Nigeria’s 4th Republic: What Is Working, What is Not – And What Must Be Done
By: Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai
Let me first apologize for being physically absent at this important conference.
This is because of a sudden bacterial and viral infection that I had, that was successfully treated last week. However, I was still under observation until Wednesday morning and therefore I missed the opportunity to be on the Egyptair flight to Abuja. I then travelled to Europe with the hope that a friend’s private jet would be available to bring me to Abuja overnight, but this turned out to be unsuccessful. I am speaking to you from Brussels, Belgium where I have some meetings with friends at the European Union headquarters, among other engagements before returning to Nigeria, in sha Allah.
Let me thank the Trust Newspapers for the privilege of being invited to speak at this 23rd Daily Trust Dialogue on Nigeria’s Fourth Republic – what is working and what is not. The theme is timely, not because the Republic is young, but because it has endured long enough to be objectively assessed based on the indices of expectations and outcomes.
Nigeria’s Fourth Republic, now in its 27th year since 1999, represents the longest stretch of civilian rule without a successful military interruption. Our nation has now spent a total of about 37 years years under civilian rule compared with 28 years under military rule since independence in 1960 (Akinrinade, 2003; Suberu, 2013). This political endurance and democratic stability constitute a credit not only to politicians and parties but to the ordinary Nigerian and is indeed a cause for national celebration.
However, as we assess what is working and what is not, we must confront the reality that endurance and stability alone do no equate to societal progress. I will argue that the Fourth Republic has delivered some incremental gains but has been marred by systemic failures that have perpetuated inequality, insecurity, injustice, unethical governance and institutional decay. While democratic longevity matters, it is clear that endurance alone does not guarantee delivery of public services and other democratic dividends to the majority of the people.
As we look forward to the next 27 years, the task before us is to distinguish mere democratic and political survival from actual performance in governance that ensures that basic needs like human security, public education, healthcare, and physical infrastructure are affordable delivered to the silent majority that are the many not the flamboyant, politically-entitled and noisy few.
My remarks would therefore acknowledge the achievements of the Fourth Republic from Obasanjo to the present, along with a candid critique of the failures, and conclude with pathways for political, electoral, economic and governance reforms to ensure that democracy delivers concrete dividends to the majority of Nigerians. I will therefore argue five propositions:
1. The Fourth Republic has recorded real, defensible achievements.
2. In this 27th year, it is a democracy in form, but a federated autocracy in substance.
3. Despite some achievements, it is nevertheless failing in critical, structural and monumental ways.
4. The binding constraint is not democracy itself, but the capability, commitment and competence of politicians and political officeholders, leading to poor state capacity, deficits in accountability, and elevated levels of citizen mistrust.
5. Young Nigerians are losing faith and confidence in democracy due the disconnect between expectations and outcomes, and unless this changes, the Fourth Republic may not survive the collective anger and mobilization of the citizenry against its actors.
What Is Working – Areas of Progress – The Habit of Democracy
1. Civilian Continuity and Constitutional Order
Since 1999, Nigeria has experienced uninterrupted civilian rule, with six general elections and multiple transfers of power, including between political parties (Independent National Electoral Commission [INEC], 1999-2023). Courts sit, legislatures function, and subnational governments seemingly operate across all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory.
Comparatively, this matters. Fewer than half of African countries that transitioned to civilian rule in the 1990s have sustained uninterrupted democratic governance for 25 years (Afrobarometer, 2022). Nigeria has achieved more than 26 years despite the Boko Haram/ISWAP insurgency in he North-East, widespread banditry in the North-West, isolated separatism in the South-East, cultism and oil bunkering in the South-West and Niger Delta, oil price collapses, multiples recessions, and the COVID 19 shock.
The implication here is that military rule appears to have lost legitimacy as a solution to Nigeria’s problems, particularly amongst the older generation that has experienced varieties of military governance.
2. Federal Pluralism
During this last quarter of century, Nigeria remains a functioning – even if a strained- federation. States and local governments employ most of the public servants and deliver the bulk of education and healthcare services (Federal Ministry of Finance; IMF, 2023). State governors remain consequential political actors, enabling subnational experimentations of successes and clear failures of governance.
