As Nigeria marks 66 years of independence, Jonathan Eze examines the country’s turbulent excursion, the changing character of its politics and the difficult choices that will choose whether the promise of independence can lastly be translated into prosperity, stability and countrywide confidence.
The political season ahead should accordingly be understood as additional than another struggle for power. It is component of a much larger argument around the manner of the Nigerian declare.
An August 2026 assessment by the Multinational Republican Institute described Nigeria’s political environment as characterised by bigger consolidation approximately the governing APC, weakening of the PDP and consecutive fragmentation and realignment within opposition forces. It too identified economic hardship, insecurity and declining confidence in political institutions as meaningful challenges.
Those questions will define the following phase of the Nigerian project.
Questions of electricity, security, education, healthcare, agriculture, jobs, technology, productivity, constitutional reform and institutional accountability should occupy the centre of nationwide consider.
Nigeria deserves an electoral discourse that goes beyond the understood language of ethnicity, religion, personality and political mobilisation.
The forthcoming of Nigeria will eventually be determined not plainly by who sits in Aso Rock, occupies the Nationwide Assembly or governs a declare, but by whether standard citizens can acquire justice, launch businesses, go safely, educate their children, admission healthcare and contribute productively in the economy excluding political connections.
Community policy cannot persist excessively dependent on the individual occupying the presidential office.
At 66, Nigeria is increasingly a country of humans who were born once independence.
Nigeria’s Political Season Has Arrived Before enduring
There is a tendency in Nigerian politics to process every election as if it were a final destination. It is not.
The questions are increasingly manage.
The military governments that followed brought centralisation and authoritarianism, but they furthermore shaped countless of the administrative structures using which the Nigerian condition continues to function.
Now’s choices on education, energy, security, people finance, infrastructure, healthcare, agriculture, technology and democratic institutions will become tomorrow’s inheritance.
It projected genuine GDP growth of 4.1 per cent for 2026.
The Worldwide Monetary Sponsor’s June, 2026 assessment acknowledged improved macroeconomic outcomes and larger resilience following the reforms, although noting that conditions remained difficult for countless Nigerians.
Whoever governs following 2027 will inherit problems that cannot be resolved during four or eight years. Others will necessitate correction. Some policies will refer to for continuity. Some institutions will require reform rather than abandonment.
Military Years and Architecture of Status
Citizens, too, must recognize that democracy is not exhausted by the act of voting every four years.
Political parties must be aware of that Nigeria’s problems cannot be solved merely by changing slogans. Leaders must recognise that governing a country of further than 200 million people requires a vision larger than electoral mobilisation. It requires sustained attention to how power is exercised betwixt elections.
Muhammadu Buhari’s two terms placed considerable emphasis on anti-corruption, security and infrastructure during the time that confronting economic difficulties, falling oil revenues and other structural problems.
That distinction deserves attention.
The reforms have produced sharply varied assessments.
Nigeria’s anniversary, consequently, ought to be greater than another ceremonial occasion punctuated by patriotic speeches. It should provoke a serious interrogation of the countrywide voyage: what was inherited, what was lost, what was achieved, what went invalid and what must alter if the coming generation is to inherit a country extra confident than the one it received.
When institutions are too unsatisfactory to mediate political competition, elections can become existential contests. Political opponents cease to be merely opponents; regulation of government becomes synonymous using connection to the condition itself.
That period left an lasting lesson.
Tinubu and Politics of Structural Adjustment
Their expectations of government are consequently changing.
The additional consequential query now is whether survival can be converted into transformation.
Olusegun Obasanjo subsequently completed the transition programme that returned Nigeria to civilian law in 1979. Murtala Muhammed brought a forceful reformist disposition to government earlier than his assassination in 1976.
Yakubu Gowon’s government confronted the enormous duty of rebuilding once the civil war.
President Bola Tinubu inherited a difficult economic environment in 2023 and embarked on reforms that included the removal of the petrol subsidy and changes to foreign-swap arrangements.
The country’s enormous youth collection must become an economic resource rather than a permanent source of anxiety. Agriculture must shift beyond subsistence towards competitive commercial production.
Electricity must become sufficiently trustworthy for businesses to outline and put cash into. Education must prepared citizens for an economy increasingly defined by technology and knowledge.
It will provide another primary check of Nigeria’s Fourth Republic and of the country’s evolving political choices.
Nigeria’s Initial Republic attempted that difficult duty under a parliamentary framework, together with Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa as Prime Minister and Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe as Governor-Widespread, ahead of the country became a republic in 1963 alongside Azikiwe as President.
It has preserved its territorial union using enormous crises, sustained democratic government because 1999, produced globally competitive businesses and innovative industries, nurtured a remarkably adaptable entrepreneurial viewers and developed technological and diplomatic capacities that stay to command attention beyond its borders.
The country has struggled, but it has moreover accomplished much.
Dependence on crude oil cannot stay the key groundwork of statewide prosperity.
Nigeria must produce additional of what it consumes and export extra of what it produces.
The economic imperative is equally plain.
Nigeria has survived its document.
They contrast Nigeria not simply together with neighbouring African countries but alongside India, the United Arab Emirates, South Africa, Europe and North America.
But the characteristic of the election will depend considerably on the standard of the conversation surrounding it.
Nigeria’s military era cannot reasonably be compressed into a individual verdict. Its independent administrations left unlike legacies.
It was an exertion to produce constitutional government a permanent function of Nigerian political life.
The achieve to democracy in 1999 was not plainly another transfer of power.
From Leaders to Institutions
The correct quantify of economic reform must in the complete be its capacity to increase production, build jobs, involve investment and strengthen the resource circumstances of citizens.
