Editorial: The Cost of Elections In Nigeria
- Shutting Down the FCT for 22 Hours!
Last Friday was a grim one for the hospitality industry in Abuja, the nation’s seat of power. A sweeping restriction of movement, imposed from Friday night until 6 p.m. the following day, effectively paralysed economic and social life across the Federal Capital Territory. The familiar refrain of “Thank God It’s Friday” vanished, replaced by empty restaurants, idle taxis, cancelled events and shuttered businesses.
The economic toll must have been enormous yet this was only one sector. The disruption rippled across supply chains, logistics, retail and informal trade. One hardly needs the skills of an econometrician to grasp the devastating impact, particularly on small businesses already battered by insecurity and declining purchasing power.
Such costs appear to matter little to a segment of the elite that continues to thrive within a rent-seeking economic structure. Yet the nation must pause and reflect. Elections, which should symbolise democratic vitality, are instead accompanied by enforced economic hibernation. The shutdown of a capital city sends troubling signals not only to citizens but also to foreign missions and investors who watch these developments closely through the eyes of commercial attachés and risk analysts. It undermines the country’s persistent, if often rhetorical, campaign to attract foreign direct investment.
Once proudly described as the “Giant of Africa,” Nigeria now lags behind many peers in the management of electoral processes. The resort to large-scale shutdowns reveals deeper institutional fragility and structural dysfunction. If security architecture were more decentralised and community-based, operational efficiency would reduce the perceived need to immobilise entire cities. Other African democracies, including Ghana, conduct elections without suspending economic life because institutions are trusted to function and political actors show greater commitment to process over theatrics.
There is also the question of proportionality. Security must never become an excuse for administrative overreach that punishes millions of law-abiding citizens. Democracies are strengthened not by the absence of risk but by the capacity of institutions to manage risk without crippling normal life. When economic activity is halted in the name of order, the unintended consequence is a gradual erosion of confidence in governance itself.
Moreover, the recurring pattern of election-induced paralysis contributes to a subtle but damaging form of national “de-marketing.” Investors prize predictability; they seek environments where political transitions are routine rather than disruptive spectacles. Each cycle that shuts down commerce advertises instability and raises the perceived cost of doing business, thereby weakening competitiveness in a continent where several countries are actively reforming to attract capital.
What is required is a return to reform conversations long acknowledged but seldom implemented. Recommendations of the Uwais Report, alongside other institutional reform proposals, must be revisited with sincerity. Strengthening the autonomy and capacity of the Independent National Electoral Commission, modernising election security strategy and deepening local policing structures would allow elections to occur without placing entire territories under siege.
Nigeria cannot continue to advertise inefficiency at every electoral turn. The present model is economically injurious, reputationally costly and democratically unsustainable. Reform will meet resistance, as all structural change does, but the political elite must recognise it as an act of collective self-preservation. A democracy that shuts itself down to function is one that must urgently learn how to run without stopping.
