In Nigeria, becoming a politician is not a career move — it is a dangerous initiation. The moment you take that step, you discover you have walked into fire with kerosene on your skin. From the outside, politics shines like gold, but inside, it is a storm of demands, betrayals, expectations, and spiritual battles. It is a beautiful poison: sweet when tasted, destructive when swallowed.
I have watched this system closely, lived around it, and felt its heat. I can tell you confidently that politics in this country behaves like the ancient abiku — the spirit-child who dies and returns again and again. Promises rise and fall. Hope is born, dies, and is reborn in the same season. Faces disappear today and reappear tomorrow, wearing new agbada and new lies. Nothing ever truly leaves; it only mutates and comes back.
Choosing politics here is like poking a sleeping lion and expecting applause. It is like stripping naked in a crowded market square — every eye follows you, every whisper concerns you, every action is judged, and nothing is forgiven. The moment your name appears on the ballot, your privacy evaporates like hot water on iron. The moment you win, your peace dies.
The transformation is instant.
Friends who once joked with you now begin to treat you like their personal treasury. They come with school fees, hospital bills, business proposals, spiritual problems, marital problems — everything becomes your burden. People who never gave you a kobo suddenly expect millions. Every handshake comes with a hidden demand. Every visit carries a silent invoice.
Family members turn you into a human ATM with no PIN. Press a button — money must come out. Make a call — money must come out. Even people you have never met suddenly claim blood ties. Every burial, every wedding, every naming ceremony, every rent expiry becomes your responsibility. Your account balance becomes a public assumption.
Then the party loyalists arrive, with entitlement wrapped around their necks like a scarf. These are the same people who danced during campaigns. Now they march toward you with lists:
“My son must get a job.”
“My wife must get a contract.”
“My ward must be chairman.”
“My people must be compensated.”
One refusal turns them into instant enemies. They gather in corners and whisper, “He has forgotten the people who made him.” No matter how generous you are, it is never enough. Your kindness becomes your weakness. Your boundaries become betrayal.
Meanwhile, the system itself behaves like an abiku child refusing to stay buried. Politicians fall today and rise tomorrow. Disgraced officials rebrand themselves and return. A governor leaves and reappears in the Senate. A minister is removed and resurfaces with another appointment. New parties are born, but they are led by the same old faces. The cycle refuses to break.
The public loves the convoys, the sirens, the media attention, the flowing agbada and gele. But they do not see the sleepless nights, the blackmail, the betrayals, the spiritual pressure, the loneliness, the emotional exhaustion. They do not feel the weight of expectations on your shoulders. They do not know the cost of every smile, every handshake, every decision.
In this world, you become a target for gossip, a magnet for lies, a bank for the desperate, a ladder for the ambitious, and a scapegoat for the frustrated. Your home becomes a bus stop. Your phone becomes a source of fear. Your silence becomes suspicious. Your generosity becomes entitlement. Your refusal becomes hatred.
That is why I say, without apology or exaggeration, that it is truly dangerous to become a politician in Nigeria. To enter politics is to sacrifice your comfort. To survive it is to shed your skin repeatedly, like an abiku child battling fate. To succeed in it, you must carry scars nobody will ever see.
Here, politics is not public service.
It is a battlefield.
A spiritual test.
A journey where only the reborn endure, and cowards disappear like the morning dew.
Mogaji Wole Arisekola, Publisher of The Street Journal Newspaper, writes from Ibadan.
