Once Nigerians move abroad as adults, something funny starts happening.
Three years inside a functioning system and suddenly they become governance philosophers.
You enter a country where institutions were built over 150 years. Courts that work. Police that mostly follow procedure. Tax systems digitized before you finished secondary school. Political parties with deep local chapters. City councils that actually meet. Regulatory agencies that enforce.
System wey you no build.
System wey you did not negotiate.
System wey you did not defend.
You land into the system as a beneficiary. You plug into infrastructure that was fought for, funded, refined, audited and institutionalized over generations. Then you turn around and conclude that it works purely because people “just do the right thing.”
Or better still, you reduce it to: they just work hard. It is all by merit.
No.
It works because there are consequences. It works because there is enforcement. It works because there is structure behind every process.
There is no meritocracy in politics. Zero.
In the United States, both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party have precinct captains down to neighborhood level. Voter files are maintained obsessively. Fundraising is continuous. Primaries are strategic warfare. Coalitions are negotiated years in advance. Courts are prepared for litigation before elections even hold. That is why politics in the U.S is still bi- partisan even in 2026!
That is not merit floating in the air. That is machinery.
In the United Kingdom, the Conservative Party and the Labour Party have constituency associations embedded locally. Candidate selection is not vibes. It is process, vetting, gatekeeping, factional balance.
Again, machinery.
But you relocate and compress all of that into “they are serious people.”
Then you look at Nigeria and say, “Why can’t Nigerians just behave?”
Because Nigeria does not lack hardworking people. Nigeria lacks enforceable systems.
Hard work without structure produces exhaustion.
Hard work inside structure produces outcomes.
You now start saying things like, “I don’t even know how you people deal with the heat.”
After only three winters abroad oga?
As if the sun is the core governance problem.
You survived fuel scarcity. You survived ASUU strikes. You survived NEPA. You survived immigration queues. You survived insecurity. But now your biggest cultural contribution is air-conditioning commentary.
Rellllllaaaaxxxxx.
Living inside a working system does not automatically make you a systems thinker. Benefiting from order is not the same thing as building order.
You did not sit in council meetings.
You did not organize voter registration drives.
You did not fund local candidates.
You did not build civic databases.
You did not negotiate power blocs.
You entered a finished product.
Then you return online and start moralizing to people who are navigating unfinished architecture in Nigeria.
Diaspora Nigerians often assume systems are natural states of society. They are not. They are political achievements. They are products of long-term organization, lobbying, conflict, compromise, enforcement and money.
Money especially.
You cannot outrage your way into institutional reform. You cannot tweet from structured countries and expect structure to magically appear in a place where pipelines of power are fragmented.
Structure is built deliberately. It is defended aggressively. It is funded consistently and also aggressively. Especially aggressively. That is why the U.S has PACS and “cheerful” donors who make elections happen!!
The countries you admire did not “just get serious.” They organized. And spent a ton of money to build structures.
Governance is engineered. Exposure to order is not the same thing as having the discipline, patience and coalition strength required to construct it from scratch or teach it!
By Chioma Amaryllis Ahaghotu
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