Nigeria@66: From resilience to enduring capability - Punch Newspapers

Today, October 1,  2026, Nigeria turns 66. That anniversary invites neither self-congratulation nor despair. Both are too easy. Nigeria has survived civil war, military rule, commodity shocks, insurgency, disputed elections and repeated economic disruption. It has also produced globally competitive entrepreneurs, professionals, artists and institutions. Yet too many Nigerians still rely on private ingenuity to compensate for public weakness. That contradiction deserves attention. Through years of teaching leadership and international business, and engaging executives across sectors and countries, I have become increasingly convinced that Nigeria’s central challenge is not a shortage of talent. It is the failure to convert talent into institutional capability. Our people often outperform our systems. The next chapter must reverse that imbalance. Five achievements that matter 1. Nigeria has sustained an extraordinarily difficult union Nigeria’s survival should not be trivialised. Few countries combine its scale, ethnic diversity, religious plurality, regional inequality and powerful local identities. The federation survived a devastating civil war and continues to negotiate the meaning of belonging. Nigeria’s strength has never been sameness. It is the ability of people to belong simultaneously to family, hometown, faith, ethnicity, profession, state and nation. Hometown associations, age-grade groups, traditional institutions and religious communities frequently organise welfare and development with remarkable effectiveness. The unfinished task is to make national institutions command comparable confidence. 2. Civilian government has become the accepted basis of political legitimacy Since 1999, Nigeria has sustained its longest period of civilian rule. The peaceful change of governing party at the presidential level in 2015 was particularly significant. The achievement should not be exaggerated. Elections and governance remain imperfect. But an important norm has taken root: political authority is expected to emerge through constitutional civilian processes. The next frontier is performance. Democracy must become visible not simply at polling units, but in classrooms, hospitals, roads, public safety and economic opportunity. 3. Nigeria has proved how rapidly its people respond when constraints are removed The telecommunications revolution remains one of Nigeria’s most instructive economic stories. Once competition and access expanded, Nigerians adopted mobile technology at extraordinary speed. The phone became a bank, marketplace, media platform and business tool. The lesson is larger than telecommunications. Nigeria often does not lack demand, ingenuity or enterprise. It lacks enabling systems. The same logic should shape electricity, broadband, transport, credit and education. 4. Nigeria has acquired global cultural power Nollywood, Afrobeats, literature, fashion, comedy and digital culture have changed how Africa represents itself to the world. This is more than entertainment. Nigeria has acquired narrative power. People who have never visited Lagos increasingly consume Nigerian language, humour, music, fashion and stories. Few African countries possess comparable cultural reach. The opportunity now is to connect that influence more deliberately to tourism, intellectual property, technology, education and investment. 5. Nigerians have built a global network of capability The Nigerian diaspora is usually discussed through remittances. That understates its significance. Nigerians occupy important positions in medicine, academia, finance, technology, engineering, law, entrepreneurship and the creative industries across the world. This raises a difficult but useful question: why does Nigerian talent so often become more productive once it enters better functioning systems?See more Punch stories on Google.Add Punch on Google The diaspora should therefore be treated not merely as a source of money, but as distributed national knowledge. Seven challenges beneath the familiar headlines 1. We restart too often Nigeria has an institutional memory problem. Governments, organisations and agencies frequently improve under particular individuals, then lose capability when those individuals leave. Rwanda’s use of clear performance commitments offers a relevant lesson. The transferable idea is simple: promises require owners, deadlines and consequences. Government must preserve institutional knowledge across administrations. Businesses must build beyond founder dependence. Civil society must track unfinished commitments, not merely new announcements. Nigeria must learn to continue. 2. Federalism rewards sharing more than production Nigeria has spent decades debating how national revenue should be divided. Far less energy has gone into asking what each state should become exceptionally good at producing. Indonesia’s decentralisation experience shows that transferring money alone does not guarantee development. Local incentives and measurable outcomes matter. Nigeria should move towards productive federalism. States should compete on learning, investment, agricultural productivity, exports, infrastructure and service delivery. Thirty-six states should become thirty-six laboratories of development. 3. Nigeria has plenty of trust, but its radius is too narrow Nigerians trust family networks, religious communities, hometown associations, traders and professional circles. The problem is not absence of trust. It is that trust often weakens outside the group. India’s digital public infrastructure demonstrates how common systems can connect people across vast social differences. Nigeria needs reliable national platforms for identity, payments, qualifications, land and public services. Business should build supply chains and leadership teams across regions. Civil society should create more practical coalitions that cross ethnicity and religion. Nigeria does not need weaker local identities. It needs stronger bridges between them. 4. Informality works, but it does not scale Nigeria’s informal economy is not disorderly. It contains sophisticated systems of reputation, apprenticeship, credit and dispute resolution. Rewriting story: Nigerian woman’s journey from dyslexia to advocacy IFC commits $50m to strengthen InfraCredit’s infrastructure financing Guinea-Bissau coach urges focus after Nigeria win Its weakness is scalability. A trader may be trusted by an entire market yet remain invisible to a bank. The lesson from countries such as Bangladesh is that businesses formalise faster when formality creates access to markets and opportunity. Government should therefore make formal participation valuable through simpler taxation, insurance, credit histories, procurement access and portable pensions. Formalisation should be an invitation, not merely an obligation. 