Special to USAfrica magazine (Houston) and USAfricaonline.com, first African-owned, U.S-based newspaper published on the Internet.
Chudi Okoye, PhD., contributing analyst for USAfricaLive.com, is the Editor of Awka Times
The North-South West duopoly that has governed Nigeria for six decades must be politically defeated for the country to forge ahead.
There may be wondrous beauty and harmony in the heavens when the Sun, Earth, and Moon align in a near-perfect straight line, in what astronomers call a ‘syzygy’, that is, a yoked union of celestial bodies. Yet such alignments often trigger eclipses and tidal upheavals, disrupting earthly equilibrium.
As in the heavens, so in the fractured firmament that is Nigeria. The country remains trapped in the syzygy of its 1914 colonial amalgamation, a yoked union of disparate civilizations in Britain’s northern and southern protectorates. Like celestial bodies locked in a destabilizing orbit, Nigeria’s regions tug at one another in a zero-sum struggle, their gravitational tensions straining the country’s fragile force field. This is a syzygy without synergy; a country crippled by contradictions and hobbled by a pervasive ‘con’ tradition. Just as celestial syzygy causes eclipse and tidal perturbations, so too does this imposed union warp reality, obstruct progress, and stir tides of political turmoil in Nigeria.
If the so-called ‘Pottery Barn rule’ (“you break it, you own it”) means that imperial Britain bears historical blame for the colonial contraption, it follows that the dominant elites in post-independence Nigeria—overwhelmingly from the North and South West regions—must answer for its present malaise. Following Britain’s exit and an initial period of civilian self-rule, Nigeria has been kicked from khaki to kakistocracy: from a failed ‘authoritarian bargain’ under military rule (economic security for limited political rights) to abuse and sustained misrule by a rudderless and utterly incompetent civilian bloc.
Yet, our political discourse too often blames a nebulous ‘military’ or ‘civilian’ governing class (‘the leadership,’ as Chinua Achebe once described them); sometimes the ‘masses’ and even, still, Britain, are inculpated. Such scapegoating is surprising and unwarranted. Elite complicity and opportunism certainly cut across regions; and neither mass apathy nor colonial legacy should be discounted. However, it is specifically elites from the northern and south-western regions that have held sway and are chiefly to blame. The North has neutered the nation; the South West has laid it to waste. For 59 of Nigeria’s 64 years of independence, elites from these regions have dominated the federal government, designing its institutions, shaping the architecture of power, and monopolizing resource flows. These regional power blocs are therefore primarily responsible for the resulting dysfunction, not their imperiled compatriots or imperial ghosts.
This point must be pressed with force and forthrightness, especially as the 2027 presidential election looms. Nigeria’s marginalized groups must begin to brand the North and South West as co-architects of a failing republic, and thus demand a genuine power shift.
An Incompetent Duopoly
The push for power shift by marginalized groups in Nigeria, or rather their yearning for power-sharing, is not new or radical. It has echoed through much of Nigeria’s tortured history, and was crystallized in several constitutional proposals, both colonial and postcolonial. For instance, recommendations for a rotational presidency and related provisions were made in the 1994/95 Constitutional Conference convened by the late General Sani Abacha, the 2005 National Political Reform Conference summoned by President Olusegun Obasanjo, and the 2014 National Conference initiated by President Goodluck Jonathan. Though driven by varying political contexts and motives, these conferences converged on the same imperative: that apex power must rotate across Nigeria’s geopolitical zones to promote inclusion, reduce ethno-regional tensions, and reinforce national cohesion. Yet successive regimes—military and civilian alike—have refused to constitutionalize this principle, leaving it to the vagaries of elite bargains and party traditions.
This persistent agitation, it must be said, is driven less by high-minded ideals of justice than by a visceral craving for sectional access to political goods. Nigeria is a perverted laboratory for Kwame Nkrumah’s well-meaning dictum, itself an adaptation of Jesus’ innocent charge in Matthew 6:33: “Seek ye first the political kingdom, and all else shall be added unto you.” In our culture of distributive politics, the presidency is the grand vault of prebendal patronage and influence. Unsurprisingly, critique of the North and South West’s hegemony often hinges not on competence, but on exclusion.
