By Carl Obiefuna
For decades, politics in Nigeria has been practised less as an instrument of governance and more as a contest for capture, less about service and more about survival. Power has been pursued not as a means to national development but as an end in itself, often insulated from accountability by ethnicity, propaganda, and patronage.
In this political culture, elections are frequently reduced to rituals stripped of moral meaning, while public office becomes an avenue for private accumulation. Political parties, rather than functioning as vehicles for ideology and policy, have largely operated as transactional platforms, easily abandoned when access to power is threatened. The result is a democracy in form but hollow in substance.
