Imagine a government losing the confidence of its people over a housing crisis. Now imagine a country where insecurity, hunger, unemployment, poverty and deteriorating infrastructure can persist for years, yet political leaders continue to seek public support for another term.
That contrast raises an uncomfortable question: what exactly has happened to Nigeria’s culture of political accountability?
In Spain, the housing crisis has become a major source of public and political pressure. Citizens are demanding answers over an issue that directly affects their ability to live and plan their lives.
In Nigeria, what will it take?
Must Nigerians be kidnapped before insecurity becomes an unacceptable political issue? Must farmers abandon their farms? Must graduates remain unemployed for years? Must families go to bed hungry? Must parents struggle to keep their children in school? Must Nigerians continue dying from preventable or treatable illnesses?
At what point do these conditions become enough to demand accountability?
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Here, a government can preside over widespread hardship, insecurity, unemployment and infrastructure challenges and still tell citizens that “Nigeria is being fixed.”
Fixed for whom?
That is a question Nigerians must be willing to ask.
If the country is truly being fixed, why are millions of citizens still struggling to survive? Why are some farmers afraid to travel to their farms? Why do Nigerians worry about kidnapping on some roads? Why can many families no longer comfortably afford quality education? Why are young people looking abroad for opportunities?
And why, amid all these challenges, does political competition often appear more focused on retaining power than on improving the conditions of the people?
This is where Nigeria’s accountability crisis becomes particularly troubling.
When failure has no political cost
Failure becomes politically profitable when it carries no consequences.
A politician can spend years in office without delivering meaningful improvements and still return during election season with bags of rice, noodles, bread, small cash gifts and promises.
For a citizen struggling to survive, that immediate assistance can be difficult to reject. The result is a dangerous cycle: short-term relief is exchanged for long-term political loyalty.
A politician gives you ₦10,000 and expects your vote. A bag of rice becomes a campaign strategy. A few food items become a substitute for four years of governance.
But this is not empowerment.
It is a symptom of a political system in which poverty can become an instrument of political mobilisation.
Public resources belong to the people. Public office is not a private business. Politicians are not doing citizens a personal favour when they provide roads, schools, hospitals, security or basic infrastructure.
Those are responsibilities of government.
Yet citizens sometimes celebrate politicians for delivering what should ordinarily be considered basic public services.
We praise. We defend. We fight on social media over politicians who may never know us personally.
Meanwhile, political elites may have access to better schools, healthcare and living conditions than the majority of Nigerians.
The question again is: working for whom?
Nigeria’s problem is accountability
Nigeria’s challenges cannot be reduced to corruption alone. A deeper problem is the absence of consistent consequences for poor governance.
Where there are no consequences, impunity can grow.
Where failure carries little political cost, there is less incentive to improve.
Where corruption is not effectively punished, public office can become vulnerable to abuse.
And where desperate citizens can be persuaded with short-term handouts, politicians may have less incentive to address the structural causes of poverty.
That is how democracy risks becoming an elaborate theatre.
Politicians perform.
Citizens applaud.
Politicians return to power.
And the underlying problems remain.
What Spain’s housing crisis should make us consider
The lesson from Spain is not that the political circumstances of the two countries are identical. They are not.
Rather, it is that citizens can make specific public problems politically consequential when they demand answers from those in power.
Nigeria has its own long list of challenges: insecurity, unemployment, poverty, food insecurity, infrastructure deficits, education pressures and healthcare challenges.
Yet the political conversation can too easily shift from solving these problems to winning the next election.
That should concern every Nigerian, regardless of political affiliation.
We should ask ourselves: What happened to our willingness to demand results?
Have ethnicity, religion and partisan loyalty become so powerful that citizens sometimes defend politicians despite the consequences of government policies on their own lives?
And has economic hardship made citizens more vulnerable to political patronage?
These are difficult questions, but they deserve honest answers.
Poverty must not become an electoral strategy
A hungry population is vulnerable to political manipulation.
Give someone food today and it may become easier to make them forget the structural conditions that contributed to their hardship.
That is the dangerous mathematics of poverty.
A bag of rice cannot rebuild a broken road. A packet of noodles cannot secure a child’s future. A few thousand naira cannot compensate for years of inadequate healthcare, poor education, unemployment or insecurity.
Nigerians therefore need to look beyond what politicians distribute during election season and examine what they actually deliver in office.
Elections should be about records, policies, character, transparency and the capacity to deliver—not simply about slogans, gifts or political machinery.
Citizens should ask:
What has this candidate done?
What does this candidate intend to do?
How will those promises be funded and implemented?
What evidence exists that the proposed policies can work?
And perhaps most importantly:
What happens when the candidate fails to deliver?
Nigerians must demand accountability
Politicians have learnt that public disappointment does not always translate into electoral consequences.
That pattern can change only when citizens become more deliberate about holding public officials accountable.
Nigeria does not belong to politicians.
It belongs to its citizens.
That means citizens have a responsibility to participate beyond election day: to ask questions, scrutinise policies, demand transparency, follow public spending, challenge misinformation and assess political records.
We cannot remain silent because of political intimidation, online attacks or the influence of political godfathers.
Silence will not build our roads.
Silence will not secure our farms.
Silence will not create jobs.
Silence will not educate our children.
Silence will not strengthen our healthcare system.
Accountability requires citizens who are willing to ask difficult questions and insist on answers.
The contrast with Spain should therefore not simply provoke anger. It should provoke reflection.
If citizens can demand political accountability over housing, what mechanisms can Nigerians strengthen to demand accountability over insecurity, poverty, unemployment, education, healthcare and infrastructure?
The answer cannot be left entirely to politicians.
Citizens have a role to play.
Through our voices.
Through our vigilance.
Through civic participation.
And, ultimately, through informed choices at the ballot box.
We must stop treating temporary political generosity as a substitute for effective governance.
Because when a society repeatedly tolerates poor outcomes without demanding accountability, those outcomes can become normalised.
Nigeria deserves better governance.
And Nigerians must demand the transparency, accountability and results they expect from those entrusted with public office.
Written by Festus Edovia, ANIPR, FICM
