It is hard to watch, and harder to excuse.
Public officials elected to manage the lives of millions now perform rituals to gods and ancestors while ordinary people lack water, shelter, and basic dignity. This is not satire. It is the present reality in Kogi State, where governance has slipped into performance and public office has been mistaken for priesthood.
Every month, money arrives. Statutory allocations from the Federation Account. Public funds. Money that belongs to the people of Kogi State. The purpose is simple and well known. Build roads. Provide water. Fix schools. Create jobs. That is the basic contract of government.
In Kogi, that contract has been broken.
Instead of results, we get rituals. Instead of accounting, we get ceremonies.
The Accountant-General of the state—the official charged with guarding the treasury—has been in the public eye not for transparency or reform, but for appeasing traditional deities. This raises questions that should never need asking. Where does this appear in the budget? Under what heading do libations fall? Has ritual replaced audit as the standard of accountability?
The answers are obvious. Which is why the questions matter.
This is not a quarrel with tradition or belief. Nigerians are free to worship as they choose. Culture deserves respect. Faith deserves protection. If any public official wants to honour ancestors in private, with private money, that is their right.
But public office has limits.
The moment official duty is replaced by ritual display, something has gone wrong. When ceremonies take the place of spreadsheets, and symbols displace service, belief turns into misrule. Devotion becomes neglect.
The cost is visible everywhere. In Lokoja. In Okene. In Kabba. In Ankpa. Women walk long distances for dirty water. Children sit under trees to learn. Roads collapse and are never repaired. Young people wait for jobs that never come. Infrastructure has not stalled. It has moved backward.
These are not acts of fate. They are political choices.
And while communities decay, officials perform.
This is not just incompetence. Nigeria has endured enough of that to recognize it. What we are seeing is worse. It is confusion about the meaning of public office. In a democracy, officials are not spiritual mediators. The Accountant-General is not a priest. He is a custodian of public funds.
When those entrusted with money act like ritual specialists, institutions weaken. Accountability fades. Performance replaces purpose. Failure hides behind culture.
Citizens have a right to ask simple questions. How does ritual produce clean water? How does appeasement build schools? Which god audits accounts? Which ancestor enforces procurement rules?
There are no answers. There never were.
The real tragedy is how long this has continued. How suffering has become normal. How leaders look upward while citizens struggle below. A Yoruba proverb says that when someone has deceived others, they look to the sky. In Kogi, officials look skyward. The people pay the price.
Even the ancestors invoked would likely disapprove. Our forebears built communities. They valued responsibility to the living. To invoke them while presiding over decay is not tradition. It is betrayal.
The way forward is not mysterious. It requires no rituals and no oracles. It requires honesty, transparency, and work. Kogi does not need appeasement. It needs accounting. It does not need performance. It needs governance.
Anything less is not culture. It is failure dressed up as faith. It is incompetence hiding behind tradition.
The mistake is serious. The damage is real. And the solution lies not with the gods—but with the people, who, unlike the ancestors, still have the power to vote.
