By Msonter Ijoho
The Old Guard: Six Decades, Same Faces, Same old, same old.
One of the most damning indictments of Nigeria’s political evolution is this: for over sixty years, we have been ruled, influenced, recycled, and dictated to by the same political lineage, cloaked in different party names but powered by the same ambition – power without progressive vision.
Since independence in 1960, a recurring cast of characters has gripped the centre of power. Some of them have been military dictators, civilian presidents, party chairmen, governors, or kingmakers – but always, they remain in the shadows or foreground of national leadership.
Let us name some of them.
General Yakubu Gowon ruled as Head of State from 1966 to 1975. Today, nearly 50 years later, he is still on national advisory committees, still speaking, still relevant – but never held to account for his role in policies that shaped the war and its aftermath.
Olusegun Obasanjo first ruled Nigeria as a military leader in 1976, returned as a civilian President in 1999, and continues to dictate the tone of national politics through endorsements and veiled interventions. That’s nearly 50 years of political dominance.
Muhammadu Buhari, who first seized power in 1983 as a military ruler, came back over 30 years later as a democratically elected president in 2015. Nigeria recycled history while pretending it was progress.
Ibrahim Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar may not be on the ballot anymore, but their influence remains potent in the corridors of Northern oligarchy and elite negotiation tables.
Atiku Abubakar, former Vice President (1999–2007), has contested for the presidency six times under different parties. His political career spans nearly four decades – yet he still positions himself as the solution to problems he helped sustain.
Bola Ahmed Tinubu, now President, has wielded immense power since the return to democracy in 1999, as Governor of Lagos, party financier, and kingmaker. He is a symbol of how Nigerian politics rewards longevity over legacy.
This is not mere continuity…, it is a closed circuit of recycled governance, an elite carousel spinning endlessly while the rest of the country waits for crumbs. And it’s not just about individuals, it is about a system that sustains them, an electorate that permits them, and a youth population that disengages and makes room for them.
So, when we complain about bad governance, we must ask: who enabled it? Those who allegedly rigged, or those who refused to register? Those who allegedly bribed, or those who refused to contest?
The apathy of good citizens is the insurance of so called bad politicians.
At the heart of Nigeria’s democratic dysfunction lies a silent but deadly killer – political apathy. It is the quiet shrug of the educated elite, the disinterested silence of the urban youth, the defeated look of the village farmer. It is the cancer of disengagement, and it has metastasized across generations.
Let’s make it plain: political apathy is complicity.
It is not beign eutral. It is not a protest – it is surrender.
When over 70% of our voting population are youths, yet only about 5% of these young people are actively involved in the politics – only a tiny fraction are positioned to show up at primaries or are even registered as party members. We have not just failed to act, we have enabled those who act against us.
The Price of Disinterest:
Apathy is not passive – it’s active. It is a political choice with grave consequences. It is how people without any national progressive agenda get into office. It is how alleged hoodlums and warlords become lawmakers. It is how ignorance passes as governance. And it is why Nigeria, a country with one of the most vibrant, intelligent, and resourceful youth populations in the world, remains stuck in the oven of recycled mediocrity.
We complain so much that politics is dirty, and I ask: Why do we expect clean governance when we’ve abandoned the engine room of democracy? The tragedy of Nigeria is not just in those who allegedly rig elections; it is in those who refuse to contest them. It is in our most brilliant minds deciding that “politics is not for me.” It is in the tech entrepreneur who would rather relocate than mobilize. It is in the graduate who can write a 5,000-word critique of governance but has never attended a single ward meeting. That is the crime. That is the betrayal.
While we chase foreign visas, self-actualization, and “peace of mind,” the power structures remain untouched- they are feeding on the apathy we leave behind. When those with real vision, good intentions and purpose retreat, the manipulators advance and they cover grounds.
The Apathy-Exploitation Nexus:
The political class understands our apathy and exploits it expertly. They know we won’t show up, so they prepare the bags of rice, t-shirts, and cash for the few who will. They don’t need everyone’s vote – just those who are hungry and available. And they know the rest of us will go back online to complain afterward.
They understand that the apathetic citizen is the easiest citizen to govern, or rather, to manipulate. So they invest in our distractions – BBNaija, etc. They amplify ethnic tensions to divide us. They invest in poverty to keep us too hungry to care. And we keep playing into their hands.
Youth Must Declare Political War on Apathy:
We cannot continue to see politics as a dirty game while our lives are dictated by the outcomes of that game. If politics is dirty, then we need clean people with courage and clarity to go in and sanitize it. Not spectators with podcasts, hashtags and slogans.
We must stop treating civic duty as a burden. Voting is the most bare minimum. We must go beyond voting to joining parties, supporting and funding ideologically sound candidates, running for office, mentoring others, and holding leaders to account.
From Passive to Purposeful: The Cure to Apathy:
The cure to political apathy is not just civic education, it is civic agitation. The type that demands more from both self and society. We must change the culture where brilliance is only channeled into academics and not into business and governance. Every community must begin to birth a generation of local politicians with global intelligence.
Let us speak plainly: we either join politics and shape it, or we continue to be shaped—cruelly—by those who do. There is no middle ground. Nigeria’s problem is not just bad leadership; it is the dangerous disengagement of good minds. A country cannot rise beyond the consciousness of its political class, and when its brightest citizens refuse to engage, ignorance and greed take the throne.
