor Monday Okpebholo of Edo State has echoed Akpabio. Be assured that that argument of theirs would be the singsong in a matter of weeks. And when this happens, how would the beleaguered people of Eda Oniyo in Ilejemeje Local Government Area of Ekiti State be strengthened? How will other communities in Ekiti State, plagued by insecurity like Oke Ako, Iyemero, Irele, Itapaji and others be motivated as Nigerians? Meanwhile, those seized from their church in Eda Oniyo are still in captivity!
The internally displaced camps in Nigeria are now worse than concentration camps. Amnesty International, as it has always done, called for a look into the condition of those camps and raised fresh issues about the condition of the one in Yipata NYSC Camp in Kwara State. Those in the 300 or so camps are not motivated in any way and might find it hard to embrace patriotism, because they landed in such shelters in the first place because the government failed them.
In these institutions and, from what could be received as information about the country, do we have reasons to stay motivated as Nigerians? What are those things which might attract people from various other corners of the world to come to Nigeria and share in our life? Motivational experts and marketing gurus need to come here and help us. Sam Levenson, at the very beginning of his autobiography ‘Everything But Money’, told what motivated his parents’ migration to the United States. ‘My parents came to America by invitation. Those who had landed here before them sent back picture postcards of a lady called Miss Liberty. Printed on them were these words:
‘Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!’
Who or what can motivate Nigerians now? Football? What, please? Or should Nigerians just look inwards? To find what really? Levenson said his parents were ‘tired, poor, huddled, yearning to be free, wretched, homeless and tempest-tost.’ His parents’ 19th Century is Nigerians’ 21st Century lot. We need motivation, urgently.