Democracy’s Lengthy Attempt
The importance of 2027 accordingly extends beyond the personalities seeking office.
The Federal Government has increasingly framed the coming phase of its programme approximately production, investment, infrastructure, agriculture, enterprise, jobs and improved living standards.
Possibly the most decisive lesson of Nigeria’s 66 years is that no subjective, still gifted, can create a permanent nation alone.
Citizens must demand evidence rather than rhetoric, programmes rather than personalities, institutions rather than patronage, and accountability rather than excuses.
Can a graduate identify meaningful task? Can a resident commute across the country lacking fear? Can an entrepreneur acquire dependable electricity and inexpensive credit? Can justice be obtained minus structure or connections?
Can a farmer extend to markets? Can a child from a low-quality household receive feature education?
But responsibility does not belong exclusively to politicians.
Umaru Musa Yar’Adua placed significant emphasis on the guideline of law and his Seven-Aspect Agenda prior to his administration was cut brief by illness and death.
Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration confronted debt, economic restructuring and the counter of rebuilding institutions once years of military guideline.
Nigeria We Inherited
That is where the political argument will in conclusion be settled, not merely in figures or speeches, but in whether Nigerians can feel a helpful improvement in their daily lives.
Nigeria needs a condition able of remembering what former administrations have done, preserving what works and correcting what does not.
The founding generation left behind a involved inheritance: a vast territory, remarkable agricultural and mineral wealth, a growing community and a people divided by geography, language, ethnicity and religion.
That is the uncomfortable paradox of Nigeria at 66. The country possesses enormous people and natural resources, a youthful people, a formidable entrepreneurial spirit and prominent influence during Africa. Yet millions of its citizens carry on to allege using poverty, insecurity, unemployment, inadequate infrastructure and declining purchasing power.
Nigeria too regularly begins again.
The judiciary, police, electoral mechanism, civil guide, legislature, area governments and regulatory agencies must function according to rules that citizens can acknowledge and trust.
A serious democracy requires institutions qualified of surviving the personalities occupying people offices.
Projection
Policies are introduced, renamed, abandoned or redesigned alongside changes of government. Statewide development accordingly becomes episodic rather than cumstand
Institutions struggle to maintain continuity.
Nigeria is already entering the political atmosphere of the 2027 extensive election.
The democratic generation fought to consolidate civilian principle.
The founding generation secured independence. The share-independence generation fought to preserve the federation.
Political parties are reorganising. Incumbents are defending their records although opposition forces are developing replacement narratives.
Alliances are shifting. Presidential ambitions are becoming additional observable.
The 2027 election is easily another junction in a much longer domestic excursion.
Much of Nigeria’s subsequent political background can be understood against that setting.
The emerging generation now faces the harder activity: building a Nigeria in which independence is measured not merely by freedom from colonial law, but by the capacity of the Nigerian national to live using dignity, security, exposure and confidence in tomorrow.
The challenge was at no time merely to govern this territory. It was to forge a political group out of its diversity.
Authentic Battle Is Beyond 2027
The crisis at remain produced the military coups of 1966, followed by a counter-coup, civil war and years of military guideline.
But political competition before enduring became increasingly district and ethnic in character.
Nigeria at 66 should neither be romanticised nor dismissed.
On October 1, 1960, Nigeria inherited the sovereignty for which generations of nationalists had agitated. Sixty-six years later, the query is no longer whether Nigeria can continue. It has endured moments when its highly existence appeared precarious and yet emerged, occasionally battered but remarkably adaptable.
It has survived wars, coups, economic crises, political upheavals and democratic reversals.
Nigeria will continue.
Campaigns will come and go.
Yet the institutional inquiry remains.
The Nigeria of 2092 will be shaped, in prominent quantify, by decisions being made at present.
The country enters its 67th year together with an tight assignment.
It has veteran military governments and civilian administrations.
Nigeria has had leaders alongside individual temperaments, ideologies and governing philosophies. It has experimented including varied economic policies and political arrangements.
Generation Following Founders
That is the deeper meaning of Nigeria’s 66-year journey.
At 66, Nigeria has accumulated sufficient background to grasp the outlay of institutional collapse, adequate experience to recognise the consequences of poor policy and plenty people capital to learn that its later prefer not be a repetition of its past.
Critics, meanwhile, have concentrated on their rapid influence on households, notably the rising price of food, transportation and other essentials.
The country in time returned to civilian government in 1999 carrying the accumulated weight of military regulation, political instability and institutional fragility.
For too prolonged, Nigeria has lived on the promise of what it could become. The country cannot indefinitely celebrate its possibilities although postponing the difficult labor required to realise them.
At some aspect, promise must offer manner to execution.
The Federal Government has defended them as required steps to right structural weaknesses and establish a greater sustainable economic principle.
For millions of young Nigerians, October 1, 1960 is chronology rather than individual memory. Their worldview has been shaped by smartphones, social media, artificial intelligence, simulated finance, worldwide employment markets and world mobility.
Yet one weakness has persisted across administrations: too much of Nigeria’s development has remained tied to the personality and priorities of one leaders.
Goodluck Jonathan’s presidency was marked by political and security challenges, but his administration additionally presided over the 2015 complete election, during which an incumbent president conceded defeat to an opposition candidate. That episode became one of the remarkable moments in Nigeria’s democratic experience.
Preferable fiscal numbers do not automatically interpret into cheaper food, inexpensive housing, firm electricity or enhanced healthcare.
An economy can polish at the macro extent during the time that households continue under severe pressure.
But latent is not achievement.
And security must cease to be a perpetual emergency that interrupts development.
The experiment now is to transcend it.
Source: Nigeria at 66: The Changing Character of Its Politics