5. Aspiration is growing faster than capability Nigeria has one of the world’s youngest large populations. But youth alone is not an economic advantage. A smartphone allows a young Nigerian to compare opportunities instantly with London, Dubai, Toronto or Singapore. Expectations have globalised faster than opportunities. Vietnam connected skills development closely to manufacturing and exports. Nigeria must similarly connect education to actual economic production. Government should build skills around regional industries. Companies should become training institutions. Apprenticeship traditions should be modernised and accredited. A degree cannot remain the only respected proof of capability. 6. Nigerian cities are growing faster than their systems Nigeria’s future will increasingly be urban. Yet many cities are expanding without adequate transport, housing, drainage, electricity or coherent land administration. Brazil’s metropolitan experience shows the cost of allowing economic regions to outgrow fragmented governing structures. Nigeria needs metropolitan governance that reflects how people actually live and work. The objective is not prettier cities. It is productive cities. Every hour lost to traffic, flooding, unreliable electricity or avoidable logistics is a hidden tax on national productivity. 7. Our greatest strength, improvisation, can become a trap Nigerians are exceptional problem solvers. No electricity? Buy a generator. No water? Drill a borehole. Weak school? Pay privately. Poor security? Hire guards. This resilience is admirable, but it creates a dangerous equilibrium. Individuals solve today’s problems while the underlying system survives unchanged. Morocco’s industrial development offers another lesson. Infrastructure, skills, logistics and investment were coordinated over years rather than treated as isolated projects. Nigeria must learn to compound. Government needs long-term national priorities that survive administrations. Business must invest beyond quarterly horizons. Civil society must preserve memory and insist on continuity. A country becomes serious about the future when tomorrow has a voice in today’s decisions. Seven opportunities if we get this right The first opportunity is a delivery state, where citizens can see what was promised, who owns it and whether it was completed. Predictability itself would become economic infrastructure. The second is productive federalism. Nigerian states could specialise rather than imitate one another, creating competitive clusters in agriculture, manufacturing, logistics, technology, tourism, healthcare and energy. The third is development powered by social capital. Hometown associations, age-grade groups, religious institutions, alumni networks and diaspora communities could co-invest transparently in schools, clinics, apprenticeships and community infrastructure. The fourth is financial deepening through formalisation. Millions of small businesses could become financeable once reputation, transactions and skills are converted into recognised economic records. The fifth is talent export without permanent talent loss. Nigerian professionals could increasingly sell digital, medical, creative, financial and technical services globally while remaining physically rooted in Nigeria. The sixth is an urban productivity revolution. Better transport, land systems, electricity, housing and logistics could return millions of lost hours to productive economic life. The seventh is the most important: Nigeria could finally become a country that compounds. Good schools would produce better workers. Better workers would attract investment. Investment would strengthen suppliers. Stronger suppliers would create better jobs. Trust would lower transaction costs. Institutional memory would prevent constant restarting. Progress would begin reinforcing itself. The real task at 66 Nigeria does not need another generation celebrating its potential. Potential is useful only when converted into performance. Our entrepreneurs show that Nigerians can build. Our communities show that Nigerians can organise. Our creatives show that Nigerians can influence the world. Our diaspora demonstrates that Nigerians can excel under demanding institutional conditions. The evidence already exists. The problem is that these islands of excellence remain insufficiently connected. This is also where my own understanding of leadership has evolved through teaching and engagement with executives over many years. Leadership is not ultimately about becoming indispensable. It is about building something that continues to work when you are absent. The same principle applies to nations. Nigeria’s next chapter cannot depend upon heroic presidents, governors, chief executives or exceptional civil servants. Heroism does not scale. Institutions do. The real test of the years ahead is therefore straightforward. Can community become institution? Can federalism produce competition? Can informality produce scale? Can youth become capability? Can cities become productive? Can improvisation become accumulation? Can leadership become legacy? At 66, Nigerians have demonstrated enough resilience. The greater ambition should now be to build a country in which ordinary people require less extraordinary resilience simply to live productive lives. That would be more than progress. It would be progress that endures.   Kindly share this story:

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