This pluralism has prevented some degree of political monopoly, even if it has not yet produced optimal governance everywhere. It is clear that the current APC government is determined to disturb this pluralism. Using a combination of carrot (selective and unconstitutional financial transfers to governors and legislators) and stick (threats of arrest and detention by the DSS, EFCC or ICPC), several governors, federal and state legislators, and sundry unemployed politicians have been ‘persuaded’ or more bluntly coerced into joining the 2027 APC re-election project. The gale of defections is nothing more than a survival tool rather than ideological or governance shift.
What Adams Oshiomhole, one time APC national chairman once joked that once you join the APC, your sins are forgiven has very tragically become today’s reality. This tragicomedy was further confirmed by the leaked “Arrest-Detain-Prosecute” directive of Nuhu Ribadu to the task force led by ONSA with the EFCC, ICPC, DSS, NFIU and SEC specifically targeting opposition politicians and plans to cripple any business allegedly linked to any opposition figure.
As expected, the APC federal government denied the existence of the Directive – but most interestingly not by the Presidency through the usual quick-reacting Bayo Onanuga, but by the Honorable Minister of Information himself, days after the leakage of the plan. In the last few months, the bulk of the activities of this task force amounts to nothing more than media trials and publicizing of laughable charges like ‘terrorism financing’ to destroy the reputations of opposition figures and nothing more. The intention of the current APC government is not to have a credible case capable of conviction by an objective tribunal, but the weaponization personally by the NSA, not to fight corruption, but to decimate the resolve to challenge the APC in 2027.
3. Political Competition and Elite Circulation
Elections are generally competitive and coalitions shift across electoral cycles. No party has enjoyed uninterrupted national dominance since 1999. PDP’s dominance lasted for 16 years, and it is clear that the hegemony of the APC will end in 12 years or less, on or before 2027! This distinguishes Nigeria from countries like Uganda, Tanzania, Cameroon, Togo, Benin and Rwanda with dominant party systems.
However, this partisan competition has not yet matured into quality governance and institutional accountability-elite circulation across partisan platforms has sadly outpaced institutional consolidation based on ideology and governance performance.
4. Economic Development, Infrastructure, and Industry
The formulation and implementation of competent fiscal, monetary, industrial and trade policies have led to spurts of economic growth particularly between 2003 and 2008, along with some infrastructural modernization in the roads, railways and aviation sectors. There were high expectations when the fuel subsidy was abolished and exchange rates unified, but other than attain some degree of exchange rate stability and stabilization of foreign reserves, no benefits have accrued to the economy in real terms.
Real sector growth in agriculture and food security was recorded between 2015 and 2023, but this has collapsed with the import of poor-quality grains in a misguided effort to reduce food inflation. Under the industrial policies of 2005, Nigeria has within a decade, became a net exporter of cement, and with the commissioning of the Dangote Refinery and Petrochemicals plant, we are likely to attain national self-sufficiency in refined petroleum products, petrochemicals, and fertilizer, and beyond.
5. Regional Development and Social Gains
Despite national hurdles, some states that are better governed have recorded sustained economic development, attracted investment, and created quality jobs due to relative prosperity over the years. Broader efforts to advance local government autonomy and increased FAAC allocations to states have empowered subnational governance, thus providing opportunities for grassroots development. These are all positive developments in themselves.
These positives, even when qualified as indicated above, demonstrate that the Fourth Republic has laid down a framework for democracy, but often overshadowed by uneven implementation, incompetence of elected and appointed office holders, and elite capture by a reckless and selfish few, to the detriment of the general populace. This is has worsened the struggle for legitimacy in light of the many other aspects of our national life that are clearly not working.
What Is Not Working – Persistent Challenges
1. Governance without Accountability
Nigeria has built the forms of accountability more quickly than the actual outcomes. Our tendency to duplicate institutions in lieu of reforming and revamping them has become a ntional disease. For instance, instead of cleaning up the Police, decentralising its footprints and strengthening it through training, attachments to international organizations and capacity building, we have created expensive parallel institutions like the FRSC, NSCDC, EFCC, ICPC and the like to undertake basic policing functions. While agencies like EFCC announce recoveries running into hundreds of billions of naira from corrupt officials since the mid-2000s (EFCC, 2022; Federal Ministry of Justice, 2021), the lawful administration of these recovered funds is still problematic. And this is why, for too many citizens, probity and accountability still feel selective and episodic.
