Every four years, Nigeria’s political class performs the same ritual. A new administration takes office with fanfare, promises, and a mandate to govern. Within months, however, the real business of politics quietly begins: not service delivery, but succession planning. By the time citizens realize it, governance has already taken a back seat to something far more consuming — the fight over who comes next.
This is Nigeria’s “second-tenure cycle,” and it has become one of the most persistent, least examined sources of tension in our political system.
The “Do or Die” Mentality
With most governors, presidents, and lawmakers limited to two terms, the logic of political survival distorts the calendar of governance itself. The first term is spent campaigning for re-election. The second term is spent fighting to install a successor. Genuine policymaking is squeezed into the narrow space left over — if any space is left at all.
By the time an officeholder reaches years five and six, a troubling pattern sets in: projects are abandoned because “the next person may not continue them,” while incoming aspirants promise to cancel the outgoing government’s initiatives simply to appear different. Continuity, the very thing good governance depends on, becomes a casualty of political theatre.
Three Camps, One War
The second term typically fractures into three competing camps, each with its own incentives:
- The incumbent, who wants to control the succession to “protect legacy” and shield themselves from post-office scrutiny by anti-corruption agencies.
- Deputies and senior aides, who feel entitled to the top seat after years of loyal service.
- External aspirants — party elders, godfathers, and new political financiers — who see an opening to install their own preferred candidate.
Blocs begin forming as early as three years before an election, long before ordinary citizens start paying attention. What follows is a slow build-up of suspicion, backroom alliances, and public posturing that consumes the political oxygen of an entire administration.
How the Tension Shows Itself
This succession anxiety rarely stays behind closed doors. It manifests in ways Nigerians have grown wearily familiar with:
Intra-party warfare. Party primaries turn into battlegrounds, complete with thuggery, vote buying, and parallel congresses that produce rival “winners” from the same contest.
Executive-legislature clashes. Lawmakers suddenly discover new appetite for “investigating” the government — often less about oversight and more about weakening a preferred successor.
Zoning and ethnic politics. Debates over “whose turn it is” grow louder, reducing candidate selection to geography and identity rather than competence.
Abuse of state resources. Incumbents lean on government funds and structures to prop up favoured candidates, blurring the line between state and party.
Losers in this contest rarely walk away quietly. They head to the courts or defect to rival parties — which explains the mass defections that have become a fixture of every election cycle across Nigeria’s major parties.
Getting to the Root
Analysts who study Nigeria’s political economy point to deeper structural causes behind this cycle:
Winner-takes-all politics. Losing an election in Nigeria doesn’t just mean losing a seat — it often means losing access to contracts, appointments, and protection. The stakes are existential, not merely electoral.
Weak party institutions. Internal democracy within parties is largely absent. Instead of members and structures deciding candidates, power is often settled in closed-door “Abuja meetings” among a small circle of elites.
Fear of post-tenure prosecution. Many incumbents are driven less by ideology than by self-preservation — the fear that a hostile successor will pursue prosecution once they leave office.
Youth exclusion. Young, capable aspirants are frequently priced out of contention, leaving the field to godfather-backed candidates with access to money and machinery.
What Can Be Done
None of this is unfixable, but it requires deliberate reform across several fronts.
Constitutionally, there is a case for a single, longer term — a proposal for one six-year term instead of two four-year terms — which would remove the re-election pressure that distorts a first term entirely.
Within parties, enforcing genuine internal democracy — direct primaries, transparent and digitized membership rolls — would weaken the grip of godfathers over candidate selection.
At the electoral and security level, INEC and security agencies must more seriously punish vote buying and election-related violence, rather than treating them as routine.
In governance, strengthening the independence of the EFCC and ICPC would reduce incumbents’ fears of politically motivated “vendetta” prosecution — one of the quiet drivers of succession anxiety.
In civic life, youth and women’s coalitions have a role to play in demanding issue-based campaigns rather than accepting anointment as the natural order of politics.
Questions Worth Asking
As Nigeria looks toward its next electoral cycles, these are questions the public, not just the political class, should be debating:
- Does Nigeria need a single six-year term to reduce the desperation that drives succession politics?
- How can political parties manage succession without splintering into warring factions?
- What role should youth and women play in breaking the godfather cycle?
- Should there be a law barring sitting governors or presidents from publicly endorsing successors?
In Conclusion
The second-tenure cycle itself is not the problem. Elections, term limits, and political succession are normal features of any democracy. The real problem is how Nigeria handles power, succession, and accountability once the contest begins.
Losing an election should not amount to political death — and until that reality changes, the outsmarting, the suspicion, and the tension will continue, cycle after cycle, regardless of who occupies the seat.
– Benjamin Ibrahim writes from Lokoja, Kogi state.
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