Yet a more damning argument exists: these ruling blocs have not only monopolized power, they have squandered it. They have presided over the utter ruination of Nigeria, their reign marked by corruption, incompetence, and abject state failure. The demand for a power shift should therefore rest, not merely on the logic of inclusion, compelling though that may be, but also on the empirical record of the duopoly’s abysmal governance.
Let’s peep a little into the arithmetic of the duopoly’s power and underperformance.
Arithmetic of a Failed State
The truth is easy to track. A glance beyond the gloss of Nigerian democracy reveals the dross beneath. A picture of predation emerges, brimming with the brazen details of a duopoly that has turned governance into graft, an extractive industry.
For much of Nigeria’s postcolonial history, following a fleeting period of diffused power under the First Republic’s parliamentary system, two regions—the North and South West—have locked in power with what looks like precision engineering. The North had some heft from the proto-independence period, having been privileged by departing British administrators who trusted the northern oligarchy more than the southern radicals and their rowdy entourage. Even so, other regions also had sway in that era: the East as the North’s central government partner, and the West a feared and formidable opposition. But with the outbreak of the Nigerian Civil War (1967–70), everything changed. The military emerged as a political force. The West went from opposition to governing partner. The East was defenestrated. A duopolistic ruling formation began to take shape, tentative at first but eventually entrenched. It has since become the hegemonic force in Nigeria, controlling the institutions of state, the security apparatus, the treasury, and the commanding heights of the economy.
Let’s pick through some of the startling statistics of hegemony. The North and South West have produced 14 of Nigeria’s 16 heads of government (HoG) since independence, including the First Republic’s prime minister, successive civilian presidents, and a string of military honchos. Together, they account for a staggering 92% of all HoG tenures. The same duopoly has commanded the military’s top brass for an identical 92% of the nation’s postcolonial history. It has also held overwhelming sway at other coercive helms, securing 74% of DSS/SSS leadership tenures since 1976, 77% of police inspector general tenures since 1964, and a full 100% headship of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission since its creation in 2003. To this must be added what has become a fixed tradition across administrations: all key ministerial portfolios are held by the duopoly, with exceptions rare and typically symbolic. The All Progressives Congress (APC) years have ushered in even more brazen levels of tribal nepotism. In all, this is a gripping portrait of dominance, with the levers of executive power and the state’s coercive instruments firmly under duopolistic control.
It doesn’t quite end there. Even in the Central Bank, where meritocratic ideals might suggest more regional diffusion, the duopoly has claimed 55% of all governorship years. But what may appear to be technocratic accommodation of other regions belies a deeper truth: candidates from outside the duopoly may occupy the apex seat, but they invariably serve hegemonic interests. And should they ever forget their place, there is a steep price to pay.
Consider the cautionary case of Godwin Emefiele, where hubris collided with the heuristics of hegemonic power, with tragic consequences. The high-flying banker, a former Zenith Bank CEO once lauded for his technocratic acumen, ascended to the CBN’s top post under a southern president (Jonathan) and was retained by a northern one (Buhari). In his near-decade at the helm, Emefiele became a pliant steward of hegemony, printing money to fund its appetites, implementing controversial currency policies at the presidency’s behest, and was famously photographed bowing before Isa Funtua, a northern powerbroker in Buhari’s cabal. A loyal steward par excellence. Yet when he sprouted wings and dared to seek the presidency, the same system he served so slavishly turned on him with a vengeance: he was suspended, arrested, publicly humiliated, his properties seized, and his reputation left in ruins. He became a cautionary relic of overreach, proof that loyalty is rewarded only as long as it does not threaten the architecture of exclusion.
The structuring of power and obedience under duopolistic rule is deliberate. It is not coincidence; rather choreography. The North and South West do not merely govern; they guard the gates, police dissent, and control the vaults. In Nigeria, hegemony is not just a matter of who sits at the top; it is the architecture of exclusion, engineered and enforced across every commanding height of the state.
Political power, to be legitimate, must be used for public good, especially in a poor country like Nigeria where state power is critical for development. Major theorists of the state, with notable exceptions like Machiavelli, have long agreed on this foundational idea: Jeremy Bentham and J.S. Mill invoked the utilitarian principle of “the greatest happiness of the greatest number”; Thomas Hobbes argued that the state exists to prevent life from being “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”; and Max Weber justified the state’s monopoly on legitimate force by its duty to maintain order and protect citizens.