When accountability is inconsistent, deterrence collapses. Corruption becomes risky for some – the civil servants, negotiable for others – the opposition politicians, and invisible for many – the APC members and decampees. The cost of this failure to apply the laws evenly to everyone and holding every office-holder accountable in a comparable manner is not abstract – it appears in unpaid salaries, trillions of unsettled contractor liabilities, decaying infrastructure, and public cynicism.
2. Centralization without State Capacity – A Failure by Design
Nigeria operates one of the most fiscally centralized systems among federations. Roughly 56% of consolidated public revenue is controlled by the federal government, while states and local governments are constitutionally mandated to deliver most frontline, critical services like basic education, primary healthcare, and rural transportation infrastructure (FAAC; IMF, 2023).
In contrast, federations such as Brazil and India assign clearer subnational responsibility for education and health, matched with financing and accountability (OECD, 2019). In Nigeria, authority, funding, and responsibility are misaligned-blurring accountability, encouraging avoidance of responsibilities, thus encouraging poor governance.
A federal system like in Nigeria that centralizes power but diffuses responsibility does not fail by accident. It fails by design – a design that goes contrary to the consensus of our Founding Fathers in 1954 for Nigeria to be ‘loose federation with strong regions (states) and a weak centre (federal government)’.
Sadly, since the military misadventure of January 1966, this “unitary federalism” has been defended, renewed, and preserved by successive military and civilian administrations. The current APC administration is by far the worst culprit so far in justifying and expanding this failing and authoritarian unitarism.
The APC Committee on True Federalism has in 2017, identified many of the constitutional and statutory amendments needed to take Nigeria back to the ‘Consensus of 1954’, but neither the Buhari nor the Tinubu APC administrations appeared willing to implement its recommendations. This step would have devolved power and responsibility back to the states and local governments in a transparent, coordinated, and non-transactional constitutional framework.
The result is a subsisting governance structure where everyone looks upward to Abuja for financial resources, downwards to the states and local government for excuses of failure, and sideways to insurgency, banditry, and unknown gunmen, that have become someone else to blame other than take responsibility for governance outcomes.
3. Security Crises and the Humanitarian Cost
Insecurity – insurgency in the Northeast, banditry in the Northwest, farmer-herder clashes, and kidnappings – remains rampant, displacing millions and fueling food insecurity for over 33 million Nigerians. Oil theft in the Niger Delta has dropped but persists, costing the nations billions of dollars annually.
Military, Police, and other security agency abuses, including torture and extrajudicial killings, compound the issues, while delays in reforms like enabling state and community policing hinder solutions to human insecurity.
Security is therefore the gravest failure of the Fourth Republic. Despite rising security spending since 2000 (Budget Office of the Federation), the state’s effective monopoly of the use of force has weakened. Terrorists, bandits and separatists contest for control of large swathes of our nation’s territory today. This explains why conflict datasets consistently place Nigeria among the countries with the highest conflict-related fatalities globally in recent years (ACLED, 2023).
When citizens are compelled by state failure to organize their own protection, it is not resilience – it is a vote of no confidence in the state. No Republic can endure when safety and justice become private commodities, available to those who can afford it. When this situation persists, then systemic, unpredictable, and nationwide breakdown is surely just a matter of time, as the social contract is either totally broken or at the least under serious strain.
4. Economic Inequality and Cost of Living Crisis
Nigeria was at some point Africa’s largest economy by GDP, yet over 40% of Nigerians live below the national poverty line (NBS, 2022). Inflation exceeding 20% year-on-year has eroded real incomes (NBS, 2024). As explained earlier, even the attempt to moderate food prices by foolishly importing inferior-quality grains, mostly unfit for human consumption, has made the populace poorer and more miserable by destroying domestic agriculture and thereby decimating rural incomes!
