THERE an unceasing tendency for Nigerian leaders to take the people for granted. It begins with an exaggerated importance of their office and extends to the divine justification in which Nigerian leaders clothe their actions.

Finally, when they have created sufficient distance between them and the people, they become experts in making excuses for their failures and rationalising the dilapidating state of Nigeria.

Minister of Information and Communication, Mr. Labaran Maku badly missed the point when he gave reasons for the absence of North Africa-type protests in Nigeria.

“Yes there are parallels between Nigeria and these countries when it comes to the level of development, but one thing that is clear the countries where these protests are taking place, you have one man dictatorships that have lasted for decades.

“The difference between Nigeria and those countries is that this country today is run in a constitutional order where the tenure of office of leaders is fixed, he said.

Mr. Maku knows Nigeria is not as developed as Tunisia, not to mention Egypt. If we take the commonest example, electricity, none of those countries is like Nigeria. They are more industrialised, more investor-friendly and have more thriving indices for sustenance than Nigeria.

Self-deception can justify anything. Mr Maku continued, “Our country has lessons that these countries can learn from. The lesson today is that it is more important to build institutions that can endure, because leaders can come and go but the institutions remain.” What are the enduring institutions that our governments are building? How have these reflected on the lives of Nigerians?

Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Defence, Oluwale Oke told a German parliamentary delegation that Nigerians will not protest their condition.

“The North African scenario is not applicable to Nigeria. Nobody has ruled Nigeria for 41 years or 31 years. Since 1999, 2003, and 2007, there were elections, come April this year, there will be election,” he said.

Are the protests in North Africa only about elections and tenure of regimes? They are about repression and governments failing to meet peoples’ needs. Regular conducts of elections are not substitutes for governments serving the people.

However, Mr. Oke’s position is not surprising. In 2009 while Nigerians worried about the third straight absence of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua at the United Nations General Assembly where high-level meetings on climate change and Bakassi were scheduled, Mr. Oke defended it.

Oke said Yar’Adua went to Saudi Arabia in anger that Barack Obama did not visit Nigeria and to protest UN’s removal of Lt-Gen Martin Luther Agwai as its commander in Sudan. Everyone, maybe except Oke, knew Yar’Adua was ill.

Nigerian governments have a fundamental obligation to cater for the people. It is the spirit of Section 14 (2b) of the 1999 Constitution, “The security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government”.

Our people may not behave like North Africans, but it is not an acceptance of the sheer misery governments serve them.