By Ezeh Emmanuel Ezeh PhD
The recent fire outbreaks in Lagos that engulfed both Afriland Towers and Emab Plaza are not just tragic accidents. They are brutal metaphors for the collapse of governance in Nigeria. In a country where emergency response is more ceremonial than functional, where fire trucks arrive late or not at all, and where citizens must rescue themselves with ladders and prayers, we are forced to confront the truth: Nigeria is a nation that does not understand process. Worse still, it is led by people who do not even know what process means.
For decades, Nigeria has been governed by two dominant political parties of PDP and APC, otherwise called PDAPC whose legacies are not systems or institutions, but improvisation and chaos. These parties have produced leaders who are bereft of ideas, allergic to structure, and incapable of building anything that lasts beyond their tenure. Governance, for them, is not about creating resilient frameworks that outlive individuals; it is about surviving the moment, patching holes, and hoping the roof doesn’t collapse before the next election cycle. The result is a country where escalators in airports break and remain broken, where public toilets are unusable, where fire outbreaks are mourned but never prevented, where railways may never work, and where process and institution building is a stranger.
The late Dr. Pius Adesanmi once said that a people who cannot maintain public toilets cannot manage a nation-state. It was a harsh truth, but a necessary one. Toilets are not just about hygiene, they are about systems. They require cleaning schedules, maintenance budgets, accountability, and oversight. They are small but powerful indicators of whether a society understands how to manage public goods. Nigeria fails this test spectacularly. And the failure is not just among the people, it is institutional. It is embedded in the DNA of our leadership.
Our leaders do not build processes because they do not understand them. They do not understand that modern governance is not about charisma or slogans. It is about systems that work whether or not the president or governor is awake. They do not understand that fire safety is not about reacting to flames but about preventing them through building codes, inspections, and public education. They do not understand that social services are not favours to be dispensed but rights to be guaranteed through structured delivery mechanisms. Instead, they govern with a mindset of anyhowness, a reckless improvisation that treats every crisis as a surprise and every solution as a temporary fix. This anyhowness is dressed in bloated ego, where personality cults replace leadership and optics and propaganda eclipse substance. The result is a judiciary and national assembly happy to be in the pockets of the executive, the destruction of our electoral system, and the clannish erosion of every institution of governance.
The recent destruction of democratic institutions in Rivers State adds to the long list of overreaches by Tinubu’s APC. He has emerged as the godfather of godfatherism Omnipresent, unrelenting, and willing to dismantle democratic norms to preserve power for his loyalists. It is why the President of a country can mount the rostrum and proudly celebrate the intent to instigate crisis within opposition parties without consequence. It is why Lagos remains largely an ungovernable space despite slush funds in the hands of its political elites. It is why most states in Nigeria cannot boast of pipe-borne water. It is why our national grid keeps collapsing like a man struggling with heartbreak—fragile, erratic, and always on the brink.
This anyhowness is not just incompetence, it is a philosophy. It is the belief that Nigeria can be run without rules, without plans, without continuity. It is the belief that tribalism can replace merit, that patronage can replace policy, and that emotion can replace logic. It is why we build roads that wash away in the first rain, why we commission hospitals without equipment, and why we celebrate the arrival of fire trucks that cannot pump water. It is why installed inverters are catching fire inside multi-billion naira towers. It is why our leaders travel abroad for medical care while our own hospitals rot. It is why we have emergency agencies that cannot respond to emergencies.
The fire outbreaks in Lagos are not isolated incidents. They are the natural outcomes of a system that refuses to be a system. They are the consequences of decades of governance without structure, leadership without vision, and politics without purpose. They are the result of a country that has never taken process seriously, and of leaders who do not even know how to begin.
And yet, the tragedy is not just in the fires—it is in the silence that follows. There will be no national reckoning, no overhaul of emergency services, no investment in fire safety infrastructure. There will be condolences, hashtags, and maybe a few arrests. Frontline religious leaders will tell us it is God’s will and offer mournful prayers. But there will be no process. Because our leaders do not know how to build one. They do not know how to create systems that work. They do not know how to govern beyond the optics. This is also partly due to our broken leadership recruitment processes.
Nigeria does not lack talent. It lacks process. It lacks leaders who understand that governance is a science, not a spectacle. It lacks leaders who know that institutions must be built, not inherited. It lacks leaders who are willing to do the hard, unglamorous work of creating systems that function. Until we find such leaders, the fires will keep burning. The toilets will remain dirty. The escalators will stay broken. And we will keep jumping from buildings, hoping someone below is holding a ladder.
This is not just a call for better governance. It is a call for a new philosophy of leadership—one rooted in systems, not slogans. It is a call to overhaul our leadership recruitment process and embrace a different kind of politics—one that delivers, not just declares. China, for all its complexities, offers a compelling example of process-driven governance, where long-term planning and institutional discipline take precedence over personality.
Nigeria must learn to build or continue to burn. Only leaders who understand process can douse the flames. And only citizens who demand it can light the path forward.
Dr Ezeh Emmanuel Ezeh, a public policy expert writes from Abuja and can be reached on ezehezeh@gmail.com.