Despite growth, inflation (especially food at over 50%) and poverty have surged, with a fivefold rise in basic food costs since 2019. Reforms like fuel subsidy removal and naira devaluation have exacerbated hardship, leading to protests, business closures, and brain drain. Unemployment, high debt (projected to decline but still burdensome), and unequal resource distribution fuel ethnic, religious and regional tensions.
Economic hardship exists in many democracies. What distinguishes Nigeria is that shocks accumulate without buffers, while unlicensed officials and politicians live extravagantly, displaying sudden, unexplained wealth with impunity and zero consequences. Citizens increasingly perceive the state either as an unlawful tax collector or coercive authority – not as a guarantor of opportunity or security and justice.
5. Law, Justice, and Democratic Erosion
The law must be feared by criminals, not by law-abiding citizens. Yet prolonged pre-trial detention, detention without reasonable cause, consistently delayed investigations, and the feelings of selective prosecution have weakened confidence in the justice system. It is clear to Nigerians that only those in political opposition command the attention of law enforcement agencies, and only visible or vocal opposition leaders are targets of continuous fishing expeditions disguised as ‘corruption’ investigations.
The courts are expected to be the last hope of any person facing selective targeting and persecution, but some of the judges have been so financially compromised that it is impossible for them to dispense justice according to the laws of the land. The courts may sit, but when they are not believed, the Republic as a whole is weakened. This modus operandi of the current APC government has resulted in significant democratic erosion – quiet, procedural, and corrosive.
6. Electoral Integrity and Democratic Quality
While elections occur regularly, malpractice, voter suppression, and low turnout (e.g., 26.72% in 2023) persist, fostering disillusionment. Security compromises during polls, often linked to elite interference and monetary inducement undermine credibility.
Party systems are fluid and personality-driven, leading to weak institutions and frequent defections. This has resulted in a “fragile” democracy marked by authoritarian tendencies and shrinking civic space.
The Independent National Electoral Commission attained the zenith of its integrity and capabilities under the leadership of Professor Attahiru Jega, introducing the biometric voters’ register and the card reader that delivered the credible, and uncontested presidential election of 2015. Sady, it has been downhill for INEC since then. With the crisis of confidence facing its current hand-picked national chairperson, many Nigerians are bracing for the worst election not seen since Maurice Iwu’s disaster of 2007. With senior officials boasting that the election of 2027 is a foregone conclusion, it is imperative that various scenarios be immediately developed in anticipation of a potential national crisis if the worst fears of Nigerians come to pass.
7. Corruption and Governance Failures
Endemic corruption, particularly in petroleum, construction and public sectors, erodes trust. Weak, episodic, and selective anti-corruption enforcement, widespread cronyism and nepotism, and wasteful spending persist, despite promises by successive governments.
Public health and education sectors are underfunded (below 15% Abuja Declaration target for health and 26% UN recommendation for education), leading to poor human capital development outcomes, skills deficits and normalized strikes by health and education sector workers.
It is clear from the foregoing that the constraint to societal progress is neither the constitution nor democracy per se, but weak state capacity, incompetent leadership, low trust, and over politicized institutions.
Elections have moved faster than institutions; politics flourished faster than governance; power has run faster than responsibility. So, what can we do to fix this?
What Must Change — and What Must Stop!
To move beyond survival, the Fourth Republic must henceforth be defined not by how long it has lasted, but by how many lives it has lifted out of poverty and want. Our nation must move from consumption to production, prioritize restructuring for true federalism, and entrench electoral integrity. In more specific terms, these should include, at least, the following:
(1) moving beyond borrowing for recurrent expenditure and emphasizing food security over fiscal and statistical optics.
(2) ensuring we alter the Constitution to have state, local government, and community police,
(3) the transfer of control and licensing of onshore minerals (including oil and gas) back to the state governments, that already control land under the Land Use Act, 1978.
(4) the need to renew and strengthen key institutions through surgical judicial reforms, and non-politicized anti-corruption law enforcement.
