Sunday Southerner – Political Insight 

Nigeria is heading into another political season. And already, the noise is getting louder than the ideas.

Everywhere: accusations. Counter-accusations. Political insults. Character assassination.

But outside the political bubble, Nigerians are dealing with something much more serious. Survival.

The poor are fighting food prices. Parents are fighting school fees. Young Nigerians are fighting unemployment. Entrepreneurs are fighting electricity costs, taxes, logistics and expensive credit.

The political class should hear this clearly: Nigerians need solutions, not tantrums. The recent exchanges involving Peter Obi and Charles Soludo, the interventions of Atiku Abubakar and the responses from the Presidency should be an opportunity for serious national debate.

Instead, too much energy is being consumed by personalities. Who inherited what? Who did what? Who said what?

Fine. Publish the records. Open the books. Verify the claims. Then debate the future.

Because the real question is not who won the argument.

The real question is who can fix the problem.

Nigeria’s poverty numbers are unforgiving. The World Bank estimates that more than 60 percent of Nigerians were living below the national poverty line in 2025, while about 3.5 million people join the labour force every year.

Those are not numbers to be traded between political camps. They are a national alarm bell.

So let every political camp come prepared.

Not with insults. With numbers. How many jobs? How much electricity?How much investment? How much food production? How many industries? How much cheaper will it become to move goods? How will millions of MSMEs obtain capital, technology and markets?

And what happens to the poor while the reforms are taking place? These are the questions that should dominate Nigeria’s political conversation.

The Presidency should defend its reforms with evidence and measurable outcomes. The opposition should attack government policies with evidence—and present workable alternatives.

Obi should defend his record. Soludo should defend his record.

Atiku should defend his proposals.

Nobody should be exempt from scrutiny.

But scrutiny is not character assassination. Criticism is not abuse.

Opposition is not a licence for intellectual laziness.

Nigeria needs a political class capable of looking beyond the next election and studying what successful countries actually did.

China built industrial capacity. South Korea turned human capital into manufacturing power. India built digital infrastructure at extraordinary scale.

Singapore built institutions capable of executing policy.

Nigeria must ask the harder question: What can we adapt, finance and execute here?

Our politics must move from personality to policy. From propaganda to evidence. From promises to targets.

From targets to delivery.

Because the Nigerian struggling to feed a family does not care who won yesterday’s political argument.

He wants a job.

The young graduate does not need another political insult.

She needs an opportunity.

The entrepreneur does not need another manifesto.

He needs electricity, credit and a market.

Nigeria is too poor for politics that produces noise without solutions.

The next political contest must therefore be a contest of ideas, evidence, competence and measurable results.

Not who can shout the loudest. Not who can insult the opponent most cleverly. Not who can manufacture the most damaging headline.

The country needs politicians who can turn headlines into policies, policies into institutions, and institutions into prosperity.

That is the politics Nigeria needs now. Less tantrum. More thinking. Less character assassination. More development. Less political theatre. More nation-building.

*Nwaogu is a policy and development analyst