The New Aristocracy: When Your Surname Becomes Your Credential

Two weeks ago, Kano State governor Abba Yusuf defected from New Nigeria People Party(NNPP ) to the All Progressive Congress(APC)That’s not what got me thinking.

What stopped me cold was reading about Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso’s son resigning from the cabinet. I didn’t even know the man had a son in government. Which tells you how normalised this whole thing has become ,we don’t even notice anymore when politicians slot their children into positions of power.

Look around. The pattern is everywhere. Bello El-Rufai, son of former Kaduna governor Nasir El-Rufai, has been in the House of Representatives since 2023. He’s 35. Cyril Adams Oshiomhole, son of the former governor and senator, is a commissioner in Edo State. Former Senate President David Mark’s daughter, Blessing Onuh, sits in the House of Reps. Segun Osoba’s son Olumide is there too. Jerry Gana’s son. Ango Abdullahi’s son Sadiq. Bello Mohammed Haliru’s son Ibrahim.

In the presidency right now, the children of Babafemi Ojudu and Tanko Yakasai serve as advisers. Some head MDAs. Go to any state – you’ll find them serving as special advisers, senior assistants, commissioners.

We’re watching a political aristocracy calcify in real time, and most Nigerians are either too tired or too cynical to care.

Here’s the uncomfortable question: is this automatically wrong?I’m not going to lie to you and say every politician’s child in government got there purely on merit. That would be insulting your intelligence. But I’m also not going to pretend that being born into a political family automatically disqualifies you from public service. Some of these people have actual credentials.

The problem isn’t that politicians’ children want to serve. The problem is the system makes it nearly impossible for anyone without a famous surname to break through.

Think about it. In 2023, how much did it cost to run for House of Representatives in a semi-urban constituency? Between N150 million and N300 million, depending on the state. For Senate? Double that, maybe triple in some zones. And that’s just to get the party ticket you haven’t even started the general election campaign.

Where is a 32-year-old lawyer or entrepreneur from a non-political family supposed to find that kind of money? You either come from wealth, marry into it, or you have a godfather. And if your godfather is your actual father who was a governor or senator, well, that’s the easiest route of all.

So yes, merit matters. But let’s not pretend we have a level playing field where merit is the only thing that matters. A brilliant young person from Bida with a PhD in public policy and ten years of civil society experience will lose to a mediocre candidate whose father was commissioner in 1999. Every single time. Because the mediocre candidate has access to the party machinery, the money, and the name recognition.

That’s what makes this dangerous.

I’m not against continuity. Some professions run in families ;medicine, law, trading, farming. My father was a journalist and I am also a journalist now .If your father was a successful doctor and you become a doctor, nobody accuses you of nepotism. But those professions have gatekeepers. You can’t become a surgeon just because your dad was one you still have to pass medical school and your licensing exams. The system tests you independently.

Politics has no such filter. In fact, politics rewards the opposite. Your father’s name is your credential. Your father’s money is your capacity. Your father’s political network is your structure.

And here’s what really worries me ,it’s becoming generational. The children who are serving now will ensure their own children have access later. We’re not building a democracy; we’re building a rotating oligarchy where 50 families share power across regions and parties.

You see it clearly in the 2027 calculations already happening. The same names keep appearing. Someone who was commissioner in 1999 became governor in 2007, senator in 2015, and now his son is positioning for 2027. Meanwhile, the roads in his constituency are still the same roads from 1999.

Let me say something that will annoy people: I don’t blame the politicians for this. I blame us.We’re the ones who vote based on name recognition. We’re the ones who say “I knew his father; his father helped my village.” We’re the ones who show up at campaign rallies for a bag of rice and N2,000. We’re the ones who don’t ask about manifestos or track records.

The son doesn’t need his own vision for the constituency. He just needs to be a conduit to his father’s influence. It’s not governance; it’s a family customer service desk.

So what do we do?First, political parties need to stop being family franchises. The APC, PDP, ADC,LP, NNPP all of them are guilty. They need to create transparent, competitive primaries where delegates actually vote based on candidate quality, not on whose envelope was heaviest. I know, I know I’m asking for the sun and the moon.

But if we don’t even articulate the standard, how will we ever move toward it?

Second, we need campaign finance reform. I’ve been saying this for years and I sound like a broken record, but it’s the single most important reform we can make. Cap campaign spending. Make funding sources transparent. Create public financing options for credible candidates without deep pockets. Until we do this, politics will remain a rich man’s game, and rich men will keep passing their seats to their children.

Third and this one is on us, the electorate we need to start rewarding competence over familiarity. I know it’s hard when you’re hungry and someone’s father fixed the borehole in your village in 2003. But that borehole should have been government’s job in the first place, not a favor from a politician. We have to break the mentality that politics is about patronage and start demanding that it’s about performance.

Fourth, civil society and the media need to spotlight credible alternatives. Every election cycle, we focus 95% of our coverage on the big names and the dynasties. What if we deliberately profiled five credible “outsider” candidates in every election? People with track records in the private sector, academia, civil service? We can’t complain about a lack of options if we never give the options oxygen.

I know what some of you are thinking: “Jonathan, you’re being naive. This is how politics works everywhere. Look at America Bush family, Clinton family, Kennedy family.”

Fair point. But America also produced Barack Obama, Bill Clinton (who came from nothing), Jimmy Carter. Their system isn’t perfect, but it has enough openings that an outsider with charisma and ideas can break through. Can you name one Nigerian president  in the last 24 years who came from a completely non-political, non-elite background? I’ll wait.

Let me be clear: I’m not saying politicians’ children should be banned from politics. That would be both unfair and unworkable. Some of them are sharp, committed, and could genuinely contribute. What I’m saying is they shouldn’t have a glide path to power while everyone else has to climb a cliff.

And I’m definitely saying we shouldn’t accept a system where your surname determines your political ceiling. That’s not democracy. That’s aristocracy with elections.

Here’s the thing that keeps me up at night. Right now, there’s a 28-year-old woman in Sokoto with innovative ideas about education policy. There’s a 35-year-old man in Anambra who has built a successful tech company and understands economic development. There’s a 40-year-old civil servant in Osun who has been quietly fixing procurement processes and saving government money.

None of them will ever be governor.

Or senator. Or even local government chairman.Not because they lack the capacity. But because they lack the pedigree.

And that more than insecurity, more than corruption, more than any single policy failure is why Nigeria will continue to underperform its potential. We’re fishing for leaders in a pool of 500 families when we have 200 million people.

The governors, senators, and ministers reading this will dismiss what I’m saying. They’ll tell themselves their children are qualified, that they’re not forcing anyone, that this is just how things work.

And you know what? They’re half right. Their children probably are  qualified at least more qualified than some of the clowns we’ve elected before. And yes, this is how things work.

But “this is how things work” is not an argument. It’s a confession.

If we don’t fix this if we allow politics to become fully hereditary we’ll wake up in 2043 and realize we’ve created a permanent political class that’s completely disconnected from the people they govern. Their children will go to school abroad, get treated abroad, invest abroad, and only come home to collect their share of the oil revenue and political contracts.

We’ll have a country where the poor get poorer, the middle class stays stuck, and the political elite pass their wealth and power down like a family heirloom. Actually, scratch that. We already have that country. We’re living in it right now.

The question is whether we’re going to do anything about it, or just keep complaining while we vote for the next dynasty.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​