(5) Entrenching enhanced electoral integrity by implementing the recommendations of the Uwais Report, including introducing electronic voting, ending ward and LG collation of votes, and encrypted, simultaneous digital transmission of results.
(6) investing in human capital via increased funding for health (to 15%) and education (to 26%), alongside targeted social safety nets to combat poverty.
(7) fostering national unity by addressing ethno-religious tensions through inclusive dialogue, ending the focus on developing Lagos to the exclusion of the rest of Nigeria,
(8) entrenching competent and ethical governance, thus ensuring that democracy serves all Nigerians, not just the political and economic elite, and
(9) Restoring Nigeria’s moral and credible leadership in firstly, our sub-region – the ECOWAS where the bungling of foreign relations by the current APC government has decimated the regional institution. Secondly, be the leader and courageous of Africa and the Black Race in world affairs – a role that most Black people expect us to play.
If we are to reach our manifest destiny, some strategic shifts are necessary — but they must be accompanied by clear red lines.
What must change is deliberately ending and burying the political culture that places primacy on the pursuit of self-interest to one that emphasizes ethical governance and delivery of social services to the majority of the citizenry, thus:
1. From politics of personal interest to pursuit of collective public interest.
2. From personality cults and cabals to teams of equals building institutions that would outlast individual leaders.
3. From centralization of power to devolution of responsibility — aligning authority, resources, and consequences.
4. From elite loyalty to performance legitimacy, where governance outcomes matter more than political or regional alignments.
5. From coercion to legitimacy, because fair systems work better and cost less.
What must stop is the weaponization of security, law enforcement, and the judicial institutions to pursue ‘regime protection’ instead of the ‘preservation of a democratic state’ based on the rule of law. So, the currentAPC administration must stop:
• Selective and episodic enforcement of laws, including attempts to forge enacted laws.
• The arrest of persons without material facts and detaining them before investigation.
• Weaponization of state institutions against political competition and ignoring APC members with worse or similar cases of corruption and the like.
• Governing by emergency and knee jack reactions rather than by laws, rules and institutions.
Conclusion
Nigeria’s Fourth Republic has achieved something valuable: it has bought us time. It is a project, not a finished product. Its longevity is a foundation, but without the bold reforms and initiatives suggested above, it risks becoming a hollow shell.
And longevity must not be confused with legacy. While the “form” of our democracy still functions, the “substance” is failing. We have the architecture of a republic, but the foundation is cracking under the weight of exclusion and economic hardship caused by incompetent and corrupt governance at federal and state levels.
Urgent reset and rethink by the political class is long overdue. The nation stands at a precarious precipice. Politicians and public office holders are increasingly becoming endangered species. We must change or be changed drastically! But history teaches us a hard lesson: when reform is postponed indefinitely, rupture or collapse eventually arrives. The choice before us as politicians is not between stability and reform — it is between reform now, or instability sooner or later.
And we should stop blaming our citizenry. Nigerians do not lack adequate intelligence, insights, resources, or patriotism. What citizens have not seen is the political cost imposed on institutional failure. That cost is now being paid daily by ordinary Nigerians, instead of the politicians that are responsible for most of the systematic failures.
Those in power need to be reminded that while GDP growth rates sound nice, and Fiscal Strategy Papers may bury three rolled over and unimplemented annual budgets, you cannot consolidate a budget on an empty stomach due to diversion of funds to pet projects. This Republic will only endure if the current impossible sociopath-economic situation in our country changes for the better.
As opposition, we are working round the clock to ensure this Fourth Republic not only flourishes, but it does so through reform, renewal, and societal progress. We are not the enemy of the state, we are the conscience of the people. We are the voice of the voiceless, as large portions the media and civil society have been compromised or intimidated into silence.
I therefore appeal to all persons that wish Nigeria well to support those committed to putting our nation back on track. It has clearly derailed hopelessly since 2023. That is the only way the Fourth Republic will survive through reform — not through the inevitable collapse from the weight of its current contradictions.
Thank you. God Bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria!
A Keynote Speech at the 23rd Annual Daily Trust Dialogue, held on Thursday, 22nd January 2026 @ NAF Conference Centre and Suites, Kado, Abuja