What we suffer today in Nigeria is not just political failure, it is a generational betrayal. Not by the leaders alone, but by all of us who knew better, yet chose the safety of distance over the risk of involvement.
We watch the reckless, the corrupt, and the grossly incompetent scramble for elective offices every four years while we groan in our living rooms, churches, mosques, WhatsApp groups, and social media timelines. We insult them, analyze them, but we never replace them. Why? Because we are not in the rooms where decisions are made.
Historical Amnesia and the Cost of Detachment:
The Nigerian independence movement was largely powered by young, educated Africans who were unafraid to wrestle with colonial institutions. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo, Tafawa Balewa, Anthony Enahoro – none of them waited to be invited into politics. They forced their way in, reshaped it, and redefined the future. They understood that if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.
By the time Nigeria attained independence in 1960, the average age of our nationalist heroes was under 40. These were men who knew that politics is not a spectator sport. If you want to see change, you must be willing to enter the arena, sweat, bleed, and earn the right to influence the game.
Contrast that with today’s educated youth – over 60% of the youth population, largely reduced to analysts, online critics, and election-season idealists. We fantasize about utopia while abandoning the trenches to men with no vision beyond their stomachs.
The Problem with Clean Hands and Folded Arms:
There is a convenient lie that politics is too dirty for “decent” people. But this lie has cost us dearly. We forget that corruption doesn’t thrive because the unrighteousness are powerful, it thrives because the righteous are absent. The vacuum we leave is always filled by someone else. And in Nigeria, that vacuum has been filled by characters who thrive in perpetual mediocrity , unchallenged by intellect or ideology.
We cannot keep holding our noses and pretending we are too good for politics. That mentality is self-destructive.
If we want better revolutionary schools, hospitals, roads, justice systems, entrepreneurship opportunities, we must go where those decisions are made. That means joining political parties, contesting positions, influencing policy, and reshaping party ideologies from within. We must not only occupy the streets in protest, we must occupy the parties in strategy.
Enter and Infiltrate: The Power of Strategic Disruption:
Instead of endlessly trying to start new political parties every election season, most of which fizzle out under INEC regulations and financial strain, why don’t we join existing ones and disrupt them from the inside? Every major political shift in the world happened when passionate citizens joined dominant parties and changed their direction.
In the United States, Bernie Sanders did not form a new political party; he took his radical progressivism into the heart of the Democratic Party. In France, Emmanuel Macron disrupted the entire system by building a hybrid movement that united reformists from old institutions. In South Africa, Julius Malema didn’t just leave the ANC – he had first infiltrated its highest youth ranks.
Power is not handed over. It is taken, structured, and sustained. And if young Nigerians are serious about saving this country, we must stop romanticizing politics and start professionalizing our engagement. Change doesn’t begin at Aso Rock. It begins at your ward meeting.
That little room where decisions are made about delegates, primaries, and party structures is where revolutions are seeded. If we ignore that room, then we are by default submitting to those who occupy it. No tweet, TED Talk, or prayer point can substitute for physical presence and political positioning.
We must begin to join political parties, not for decoration, but for disruption. We must rise through their structures systematically, understand their rules, and use our numbers, ideas, and discipline to tilt the scale toward justice. If the party has no ideology, let us build one. If its principles are outdated, let us refine them. If its leadership is flawed, let us challenge and replace them. This is how democracy works, not by wishful thinking, but by intentional engagement.
Enough of the Eloquence Without Action:
If we do not rise now, another cycle of incompetence will soon be legitimized at the ballot. And we will have no moral right to complain. Not because we voted wrongly, but because we refused to even show up.
The future of Nigeria will not be saved by miracles. It will be saved by strategic mobilization, political infiltration, active participattion and policy-driven activism.
Let the youth arise, not with empty slogans, but with electoral cards, party forms, delegate ambitions, and firm ideological convictions.
As Frantz Fanon warned: “Every generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it.”
Let every young person make this a creed:
I will no longer watch from the sidelines.
I will participate. I will engage. I will infiltrate. I will lead.
Because if we do not, the darkness we’re afraid of will not just approach – it will engulf us.
This is our mission. Let us not betray it by waiting for angels to descend, but by rolling up our sleeves and working through flawed systems to build better ones.
The Game Is On – Play or Be Played:
Nigeria is not short of thinkers, dreamers, or talkers. What we are short of is doers in the arena of power. It is no longer enough to “speak truth to power” from a distance – we must now step into power, shape it, refine it, and wield it responsibly.
We must abandon the naive hope that something will change simply because we desire it. Nothing changes unless we change it. We cannot afford the luxury of disinterest anymore. The old guard is counting on our silence, our laziness, and our disconnect. They plan decades ahead while we binge on short-term trends.
Let this be a rallying cry to every Nigerian youth who still believes in a better country: stop waiting for perfect conditions, stop idolizing saviors, stop outsourcing your civic duty. The system is not beyond redemption – it is simply beyond the reach of those who refuse to get involved.
The stakes are high, the time is now, and history is watching.
Join the game or keep getting played.
Hon. (Dr.) Msonter Samuel Ijoho is a business development and agribusiness consultant, a political enthusiast and public affairs commentator. He writes regularly on governance, agribusiness, youth development, and institutional reform in Nigeria.
