By Alpha Amadu Jalloh
There is a certain irony in the kind of people who dominate our politics. Many of them, if we trace their roots and upbringing, are not born from the glowing lights of our towns and cities. They are not children of electricity, who grew up flickering a switch to put the lights on and seeing their world illuminated. No, they come from villages where a lamp fueled by palm oil or kerosene was the only technology of light. They come from communities where children’s eyes grew weak from the smoke of firewood, where night meant darkness and silence, not productivity or leisure. And these very people now sit at the heart of government, responsible for decisions about energy, technology, infrastructure, and the future.
It is not inherently wrong that they come from humble beginnings. Indeed, there is pride in rising from deprivation. But what is troubling is how those early experiences, combined with the shock of stepping into modern governance, leave them permanently stunned. They never really recover from the wonder of electricity, clean water, paved roads, television, air travel, and all the trappings of urban life. They remain frozen in awe, as if they are still tourists in the city, rather than leaders shaping it.
The Village Memory of Power
To understand our politicians, we must understand where they come from. Most of them grew up in small rural settlements. They never knew what it meant to simply open a tap and let water run freely. Water meant a stream, a bucket, and a long trek. To bathe was to carry, to drink was to fetch, and to cook was to plan a journey. That daily hardship shaped their survival instinct but dulled their sense of entitlement to comfort.
So, when they arrive in the city and sit in government quarters where taps run day and night, they are mesmerized. They are not thinking, “How can I extend this miracle to my people back home?” Instead, they are overwhelmed with gratitude that they themselves now have access. The instinct to build, extend, and improve is smothered by a personal sense of achievement. Their children are drinking clean water; their wives are washing clothes in sinks rather than rivers. That alone feels like progress to them. And so, they care less about extending water infrastructure to villages and slums. The deprivation of their people is normal. They endured it and survived, why should others not do the same?
The Road They Never Dreamed Of
For many of our leaders, the very idea of roads is alien. They grew up walking endless distances, sometimes 10, 15, even 20 kilometers, to reach schools, markets, or health centers. Their childhood taught them endurance, but it did not teach them the value of connectivity. For them, roads were luxuries they only saw on trips to district headquarters.
So, when they sit in ministries tasked with building bridges and highways, they see no urgency. After all, in their minds, “people can walk.” They walked. They survived. Their view of development is not one of collective transformation but of individual escape. They are content with driving their new SUVs on the few paved roads that exist, without imagining the liberation that better roads would bring to farmers, traders, schoolchildren, and patients in rural clinics.
Roads are the veins of a nation, but for politicians whose earliest journeys were barefoot treks through bush paths, the urgency of asphalt never quite registers. And so, the nation continues to stumble along.
The Television They Never Had
Consider also their relationship with information, entertainment, and technology. Growing up, many of these leaders never saw a television. Their only mirror was the reflection of their faces in a bucket of water. The idea of watching news from the world, of seeing leaders debate, or of absorbing stories through a screen was alien.
When they eventually came into contact with television, often at a relative’s house in the city, it was a marvel. It was not a tool of education, not a medium of accountability, but a spectacle. Even today, many politicians treat media as spectacle, something to be used for their image rather than for information. They pose for the cameras, they spend lavishly on coverage, they obsess over how they look on screen. But they never grasp the deeper value of television as a platform for education, civic awareness, and national dialogue. They are still in awe of the magic box that once seemed unattainable.
Shock Without Recovery
This is the heart of the problem: our politicians are in shock, and they have not recovered. The shock of electricity, the shock of running water, the shock of paved roads, the shock of television, the shock of foreign travel. When they first enter state houses and ministerial offices, their first instinct is not leadership. It is consumption. They want to taste, to enjoy, to savor the things they never had. Their families are moved into government quarters, their children into private schools, their spouses into comfortable lives.
Years pass, and they remain dazzled. They decorate themselves with luxury cars, travel allowances, foreign trips, and hotels. Their energy is spent on adjusting to their newfound privilege rather than using their power to transform society. They live in towns now, yes, but their mindset remains in the village, where scarcity was normal and comfort was unimaginable.
And while they enjoy their new lives, we the ordinary citizens who voted them wait, and wait, and wait. We wait for roads, for electricity, for schools, for hospitals, for clean water. We hope, we beg, we complain. But they are not hearing us. They are still intoxicated with the shock of their own escape from poverty.
The Citizens’ Error
Part of the blame lies with us. We mistake survival stories for leadership credentials. We celebrate the politician who grew up fetching water from the stream and walking barefoot to school. We think their poverty makes them empathetic. But in reality, it often makes them numb. They normalize suffering because they endured it. They do not fight to end it; they merely fight to escape it. And once they escape, their struggle ends.
We, the people, continue to invest hope in them, believing they will extend the benefits of their office to us. But they are too busy enjoying the privileges that we ourselves made possible by electing them. They are not planning the future; they are still recovering from the shock of the present.
What Leadership Should Mean
True leadership requires vision beyond personal experience. It requires someone who, even after drinking clean water for the first time, says: “How can I ensure every child in my village never has to fetch water again?” It requires someone who, after driving on a paved road, says: “No farmer should ever struggle to carry produce to market because of bad roads.” It requires someone who, after turning on the light, says: “This must not be a privilege; it must be a right.”
But our politicians are too few with such vision. Most stop at personal enjoyment. They have no philosophy of transformation, no urgency of equality, no ambition for universal progress. Their imagination ends at the gates of their own compound.
Before They Arrive in Town
This is why we must be cautious before celebrating the arrival of any new politician in town. Ask yourself: who are they, and what do they see when they arrive? Are they coming with a vision, or are they coming to marvel? Are they coming to build, or are they coming to consume?
We must stop electing people simply because they endured poverty. Endurance does not equal leadership. We must demand vision, ideas, and commitment. We must choose leaders who have not only escaped the village but have also imagined a better village, a better town, and a better country.
Until then, our politics will remain trapped in the shock of small men discovering big lights, and our nation will continue wasting precious years hoping that awe-struck leaders will somehow deliver transformation.
The truth is simple: until our politicians recover from their shock, nothing will change. And if we the people do not recover from our habit of electing such men and women, then we are complicit in our own stagnation.