By any of these basic standards, Nigeria’s duopoly has failed spectacularly, especially when compared to its governing peers in Asia and elsewhere. Its sixty years of rule has left a trail of staggering poverty, economic collapse, systemic corruption, mass insecurity, and a grotesque privatization of public wealth.
The statistics of failure are astounding. I’ll cite only a few, familiar figures. In just the 10 years between 2014 and 2024 with APC as the ruling party, Nigeria’s economy shrank from $568.5 billion in real terms to an estimated $199.7 billion, a percentage decline of 64.9% and CAGR of -9.93%. This means the economy contracted by nearly 10% per year on average over that period, an extraordinary decade-long deterioration. In the same period, GDP per capita plummeted from $3,222 to an estimated $877.
Over two-thirds of Nigerians, about 133 million, now live in extreme hardship or multidimensional poverty. Insecurity is rampant, with kidnapping emerging as a rapid growth industry. A recent report by the government’s own Bureau of Statistics estimated that Nigerians paid ₦2.23 trillion in ransom demands between May 2023 to April 2024, which was President Tinubu’s first year in office. This figure only reflects reported payouts! Many areas of the North, for instance, have become ungovernable, due to the violence of kidnappers, bandits and other non-state actors. Under the ruling duopoly, Nigeria has experienced a decline in human development, with an HDI of 0.539, ranking 163rd globally. Simultaneously, the country has ascended to sixth place in the 2025 Global Terrorism Index, with 565 terrorism-related deaths in 2024, reflecting a deteriorating security landscape. Little wonder foreign investment has dried up, with hundreds of international companies fleeing the country.
This record points not just to incompetence and policy failure; it is stark evidence of a state that has abdicated its foundational duties. The duopoly has not merely failed Nigeria; it has inverted the very logic of the state. It is way past time for change—beginning with a genuine power shift, possibly in the 2027 national election cycle.
Toward a Power Shift
In the aftermath of Nigeria’s 2023 election, many blamed Bola Tinubu’s victory on electoral fraud. Some maintain that view even today, despite court rulings upholding the outcome. I’ve written extensively (see here, here, here, and here, for instance) arguing that while irregularities existed, the opposition’s strategic failings were more decisive. To unseat the APC—a symbol of the entrenched North-South West duopoly—opposition forces must rethink their playbook.
Defeating an incumbent party is rare in Nigeria, but APC did it in 2015 through years of careful preparation. As 2027 approaches, it’s unclear to me if opposition parties have the cohesion or strategic clarity needed for such feat. Power does not yield to moral appeals; it must be contested, coerced, or catalyzed. Nigeria’s marginalized regions—South East, South South, Middle Belt—must shift from lamentation to calculation.
The call for a power shift is not merely a demand for symbolic justice; it is a bid for structural correction. The current distribution of power does not reflect Nigeria’s demographic, intellectual, or economic diversity. The South East, with its entrepreneurial dynamism, remains politically marginalized. The South South, despite being the economic lifeblood of the nation through oil revenues, is institutionally sidelined. The Middle Belt, often the theatre of ethnic and religious conflict, wields little agency.
To force a shift, these regions must first forge a cross-cutting compact—a strategic alignment based on shared interests. Such an alliance could draw inspiration from global examples: the civil rights coalition in 1960s America, the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, or the grassroots revolutions in Eastern Europe. Power structures crack when marginalized blocs unite with a common vision, sustained pressure, and a refusal to remain complicit in their own subjugation.
Tactics must be diversified to achieve the goal, which isn’t merely regime change but systemic renewal. It is to create a polity where legitimacy flows from competence, equity, and inclusion. Without such a recalibration, the 2027 election risks becoming another rerun in Nigeria’s tragic ritual, with the same old kakistocracy reemerging while the nation limps forward, hobbled by its unresolved contradictions.
Nigeria stands at a moment of syzygy as 2027 looms: a rare alignment of crisis and opportunity. Whether this convergence yields a new dawn or yet another eclipse depends on the courage and vision of those determined to break the cycle.
