Femi Akintunde-Johnson
Aex Otti has said something in Abia that sounds almost subversive in Nigerian politics: “I don’t want to be a godfather.” More unusually, he says that after completing his tenure as governor, he intends to retire from active politics because younger Nigerians should have their turn. He also says he has no interest in the Senate. His larger argument is that once people experience good governance, they should become unwilling to return to the old order. These are certainly worthy sentiments. But Nigeria has heard many worthy sentiments from politicians before. The interesting question is whether we can finally escape the peculiar political culture in which the man who helps you become governor later expects to become the invisible governor.
The Nigerian political godfather is not simply an elder statesman offering advice, an experienced politician mentoring a younger colleague, or a benefactor helping an ambitious aspirant find his feet. There is nothing inherently sinister about any of those things. The trouble begins when political assistance is treated as an investment requiring repayment from the public treasury, when electoral support becomes a private franchise, and when the elected office-holder is expected to remember that although the voters put him in Government House, somebody else believes he owns the key.
That is where the innocent-looking word “godfatherism” acquires its Nigerian sting. The godfather finances the campaign, deploys the political machinery, influences the nomination, helps secure the victory – and then expects the godson to understand that gratitude has a timetable. Appointments must reflect the patron’s interests. Contracts must not forget the benefactor. Political enemies must be dealt with. State resources may acquire new meanings. And the governor, who constitutionally answers to the people, discovers that another person is waiting for his monthly report.
The Fourth Republic has supplied an extraordinary catalogue of such arrangements. In Anambra, the Chris Uba-Chris Ngige saga became perhaps the most dramatic early illustration. Human Rights Watch documented a written agreement in which Ngige was expected to show loyalty to Uba and accept his influence over appointments and contracts. The relationship subsequently collapsed spectacularly; Ngige was abducted in 2003 in an attempt to force him from office, while the state descended into political violence and institutional disorder. The courts eventually overturned Ngige’s election and recognised Peter Obi as the rightful winner. That was not merely a quarrel between two politicians. It was a brutal demonstration of what happens when a private political bargain collides with a public office.
Oyo provided another lesson. Rashidi Ladoja’s relationship with Lamidi Adedibu, once a powerful political patron in Ibadan, deteriorated after Ladoja became governor in 2003. The quarrel culminated in an impeachment by lawmakers loyal to Adedibu in January 2006. Ladoja later returned to office after the courts nullified the impeachment. Again, the political argument was dressed in constitutional clothing, but beneath it lurked the familiar question: who really owned the mandate?
Kwara offered another variation through the long influence of the Saraki political establishment. Lagos subsequently supplied the Bola Tinubu-Akinwunmi Ambode rupture, with the incumbent governor losing his party’s governorship ticket in 2018 after an increasingly public disagreement with the political structure that had brought him to office. Anambra later produced the bitter Peter Obi-Willie Obiano relationship. Kano gave us Rabiu Kwankwaso and Abdullahi Ganduje, once mentor and protégé, eventually occupying opposite political trenches. The names change. The choreography remains remarkably familiar.
And that is the troubling part. Nigeria seems to have perfected a political apprenticeship in which the student is expected eventually to become independent – but preferably not too independent. The godson is encouraged to grow wings, provided he does not actually attempt to fly away from the godfather’s compound.
The damage is more serious than the colourful quarrels suggest. When a governor spends political energy negotiating with the person who helped him into office, governance becomes hostage to an arrangement that was never part of the voter’s contract. Public appointments can become rewards for loyalty rather than instruments of competence. Projects may be abandoned because they belong to the previous political camp. Legislators may become weapons in factional warfare. Party structures become personal machines. And the electorate, which was supposedly sovereign, is left watching politicians fight over possession of the mandate it supposedly gave them.
Recent academic work on Nigeria’s Fourth Republic reaches much the same broad conclusion: patronage and godfatherism can weaken administrative effectiveness, encourage clientelism and distort decision-making when personal loyalty and elite interests displace institutional considerations. The problem, therefore, is not merely that godfathers are powerful. It is that political power becomes personalised, while institutions become progressively less important.
But is this Nigerian wickedness specially manufactured for our peculiar political entertainment? Not entirely.
Patron-client politics is hardly a Nigerian invention. Political patronage, factions, dynasties and political machines have appeared in many societies. The Philippines, for instance, has a long-established tradition of patron-client politics and powerful political families. Research on the country has documented how personal alliances, patronage networks and political dynasties can shape access to office and public resources. Comparative research has also examined patronage systems in Japan, Thailand and other political systems. The difference is not necessarily that other societies have no political godfathers; it is that stronger institutions can sometimes constrain how much personal patronage is allowed to commandeer public authority.
That distinction is crucial. Patronage thrives where institutions are weak, money is disproportionately powerful, political parties are personality-driven and citizens have limited means of enforcing accountability. Nigeria therefore cannot cure godfatherism simply by denouncing godfathers. The soil that produces them must also be examined.
And perhaps the most uncomfortable question is what happens when the godson becomes the godfather.
This is where the Nigerian cycle becomes almost comic, if its consequences were not so expensive. Yesterday’s political victim becomes tomorrow’s political patron. The man who once complained that somebody was controlling him eventually acquires candidates of his own. He discovers that political influence is a wonderful thing when exercised by oneself and an undemocratic abomination when exercised by somebody else.
So Otti’s declaration deserves neither applause nor dismissal. It should be treated as a proposition to be tested by conduct. If he completes his tenure and genuinely withdraws from active politics, declines the temptation to install a successor merely because that successor will remain beholden to him, and allows younger Nigerians to compete on their own merits, then he would have demonstrated something more valuable than a political speech: that power can actually be relinquished.
That is the real test of the godfather. Not whether he can make a governor. But whether, having made one, he can leave the governor alone.
Nigeria has had enough political fathers who confuse mentorship with ownership. What the republic desperately needs are elders who can pass on experience without demanding possession, benefactors who can support candidates without purchasing governments, and politicians mature enough to understand that a democratic mandate is not an IOU.
The voters did not elect anybody’s godson. They elected a governor.