A classroom is a moral laboratory. When theories taught inside it consistently collapse outside its walls, students do not merely lose interest; they lose trust. Across Nigeria, a quiet academic migration is underway: fewer young people want to study Government and Civic Education, disciplines once regarded as the intellectual spine of citizenship. This is not an accident of curriculum design. It is a reaction to a political environment saturated with falsehood.
The problem confronting civic education in Nigeria is not complexity; it is credibility. Students are asked to memorise democratic ideals while living under leaders who routinely violate them. The contradiction is too glaring to ignore. The result is cynicism; an intellectual immune response to repeated exposure to political deceit.
Political lies in Nigeria are no longer episodic; they are pathological. They recur with such frequency and confidence that truth itself appears optional. Promises are issued like campaign flyers; bright, disposable, and quickly forgotten. For students, this creates a pedagogical paradox: how do you study governance seriously in a society where governance itself feels unserious?
Political philosophy has long warned against this danger. Aristotle understood that politics divorced from truth corrodes both state and citizen:
“The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.”
— Aristotle, Politics
In Nigeria, that multiplication has reached geometric proportions. A small lie during campaigns expands into systemic dishonesty once power is secured. Students watching this pattern do the math quickly. They realise that what civics teaches as principle is often treated in practice as performance.
Civic education thrives on moral coherence. It assumes that leaders, even when flawed, recognise truth as a standard to aspire to. When that assumption collapses, the subject begins to feel like mythology; beautiful stories disconnected from lived reality. Students disengage not because they are ignorant, but because they are observant.
James Madison, one of the principal architects of constitutional democracy, was clear-eyed about the ethical burden of leadership:
“A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or, perhaps both.”
— James Madison
In Nigeria, the farce and the tragedy coexist. Information is abundant but unreliable; speeches are plentiful but unanchored. Young people sense that studying government in such a climate is like learning navigation from captains who consistently run aground.
The classroom, therefore, becomes a theatre of irony. Teachers explain accountability to students who have never seen it enforced. They describe separation of powers in a polity where institutions often bow to personalities. They speak of public service in a landscape littered with private gain. Each lesson becomes an exercise in cognitive dissonance.
Nelson Mandela once captured the moral architecture required for leadership to inspire learning and loyalty:
“What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others.”
— Nelson Mandela
Leadership that makes no positive difference, yet insists on praise, teaches students a dangerous lesson: that power is detached from consequence. In such an environment, civic education loses its aspirational force. Why study the rules of a game when referees rewrite them mid-play?
Metaphorically, Nigeria’s political class has turned governance into a cracked mirror. Students look into it hoping to see the reflection of democratic ideals but encounter distortion instead. Over time, they stop looking altogether. Their withdrawal from civic studies is not apathy; it is protest by silence.
This retreat has grave implications. A society that loses interest in studying its own governance risks producing citizens who neither understand nor defend it. Democracy then becomes hollow, maintained procedurally but abandoned intellectually. When civic curiosity dies, authoritarian habits find fertile ground.
The solution is not to rebrand civic education or simplify textbooks. It is to restore moral hygiene in leadership. Truth must regain its status as political currency. Leaders must understand that every public lie is also an educational act; one that teaches young observers what politics truly rewards.
Until Nigerian leadership aligns rhetoric with reality, Government and Civic Education will continue to bleed relevance. Students will keep running away from teachers, schools and if at all some will choose courses that feel honest about their outcomes. And democracy will continue to suffer a quiet brain drain.
Civic education cannot survive on chalk alone. It needs living examples. Where leaders lie pathologically, classrooms inevitably empty.
– Inah Boniface Ocholi writes from Ayah – Igalamela/Odolu LGA, Kogi state.
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