The misfortunes of a former minister, a local government party chairman, and a ward official hold a mirror to a nation that builds powerful men instead of working institutions — and inevitably pays the price.
There is an old saying in Nigeria that karma does not send a letter in advance. She arrives, uninvited and unhurried, and presents her bill. Recent events in three corners of this country suggest she is collecting with unusual efficiency.
Consider the case of former Minister of Power, Adebayo Adedibu. In the space of less than two months, he has lost the APC governorship ticket at the primaries and watched members of his own family fall victim to kidnappers. Two body blows, delivered in quick succession, by the very Nigeria he once served from the comfortable heights of ministerial office. The position may have changed; the country, regrettably, has not. Thankfully, the abducted members of his family have now been rescued. While this brings relief and gratitude, the incident is yet another reminder of the painful reality many Nigerians face every day.
Then there is Muhammadu Maibargabe, a former Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Koko/Besse Local Government Area of Kebbi State, who was recently abducted alongside an elderly associate. The timing of his abduction is the kind of detail that would be dismissed as too pointed for fiction: it occurred shortly after he publicly praised the government for its strides in improving security. He had barely left the podium before reality offered its rebuttal. He is still in the kidnappers’ den, begging people to help raise ransom for his release.
Most tragic of all is the story of Mr. Nelson Adepoyigi, former APC Ward 5 Chairman in Ose Local Government Area of Ondo State. He was kidnapped. Ransom negotiations failed. He was killed in his abductors’ den. A man who had worked, organised, canvassed and delivered for his party was, in his most desperate hour, delivered to no one. The machine he had oiled for years did not come for him.
The Architecture of Exposure
These three cases, separated by geography but united by circumstance, illuminate a structural failure that Nigeria has long refused to confront: we have consistently built powerful individuals instead of functional institutions, and we are now watching those individuals discover — too late, and in some cases fatally — that personal power without institutional backing is no protection at all.
In Nigeria, political relevance has historically served as a proxy for personal safety. Access to the Governor’s office, a portfolio, a party chairmanship — these were not merely tokens of ambition. They were, in a deeply practical sense, shields. The policeman who ignored your community’s distress calls would respond quickly to yours. The road that claimed your neighbour’s vehicle would be repaired before your convoy passed. Security, justice, and basic infrastructure were not available to citizens as rights; they were dispensed to political allies as favours.
The arrangement worked, after a fashion, for as long as one remained inside the system. The catastrophic flaw is what happens when one steps outside it, through electoral defeat, loss of patronage, a change of administration, or the simple passage of time. There is no institutional floor to catch the fall. There is only the hard ground that ordinary Nigerians have been landing on for decades.
Institutions Do Not Ask for Your Party Card
This is precisely the value of working institutions: they protect without prejudice. A functional police force does not consult the electoral register before responding to a distress call. An independent judiciary does not adjourn its conscience pending the outcome of a primary election. An effective security architecture does not stand down because the beneficiary has lost ministerial rank or is not a member of the ruling party.
The Kebbi chairman who was abducted hours after praising the government’s security record was not insincere; he was, most likely, describing a reality that had been true for him, as long as he sat within the circle of influence. What he discovered, with dreadful swiftness, is that security which is conditional on proximity to power is not security. It is a temporary exemption. And exemptions, unlike rights, expire.
Mr. Adepoyigi’s death is the starkest illustration of this reality. Party loyalty, years of grassroots service, ward-level sacrifice — none of it constituted a claim on the system when survival was at stake. Because in Nigeria, the system as presently constituted does not recognise claims from ordinary citizens. And when you lose your political standing, you become, irrevocably, an ordinary citizen.
The Responsibility of Those Who Were Inside
There is an uncomfortable question that must accompany any honest sympathy for these victims, and it is this: while they were inside the system, what did they do to change it?
A minister with responsibility for a critical sector of the national economy carries, by virtue of that position, a rare opportunity to advocate for structural reform — not because it is noble, but because it is protective. Every police reform not pursued, every judicial independence not defended, every civic institution allowed to hollow out in favour of personal networks, is a vote for the same insecurity that eventually reaches every door, including one’s own.
This is not to suggest that victims of crime bear responsibility for their victimisation. They do not. But those who hold or have held public office bear a distinct responsibility for the quality of the institutions they administered, influenced or simply tolerated in their current dysfunctional state. Millions of Nigerians have suffered kidnapping, insecurity, and political disenfranchisement without ever having had a ministerial portfolio with which to address it. The difference between them and the former minister is not suffering; it is the prior opportunity to act.
What Those Still Inside Must Understand
So here we are. Former ministers, former chairmen, former powerful men — now queueing in the same suffering that Nigerians have been queueing in for decades. The only difference is that their suffering briefly makes the news.
The real Nigerians? The trader on the Abuja-Kaduna road? The student in the North-East? The fisherman in the riverine communities? They’ve been in this queue since before these men were appointed. Nobody praised the government on their behalf. Nobody wrote a tribute when they were taken.
To every current office holder, party chairman, commissioner, minister, legislator and government appointee reading this: note carefully that the distance between your present position and the position of these men is not as great as it appears. Elections are lost. Administrations change. Patronage networks dissolve overnight. And when that moment comes, you will need the same institutions you currently neglect.
Investing in working institutions is not an act of altruism toward the poor. It is an act of informed self-interest. A police force that is professional, funded, and accountable does not become incompetent the moment you lose your seat. An independent judiciary continues to function in your favour when you are no longer in a position to influence it informally. Well-maintained roads do not discriminate between former and current ministers.
Nigeria’s tragedy is not a shortage of intelligent people. It is a persistent failure to translate individual intelligence into collective institutional investment. We produce brilliant individuals who, once inside power, proceed to dismantle or bypass the very systems that could protect them and their citizens in perpetuity, in favour of personal arrangements that last only as long as their tenure.
It is time for Nigeria to stop building strongmen and start building systems. This is the right thing to do.
