Nigeria is not an accident. It is an order. An order built on inversion. It consumes what it does not produce and produces what it does not consume. It exports crude oil and imports refined fuel. It has vast arable land yet imports food. It trains world-class professionals for Europe and America but fails to support the institutions that educate them. This is not a misfortune. It is a political economy focused on extraction rather than transformation.
A narrow coalition of political elites, senior bureaucrats, rent-seeking contractors, financial intermediaries, and their external partners occupies the core of wealth. Their fortune does not rely on productivity. It relies on access: access to oil rents, public contracts, debt flows, and regulatory flexibility. Production is uncertain. Rent is secure. Industry requires discipline. Rent requires connectivity. So, the system reproduces access, not industry. It prioritizes privilege, not productivity. It emphasizes control, not development.
Factories close while religious complexes grow. When economic structures fail to create jobs and dignity, metaphysical narratives take over. Faith acts as social relief. Miracles substitute for policy. “Breakthrough” replaces industrial strategy. In this context, the line between corruption and spirituality blurs. “Yahoo Plus,” a form of cyber fraud wrapped in spiritual rituals, is not an anomaly; it reflects the cultural reality of elite wealth. At the top, oil rents are seized without production. At the bottom, digital rents are sought without work. Both follow the same logic: wealth without effort, success without productivity. The tragedy is not merely criminality. It is the normalisation of magical accumulation — prosperity theology mixed with occult shortcuts, greed dressed up as destiny.
When society accepts extraction as the norm, morality shifts to fit it. Accumulation becomes entitlement. Work becomes optional. Officials do not just steal; they exist in a system that rewards appropriation. Corruption is not a deviation; it is an incentive. The poor man who steals a goat is jailed to create the appearance of justice. The elites who drain the treasury are shielded to maintain power. Justice exists as a ritual. Impunity exists as a structure.
Nigeria practices electoral rituals without real democracy. Ballots are cast, but outcomes are influenced by money, coercion, patronage, and institutional control. Thugs often matter more than voters. Lawfulness is mocked as weakness; lawlessness is praised as cleverness. This is legitimacy without accountability. The inversion runs deep. A Local Government Chairman may earn more than a professor because a political position is directly linked to rent-seeking behavior; knowledge is not. Universities focus on survival while legislators socialize privilege. The message to society is clear: do not build — attach. The state claims poverty when faced with calls for education and healthcare, yet the cost of governance rises without restraint. Citizens generate their own electricity, drill their own wells, secure their own neighborhoods, and fund their own schools. Nigerians have formed a parallel republic to fill the gaps left by the government.
The state extracts. Society adapts. Security follows the same pattern. When instability feeds contracts, opaque spending, and emergency budgets, insecurity becomes profitable for parts of the ruling group. In such an environment, suspicion of collusion is not paranoia; it is logical. The system persists. Elections happen. Budgets are approved. Speeches increase. But what is maintained is power, not society. Youth unemployment rises. Emigration speeds up. Trust fades. Institutions are weakening. The governing order sustains itself while progressively eroding the foundations of communal life. Thus, “Japa” becomes a rational choice.
It is not betrayal. It is a way out of a system where legality offers no safety and effort guarantees nothing. Nigeria is not chaotically failing. It operates according to a distorted design. Accumulation without production. Spiritualisation of greed. Legitimacy without redistribution. Democracy without citizenship. Control without social renewal. That is the real “Idan.” Not magic. Organised power feeding on chaos.
Adelaja Odutola Odukoya, Department of Political Science, University of Lagos, Nigeria
Email:aodukoya@gmail.edu.ng
