By Olusegun Adeniyi On Monday morning, I received two videos that left me thinking about the state of leadership in our country. The first came from a local government area in one of the Northeast states. The council chairman had reportedly died, and his deputy was being sworn in to complete the tenure. What should have been a routine constitutional exercise turned into an uncomfortable spectacle. Here was a man about to assume responsibility for an entire local government, yet he appeared unable to repeat the words of the oath being administered to him. It was an awkward moment, but the more important question was not how the man performed before the camera; it was how he emerged as the person expected to inherit such a critical leadership position in the first place. The second video came from the South-east. It showed the deplorable condition of the road leading to Awhum Waterfall in Enugu State, a natural attraction whose beauty ought to make it a source of pride for the community and our country. I decided to forward the two videos directly to the governors of the respective states. I do that quite often based on my conviction that to whom you can whisper, you don’t always need to shout. Only one of the two governors responded: Peter Mbah of Enugu State. I will not name the other governor who had not responded as at the time of sending in this column last night. The point is not to embarrass or turn a private exchange into a contest between political officeholders. It is to examine what these encounters tell us about leadership. To be fair, governors receive enormous volumes of messages, and no reasonable person should expect them to personally respond to everyone. It is also possible that the other governor acted on the information without replying to me. He could also have decided that he was helpless about the situation depicted in the video. But the question remains: in a political culture where citizens often struggle to get the attention of those who govern them, what should we make of a leader who responds when a problem is brought to his attention? Mbah called me about two hours after receiving the video message. He said he agreed with the complainants. “You cannot talk about tourism with a road like that so they are quite correct,” Mbah said. “But what they do not know is that the road will soon be constructed. You can see that it has been cleared.” In public service, accountability begins with acknowledging a problem and indicating that something was being done about it. But let me also add a qualification. A response is not a completed road, and a promise is not a project delivered. To that extent, Mbah’s assurance must be tested against what happens on the ground. Nevertheless, there is value in his willingness to engage with information that may help government do its job. The larger issue here is that public officials must remain ever attentive to issues of concern to the ordinary people. From Abuja to many of the 36 states, we don’t often see that. In recent months, Nigerians have been groaning under the yoke of skyrocketing prices of goods and services that are priced beyond them. It doesn’t appear as if anybody is listening. On Monday, the 2026 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) confirmed the level of deprivation in our country: an additional 17.9 million Nigerians slipped into poverty between 2021 and 2024. Meanwhile, only God knows how many more millions may have slipped even further in the last two years. With the multidimensional poverty rate increasing to 38.7 percent in 2024 from 33 percent in 2021, Nigeria recorded the largest increase among the five countries that experienced a rise over their latest measurement periods. We performed even worse than Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, Guinea and Kyrgyzstan! Amid all these, the only response we have received from the federal government is a meaningless 30-day ‘fuel discount’ from the NNPC that appears more like an attempt to trivialize a serious problem. To worsen matters, we have become too familiar with the futility of voice. And the government, especially this government, seems to capitalize on that to take Nigerians for granted. Yet, in a functioning democracy, citizens must have reason to believe that speaking up is worthwhile because when the ordinary channels for expressing dissatisfaction repeatedly fail, disillusionment accumulates. And when that happens for a long time, there are usually consequences. So, in the context of this intervention, a message to a governor is not only a modest form of civic engagement, but also an opportunity to see whether the connection between citizens and the state is still functioning. Now, the two videos raise different questions, and it is important not to confuse them. Let me begin with the Northeast video. On 11 July 2024, the Supreme Court delivered its landmar
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