Political inequality in the Nigerian states is not merely a democratic defect; it is a carefully sustained architecture of exclusion, where power circulates within narrow elite corridors while the majority of citizens remain spectators in a republic that claims to be theirs. State politics, in theory the closest tier of governance to the people, has instead become the most aggressively captured. Political offices are monopolized by entrenched networks of godfathers, dynastic families, and transactional financiers who convert elections into auctions and governance into private enterprise. In this system, citizenship confers little more than the right to endure decisions taken elsewhere, by actors insulated from consequence and accountability.
At the core of this inequality lies a grotesque asymmetry of access. Access to party structures, ballot tickets, security agencies, and judicial outcomes is unevenly distributed, favouring wealth, coercive capacity, and ethnic arithmetic over competence or popular legitimacy. This is far from the federal character principles as jobs for instance are given out based on slots to friends, families and political allies.
Even Electoral competition in many states is thus ritualistic rather than real, producing predetermined outcomes that mimic democratic procedure while hollowing out its substance. The ballot becomes symbolic, the voter expendable, and political participation a privilege rationed by money and violence rather than law.
This distortion is reinforced by fiscal and institutional capture at the state level. Governors, operating within weak oversight regimes, often preside over budgets larger than those of some sovereign African states, yet deploy them with monarchical discretion. State assemblies, theoretically coequal, function as appendages; local governments, constitutionally guaranteed, are administratively strangled; and civil society is pacified through patronage or intimidation. Political inequality thus migrates from elections into governance itself, reproducing a cycle where exclusion at the entry point guarantees exclusion in policy outcomes.
The consequences are severe and cumulative. Political inequality translates into spatial inequality, as favuored constituencies receive infrastructure while peripheral communities decay. It morphs into social inequality, as education, healthcare, and security follow political proximity rather than need. Over time, this breeds a sullen citizenship; alienated, cynical, and intermittently explosive where faith in reform erodes and the temptation of extra-institutional resistance grows. In such an environment, instability is not an accident but a predictable byproduct.
To confront political inequality in the Nigerian states requires more than electoral reform rhetoric; it demands a radical rebalancing of power. Party democratization, transparent campaign financing, judicial independence, and the restoration of local government autonomy are not optional reforms but existential necessities. Without them, the Nigerian state system will continue to perform democracy while practicing oligarchy. And a republic that perfects the performance of equality while institutionalizing inequality ultimately courts its own delegitimation.
– Inah Boniface Ocholi writes from Ayah – Igalamela/Odolu LGA, Kogi state.
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