Newsworthonline.com | January 29, 2026
True leadership in a nation is not defined by title or office but by responsibility, foresight, and the capacity to deliver lasting societal impact. Yet in Nigeria, the metrics used to evaluate Presidents, Governors, and legislators are fundamentally flawed, focusing on visible activity rather than transformational results. This persistent misjudgment of leadership success partly explains why Nigeria, despite decades of governance and vast natural resources, has failed to achieve real, inclusive, and sustainable growth.
The central question this paper addresses is simple but uncomfortable: what should reasonably count as achievement in Nigerian leadership, and why have we consistently chosen the wrong benchmarks?
The Historical Pattern: Activity Without Transformation
Since independence, Nigerian leaders have recorded extensive lists of “achievements” that often consist of projects commissioned, agencies created, and political structures expanded. However, these activities have rarely translated into sustained economic productivity, improved human capital, or resilient institutions.
The Problem with Nigeria’s Traditional Achievement Metrics
The Illusion of Achievement Through Construction
A frequently cited example is the long catalogue of accomplishments attributed to a former military Head of State and later President, including the creation of multiple states, federal agencies, security institutions, bridges, dams, housing estates, airports, hospitals, government secretariats, and monumental infrastructure across the federation—executed largely within an eight-year period.
At face value, the list appears impressive, reflecting massive public expenditure, geographical spread, and visible state presence. However, this is precisely where Nigeria’s leadership assessment goes wrong. These accomplishments largely represent budgetary spending enabled by oil revenue windfalls, state-driven construction without deep economic integration, and proliferation of institutions without commensurate institutional capacity.
They demonstrate activity, not effectiveness; expenditure, not economic transformation.
Why Capital Projects Are Not a Measure of Leadership Effectiveness
True leadership achievement is not measured by the number of buildings constructed or agencies created. It is measured by whether a leader creates systems that continuously generate wealth, builds human capital capable of innovation and productivity, strengthens institutions that function independent of personalities, and establishes policies that survive political transitions.
Many of the listed projects failed this test, becoming underutilised, fiscally burdensome, technologically obsolete, or completely abandoned because the enabling ecosystem was never built.
The Real Drivers of National Development
Globally, nations rise when leaders focus on deliberate investment in education and skills development, industrialisation anchored on value-added production, innovation, entrepreneurship, and private-sector productivity, and strong, predictable, and accountable institutions.
Nigeria’s failure has never been a lack of projects. It has been the absence of economic structure, institutional discipline, and policy coherence.
Constituency Projects and the Collapse of Governance Logic
The National Assembly as a Case Study in Distorted Metrics – The same flawed logic dominates how legislative performance is measured. Constituency projects have become the primary yardstick by which legislators are judged, celebrated, and re-elected.
In the 2025 federal budget, BudgIT revealed that 11,122 constituency projects worth ₦6.93 trillion were inserted by the National Assembly. This convergence of budget insertion, direct execution funds, and generous perks has transformed politics into a high-return enterprise and a zero-sum struggle for access to state resources.
The Right Way: Redefining Leadership Achievement Metrics in Nigeria
For Nigeria to progress, leadership must be evaluated using outcome-based, system-oriented metrics, including human capital outcomes, economic structure and wealth creation, institutional strength, sustainability and resilience, and systemic impact.
Nigeria’s tragedy is not that leaders have done nothing; it is that the nation has consistently rewarded the wrong things. By equating leadership success with spending, construction, and institutional multiplication, Nigeria has entrenched mediocrity and incentivised waste.
Until leadership is judged by how well it prepares a nation to generate wealth, knowledge, and opportunity long after leaders leave office, Nigeria will continue to repeat cycles of motion without progress.
By Engr. Michael Kalip kadala
Engr. Kaadala is the Secretary General of HOSAN, a seasoned registered member of NSE and COREN, who has served in both designing and construction of various projects in Nigeria.
“The views, opinions, and perspectives shared in this piece are solely those of the writer and do not reflect the official stance or position of Newsworth Media Company”
