When Citizens Stop Expecting Govt

Femi Akintunde-Johnson

We can also rephrase the above headline thus: how a nation slowly adjusts to less – and calls it resilience.

  There is a new kind of silence spreading across Nigeria. It is not the silence of peace, nor the silence of satisfaction. It is the silence of lowered expectations.

  At a bus stop in Lagos, a young man checks transport fares, sighs, and quietly steps back. No protest. No complaint. Just a small adjustment – he will trek part of the journey. In a market in Ibadan, a woman prices a bag of rice, laughs softly in disbelief, and moves on to buy half of what she planned. Somewhere in Abuja, a civil servant scrolls through electricity tariff updates and simply shrugs before switching off another appliance.

These are not isolated moments. They are signals. Nigeria is witnessing a subtle but profound shift: citizens are no longer reacting to hardship with outrage; they are adapting to it with resignation.

And while this may look like resilience on the surface, it carries a far more troubling implication beneath – it marks the beginning of democratic fatigue.

In a healthy democracy, citizens expect things. They expect security, basic infrastructure, economic stability, and accountability. They may not always get them, but the expectation itself keeps pressure on those in power. It fuels public debate. It drives electoral decisions. It sustains the idea that governance is a contract, not a favour.

But what happens when those expectations begin to fade? What happens when citizens stop asking, stop demanding, and simply start adjusting? The answer is uncomfortable: accountability begins to evaporate.

Over the past year, Nigeria’s economic realities have tested the limits of public endurance. Inflation has stretched household budgets beyond recognition. Fuel costs have redefined mobility. Food prices have turned basic nutrition into careful arithmetic. Yet, for all the strain, the streets are not exactly roaring with sustained civic pressure.

Instead, Nigerians are doing what they have always done best – finding ways to cope. They are cutting portions, extending timelines, improvising alternatives, and lowering standards. It is a survival instinct honed over decades. But survival, while admirable, is not a substitute for governance.

There is a difference between resilience and resignation. One fights to overcome difficulty; the other quietly learns to live with it. What we are seeing now is a gradual drift from the former to the latter.

Part of the problem lies in the normalisation of hardship. When crises become routine, they lose their ability to shock. When price hikes become frequent, they stop making headlines. When policies arrive without clear relief, people stop expecting them to.

 In that environment, the extraordinary becomes ordinary. And once hardship becomes ordinary, it becomes easier for those in power to treat it as acceptable.

This is not to suggest that Nigerians have suddenly lost their capacity for dissent. Far from it. The country remains politically vibrant, socially expressive, and culturally vocal. But there is a noticeable thinning of sustained civic pressure – the kind that forces structural response rather than temporary adjustment.

Instead of organised demand, there is scattered endurance. Instead of collective insistence, there is individual survival.

This shift has long-term consequences. A citizenry that expects less will inevitably receive less. Governments, like all institutions of power, respond to pressure. Where pressure is weak or inconsistent, performance often follows suit. Not always out of malice, but often out of habit.

If people adjust, leaders may assume adjustment is sufficient. If citizens cope, governments may conclude that coping is an acceptable policy outcome. This is how mediocrity quietly entrenches itself – not through dramatic failure, but through gradual acceptance. 

There is also a generational dimension to this trend. Younger Nigerians, many of whom have grown up in an environment of fluctuating instability, are increasingly defining success not in terms of national improvement but personal escape. The “japa” conversation is not just about opportunities abroad; it is about diminishing belief at home.

When citizens begin to see exit as more viable than engagement, the social contract weakens further. Why fix what you no longer believe can work?

Yet, it would be unfair – and inaccurate – to place the burden entirely on citizens. Trust is not demanded; it is built. Expectations are not commanded; they are earned. Years of inconsistent policy execution, abrupt economic shifts, and limited institutional protection have conditioned Nigerians to rely more on themselves than on the state.

In many ways, this moment is the cumulative result of that history. Still, recognising the cause does not eliminate the risk.

A democracy where citizens expect little from the government is not stable – it is vulnerable. Vulnerable to policy arbitrariness, vulnerable to elite capture, and vulnerable to a gradual slide into governance without accountability.

The irony is that governments should be just as concerned about this trend as citizens. Public disengagement is not a sign of approval; it is often a sign of detachment. And detachment can quickly turn into unpredictability.

History has shown that societies do not remain indefinitely quiet under pressure. They either re-engage constructively – or react abruptly. Neither scenario favours complacency. So what is the way forward?

It begins with restoring credibility. Policies must not only be announced; they must be seen to work. Relief measures must not only exist; they must be felt. Communication must not only inform; it must reassure.

More importantly, governance must begin to close the widening gap between decision-making and lived experience. When policies are designed without visible sensitivity to everyday realities, citizens disengage – not out of apathy, but out of exhaustion.

At the same time, citizens must resist the quiet temptation to completely withdraw expectation. Adjustment may be necessary in the short term, but abandonment of demand is dangerous in the long term.

Democracy, after all, is not sustained by comfort. It is sustained by participation, insistence, and, occasionally, discomfort directed at power.

Nigeria has always prided itself on the resilience of its people. And rightly so. But resilience should not become an excuse for systemic underperformance. It should be a bridge to improvement, not a permanent condition. 

It is clear to discerning minds that when a people stop expecting their government to work, something fundamental begins to break. Not suddenly. Not dramatically. But steadily enough to matter. We have been warned!