Nigeria’s public institutions are the backbone of the nation, tasked with delivering education, healthcare, infrastructure, and essential services to millions. Yet, when the country’s brightest young minds consistently choose other paths, these institutions lose something irreplaceable: fresh thinking, high expectations, and the energy of those who still believe change is possible.
I never planned to care about public service. My parents were dedicated public servants, but their path didn’t feel like mine. When I envisioned my future, other options seemed more exciting, dynamic, and aligned with the impact I wanted to make. So, I moved on.
It wasn’t until later, working closely with public institutions through my role at the Aig-Imoukhuede Foundation, that I saw what I had missed. Public service isn’t a backdrop to national development; it is the foundation. That realization reshaped my thinking and made me wonder how many young Nigerians are stuck where I once was—not indifferent to impact, but unable to see public service as a place where impact lives.
The data backs this up. A 2021 study on public service perceptions among young and middle-aged Nigerians revealed a deeply negative view of how it operates and what it offers. Final-year undergraduates were the most pessimistic. Ask a room of young graduates where they want to build careers, and you’ll hear entrepreneurship, tech, and the private sector. Public service rarely comes up—and when it does, it’s usually with a qualifier.
The reasons are clear. Many young Nigerians have grown up hearing stories of bureaucracy, delays, and frustration. Those with direct experience—through the National Youth Service Corps or as citizens trying to access services—often leave with their optimism dented. For a generation that moves fast and expects results, a system that appears slow and rewards patience over performance is a tough sell.
But this narrative misses something crucial. Institutions don’t change only through sweeping reforms. Much of the progress happens quietly, through incremental improvements by people working steadily on the inside. The perception that nothing changes in public service is partly true, but it’s also a story we tell ourselves because the changes that do happen rarely make headlines.
The challenge, then, isn’t just structural. It’s about belief.
The loudest stories about Nigeria’s public sector are tales of dysfunction. But they aren’t the whole story. Across institutions, there are officials doing work that rarely gets attention—improving data systems, streamlining service delivery, reducing friction, and making things work better within systems not built for efficiency.
When talented young people consistently build careers elsewhere, public institutions lose fresh thinking, high expectations, and the energy of those who believe things can be different. Over time, this creates a quiet but serious problem: systems designed to serve a young, dynamic population end up shaped by fewer young voices. The gap between who builds public institutions and who they serve keeps widening. The consequences show up in daily life—in how long people wait, how much they receive, and how much they trust the state to show up.
The narrative shapes the pipeline. If the only stories young people hear about public service are of stagnation, the most ambitious will look elsewhere, and institutions needing new energy will go without it.
When young people turn away from public service, they aren’t turning away from impact. They’re turning away from a system they believe is too hard to change. Shifting that perception isn’t just a communications challenge; it’s a governance challenge.
This drives our work at the Aig-Imoukhuede Foundation. We invest in strengthening public servants—building skills, confidence, and capacity for systems-level thinking—so government institutions perform better and deliver more for citizens. It’s not glamorous like launching a startup, but over time, it changes what public service looks and feels like from the inside. When institutions function better and produce visible results, they become more credible. They become spaces ambitious, capable young people can imagine themselves in.
If we want stronger public institutions in ten years, we need young people today who believe those institutions are worth their talent. That means more than encouraging service; it means showing them, with evidence and stories, that public service is a place where committed people make real differences.
Institutions don’t get better on their own. They get better when people decide they’re worth staying in, worth improving, and worth fighting for from the inside. That decision starts with belief. And belief starts with the stories we choose to tell.
Chioma Bright-Uhara is the deputy director of communications at the Aig-Imoukhuede Foundation.
