My Participation

Author: Bisi Akande

Top Idea: Politics is not a series of episodes or sudden wins, but a long-term endurance sport. True participation requires the stubborn custodianship of an ideological tradition, even when the system punishes consistency and rewards opportunism.

The Big Idea

My Participation is a documentation of ideological persistence within the volatile landscape of Nigerian politics. Bisi Akande frames his career as a lived experience within the Awolowo political lineage (federalism, welfarism, and discipline) as against the norm of quest for power. The book argues that Nigeria’s greatest challenge is a system of bad incentives that favours tactical flexibility over moral clarity. For Akande, the survival of democracy depends on the rare individuals willing to pay the personal cost of staying ideologically coherent over decades.

Top Lessons

1. Politics is lived over decades. Real impact comes from the continuity of a tradition rather than the spectacle of a single electoral cycle.
2. In a system that thrives on ambiguity and personalization, political actors who are most committed to rules and institutions are often the most marginalized.
3. Leadership is stewardship. Fiscal discipline and institutional reform are often politically costly but morally necessary to shut out the culture of largesse.
4. Nigeria’s leadership failures are inextricably linked to its centralized constitutional architecture. Without decentralization, even virtuous leaders are reduced to administrators of a broken system.

My Notes

1. Politics as Continuity

• Akande does not claim to have authored history. He claims only to have participated in it. This humility shifts the focus from a great man to preserving persistent traditions.
• Following the Awolowo Lineage, Akande champions federalism and welfarism. This provides moral clarity but serves as a liability in a polity that often perceives principles as obstacles to making deals.

2. The Cost of Opposition

• Nigerian opposition movements are often weakened by ideological dilution from actors who defect as soon as they face personal or financial disadvantage.
• Akande’s career (from the UPN to the AD and finally the APC) shows that building a credible alternative to power requires a degree of political patience that is rare in Nigeria.
• Without principled opposition, democracy becomes nothing more than electoral rotation without reform.

3. The Ethics of Power and Restraint

• During his tenure as Governor, Akande prioritized fiscal discipline over populist excess.
• He challenges the expectation that power should be immediately monetized. In his view, the crisis of governance is a crisis of the moral economy where leadership is seen as a reward rather than a responsibility.

4. Structural Frustration

• Akande highlights how the over-concentration of power at the centre distorts local accountability.
• Because of fiscal dependency and central control of the electoral machinery, state/subnational leaders often lack the autonomy to enact real change.
• Until the constitution is redesigned to reward performance rather than loyalty to the centre, leadership quality alone will struggle to produce better outcomes.

Key Takeaways for the Nigerian Condition

• Nigeria will not be renewed by saviours or sudden breakthroughs, but by the patient participation of people anchored in principle.
• We suffer from a lack of institutional and ideological loyalty. Akande’s life suggests that traditions only survive through stubborn custodianship.
• We must stop looking solely for virtuous individuals and start looking at how to fix the bad incentives that make virtue a political disadvantage.
• The book serves as a realistic warning. Staying principled in Nigerian politics will likely lead to personal cost and state repression, but it is the only way to preserve a political tradition.

Notable Quotes

Traditions survive only through stubborn custodianship.

Nigeria’s leadership failures are inseparable from its constitutional architecture.

Democracy without ideological opposition becomes electoral rotation without reform.