The deplorable condition of Muhammad Tambari Model Primary School in Maradun North, Zamfara State, North-West Nigeria, offers a compelling empirical illustration of the Internalised Underdevelopment Theory (IUT) — a conceptual framework developed by Audu Liberty Oseni to explain the psychological, communicative, and structural reproduction of underdevelopment in postcolonial African societies.
At its core, Internalised Underdevelopment Theory argues that prolonged exposure to infrastructural decay, governance inefficiency, and communicative silence gradually conditions both leaders and citizens to normalise dysfunction. Over time, this social conditioning crystallises into an internalised belief system that accommodates failure and rationalises mediocrity. It is a process through which societies begin to perceive underdevelopment not as an aberration to be corrected but as an inevitable feature of their lived reality.
In this light, the sight of children in Zamfara sitting on bare floors beneath collapsing ceilings transcends the semantics of poverty; it signifies a deep-seated cultural adaptation to deprivation. Teachers continue to teach in decrepit classrooms; parents, out of habituation or helplessness, continue to send their children there; and government officials, insulated by bureaucracy, continue to justify institutional neglect. What emerges is not simply infrastructural collapse, but the internalisation of decline — a collective psychological resignation that redefines decay as normalcy.
Field evidence from MonitNG’s reports reveals that despite substantial budgetary allocations and recurrent federal transfers from the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), Zamfara’s educational outcomes remain dismal. The state’s institutions appear trapped in what IUT identifies as the bureaucratic theatre of development — a performative cycle where budgets are announced, committees established, and inspection visits conducted, yet tangible transformation remains elusive. Governance thus becomes an aesthetic performance rather than a functional enterprise.
This phenomenon underscores the communicative dimension of internalised underdevelopment. When the Chairman of the Zamfara State Universal Basic Education Board (ZSUBEB) attributed the absence of desks and chairs to “vandalism” by residents and ordered arrests rather than rehabilitation, he was not merely miscommunicating — he was reproducing the logic of internalised underdevelopment. His statement displaces structural accountability onto the very victims of state neglect, thereby transforming negligence into blame. Within this distorted communicative frame, leadership failure is reinterpreted as civic irresponsibility, reinforcing a governance culture in which appearances substitute for substantive action.
At the community level, IUT reveals an equally profound complicity. Citizens, fatigued by unmet expectations, begin to lower their standards of demand. Parents lament the conditions of their children’s schools but seldom organise sustained advocacy for systemic change. Many have internalised a fatalistic acceptance of state inefficiency, believing that “nothing ever changes.” This quiet endurance — a communicative silence — becomes a psychological mechanism of adaptation to failure. The governed thus participate, albeit unconsciously, in perpetuating the very structures that oppress them.
This cyclical relationship between structural decay and social adaptation lies at the heart of Nigeria’s enduring development crisis. The country’s predicament is not simply economic scarcity but what IUT conceptualises as a saturation of resignation. The persistence of collapsed schools, dysfunctional hospitals, and impassable roads across decades is symptomatic of a deeper epistemic problem: the normalisation of dysfunction as destiny. Citizens adapt to what they should resist, while leaders exploit that adaptation to sustain the status quo.
Breaking this cycle requires more than technocratic reform; it demands a communicative reawakening. Development communication must be consciously deployed to reframe neglect as abnormal, rekindle civic consciousness, and reconstitute the social psychology of accountability. Societies that have internalised failure cannot be transformed merely through infrastructure — they must first be re-socialised to desire and demand development as a moral imperative.
The case of Muhammad Tambari Model Primary School is therefore not an isolated episode but a microcosm of Nigeria’s development paradox — a nation of abundant resources but absent results. The Internalised Underdevelopment Theory exposes that the gravest obstacle to progress is not external dependency or lack of capacity, but the communicative and psychological accommodation of failure.
Until Nigeria collectively unlearns the normalisation of decay and reconstructs a civic culture that equates public neglect with moral deviance, the aspiration for a better society will remain performative rather than transformative.
– Audu Liberty Oseni
Director, Centre for Development Communication libertydgreat@gmail.com
