I have a friend I secretly rank higher than myself by every standard that matters. He has less formal education, but he outpaces me in practical initiative, in wisdom that shows up as action, in enterprise, in energy, and in the quiet sacrifices that never make it to WhatsApp status. He has done for others and for me what I am still not sure I could return in kind. I have never caught him in a single “deliberate lie.” I stress deliberate, because he believes, with an almost religious conviction, that the more he gives the more doors open for him. He is the kind of man who forgets his own trouble while carrying yours, who shows up fully at a friend’s program even when the friend only remembers him when there is a problem. And somehow, time has not changed him.
The trouble is that this same habitat of sacrifice keeps landing him in trouble. In fact, he lives there more than he lives outside it. He will come to me for a loan and swear to pay back by a certain date because “something is coming.” His faith is so deep he already spends the money in his head. If it doesn’t come, he fails you. Is it deliberate? I don’t think so. It is real. Call him when you are broke and he will say, “Give me time,” not because he is lying, but because he believes time will bend.
He is not an entrepreneur in the textbook sense, but he takes risks for people, answers distress calls, and refuses to let the economy dictate how human he can be. Even without money he will travel far just to attend an invitation. You see noble intentions, deep empathy, and exactly why people also have the other side of him. The moment you promise and cannot deliver, even with good reason, you fail someone and that failure settles into memory. When you believe you can solve every problem, when you respond emotionally to needs, even from people who are doing better than you, you are breeding unintended consequences.
Sociology calls this “role overload” and “role conflict.” Psychologist Robert Merton described it as the strain that comes when cultural goals outrun the legitimate means to reach them. You stretch across too many obligations, time collapses, discipline frays, and what looks like betrayal, or even lying, becomes almost inevitable. In the eyes of the person waiting, an unfulfilled promise is read as a deliberate lie.
As campaigns begin again in Nigeria, I keep returning to this image because it helps explain something we pretend is only about politics. Let me call it an alternative perspective using the metaphor of marriage and courtship. We like to call politicians liars, deceivers, “use and dump” artists. But a man courting a woman is also a politician. His acceptance depends on presentation, on the impression he makes, on promises he offers, on evidence of hard work and character. We dress well, respond to in-laws even when no one asked, and sell dreams that feel like evidence. Then marriage begins and disappointment arrives, and suddenly men are branded as pretenders. When we condemn politicians we may not realize we are also guilty of the same politics in our homes.
The truth is, just like my friend with the good heart, no real politician and no new husband can easily escape this trap. Most disappointments are not deliberate. They are born from assurance, from responding to people’s aspirations, from positivity, dreams, deep faith, and hope.
Political scientist James Q. Wilson once wrote that governing is not a moral contest between saints and sinners but a contest of institutions, incentives, and constraints. Nature does not reward faithfulness with a smooth life. Office, like marriage, comes with pressure and expectations that no CV, no academic credential, and no moral sermon can fully prepare you for. You have to sit in the chair to know the weight.
I read a text by Professor Abiodun Musa Aibinu titled “What Nobody Tells You About Being a Vice Chancellor: The Things You Learn Only After You Sit in the Chair.” He argued that no academic qualification or leadership training can prepare you for the lived reality of the Vice-chancellor’s position. What he didn’t say, but which his thesis implies, is that this is true not only for VCs but for marriage and for any leadership position. Aspiring leaders make promises from assumption, from suspicion, from the public’s expectations and false hopes. The reality of the office does not live in books. That is why the most passionate campaigner can end up disappointing more than the cynic.
Look at the record and you see the pattern repeat. Jonathan’s “Transformation Agenda” promised stable power after PHCN privatization, revived refineries, and an end to Boko Haram. Power stayed epileptic, the refineries stayed comatose, and insecurity deepened with Chibok.
Buhari ran on “Change” and “Next Level” anchored on security, economy, and corruption. CDD’s Buharimeter tracked 46 promises in his first term and rated only one as achieved. He said there was no subsidy, yet his government spent $10 billion on it in 2022. He promised to scrap the Office of the First Lady, but it remained. He vowed to end medical and educational tourism, then made several medical trips abroad himself. He promised to end ASUU strikes, but 2020 and the 2022 eight-month strike happened on his watch. He promised working refineries and stable electricity, but eight years later the same plants were “coming soon” and the grid kept collapsing. He promised three million jobs yearly. Unemployment climbed from 14.2 percent to 33.3 percent. Poverty rose from about 40 percent to 63 percent, with 133 million Nigerians multidimensionally poor by 2022. Even Nigeria Air, with its emblem unveiled in 2018, never flew.
Tinubu came with “Renewed Hope.” AdvoKC’s BAT-O-METER, tracking 53 promises by mid-2025, scored 20.8 percent kept, 41.5 percent compromised, and 37.7 percent broken. He delivered subsidy removal and FX unification on day one, raised minimum wage, and launched NELFUND. But food costs stayed high, the promise to eliminate kidnapping was rated broken, and six of eight infrastructure pledges were rated broken.
Why does this keep happening? First, campaigning and governing are two different games. Campaigns sell moral statements, not operational blueprints with baselines and institutions named. Second, there are no accountability archives. We do not track Jonathan’s or Buhari’s promises the way we track a budget line. Third, reality intrudes. COVID-19 hit under Buhari. Oil prices fell. IPOB sit-at-home orders, pipeline vandalism, and two recessions shrank fiscal space. Debt service to revenue ballooned. Even simple things like timely appointments, budget submissions, and board inaugurations suffered delays, not always because of malice but because the office devours time. Guests arrive daily. Donations are expected. Largesse becomes a sign of power. Governance costs rise in ways no manifesto anticipates.
This is why we must stop treating every pronouncement as an achievement. Leadership is not simply a moral submission where we decide who is more righteous. If Buhari, with a reputation for discipline and anti-corruption, could still fail on promises that did not even require money, like making appointments on time, then how much more the person without executive powers? If a former head of state can be ambushed by reality, what of a former vice president?
So like my friend and like most husbands who disappoint their wives not out of wickedness but out of care, protection, hope, and dreams, we should not be too swayed by campaign promises that can collapse in a twinkle. An idea that has not been tested in prevailing circumstances is as good as a dream. Professor Aibinu was right. Better insight comes from real experience, not from CVs, moral arguments, or imagination. Until we sit in the chair, we do not know what the chair demands. And until we do, the line between promise, assurance, tall dream, and reality will remain thin, in marriage and in politics.
Bagudu Mohammed is the Founder, Alternative Perspectives.
Web: https://alternativeperspective.onrender.com
Email: bagudumohammed15197@gmail.com | Phone: 0703 494 3575
