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Former Minister of Education Oby Ezekwesili has said that Nigeria’s democracy is weakened by a poor majority focused on survival and an upper class disconnected from productive enterprise, leaving the middle class with insufficient political influence.
Ezekwesili made the remarks in an interview on News Central’s 60 Minutes with Mr Kay on Friday.
“About 64% of your 145 million that are poor, you would tend to see that all they live for is just getting by every day. They don’t want to be disturbed by any other things,” Ezekwesili said.
“The only time that issues of governance matter to them is elections, and the elections have become a market day to improve income by a little bit of notches for that day. They are not voting for four years. They are voting for that day’s income and the additionality that they will get.”
Ezekwesili said the middle class, which in other societies has the greatest stake in ensuring social and economic mobility, is largely absent from political engagement in Nigeria.
“In normal societies, when you say upper class, you’re actually talking about distinguished people. In our own case now, when you say upper class, it’s people who have mostly made money, not by production, not by productivity. So it’s a very dodgy class to talk about,” she said.
She said the middle class “are usually the ones with the greatest stake in ensuring that society functions, and society functions to enable more people to go through what we call social and economic mobility.”
“The elections have become a market day to improve income by a little bit of notches for that day.”
Economic policy expert @obyezeks says that widespread poverty has changed how many Nigerians approach elections.
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— News Central TV (@NewsCentralTV) August 21, 2026
“When government functions and people have access to education, to health care, and to just basic minimum of services of other essentials, what happens is that they also climb into middle class. Now, we have a majority that are not climbing out of poverty.”
Ezekwesili called for political literacy to help poor Nigerians understand the stakes of elections.
“There’s a whole lot of work of political literacy that needs to happen with these 145 million,” she said.
She noted that poor Nigerians are often more faithful voters, while the middle class only obtains voter cards to avoid travel restrictions.
“The middle class got the voter’s card so that should there be a situation where some crazy person decides that you can’t travel out of this country without showing your voter’s card. That’s all it will do for them. I have a voter’s card. It’s not so that they can go and do the vote,” she said.
