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Every Household Its Own Government: Improvised Infrastructure, Entrepreneurial Citizens, and the State in Nigeria
An up-close account of how Nigerians’ self-reliance in the absence of reliable government services enables official dysfunction to strengthen state power
When Nigerians say that every household is its own local government, what they mean is that the politicians and state institutions of Africa’s richest, most populous country cannot be trusted to ensure even the most basic infrastructure needs of their people. Daniel Jordan Smith traces how innovative entrepreneurs and ordinary citizens in Nigeria have forged their own systems in response to these deficiencies, devising creative solutions in the daily struggle to survive.
Drawing on his three decades of experience in Nigeria, Smith examines the many ways Nigerians across multiple social strata develop technologies, businesses, social networks, political strategies, cultural repertoires, and everyday routines to cope with the constant failure of government infrastructure. He describes how Nigerians provide for basic needs like water, electricity, transportation, security, communication, and education—and how their inventiveness comes with consequences. On the surface, it may appear that their self-reliance and sheer hustle render the state irrelevant. In reality, the state is not so much absent as complicit. Smith shows how private efforts to address infrastructural shortcomings require regular engagement with government officials, shaping the experience of citizenship and strengthening state power.
Every Household Its Own Government reveals how these dealings have contributed to forms and practices of governance that thrive on official dysfunction and perpetuate the very inequalities and injustices that afflict struggling Nigerians.
When Nigerians say that every household is its own local government, what they mean is that the politicians and state institutions of Africa’s richest, most populous country cannot be trusted to ensure even the most basic infrastructure needs of their people. Daniel Jordan Smith traces how innovative entrepreneurs and ordinary citizens in Nigeria have forged their own systems in response to these deficiencies, devising creative solutions in the daily struggle to survive.
Drawing on his three decades of experience in Nigeria, Smith examines the many ways Nigerians across multiple social strata develop technologies, businesses, social networks, political strategies, cultural repertoires, and everyday routines to cope with the constant failure of government infrastructure. He describes how Nigerians provide for basic needs like water, electricity, transportation, security, communication, and education—and how their inventiveness comes with consequences. On the surface, it may appear that their self-reliance and sheer hustle render the state irrelevant. In reality, the state is not so much absent as complicit. Smith shows how private efforts to address infrastructural shortcomings require regular engagement with government officials, shaping the experience of citizenship and strengthening state power.
Every Household Its Own Government reveals how these dealings have contributed to forms and practices of governance that thrive on official dysfunction and perpetuate the very inequalities and injustices that afflict struggling Nigerians.
232 pages, Paperback
Published March 8, 2022
15 people want to read
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October 26, 2025
I loved this academic book! It was such a rich ethnography on informal economy in Nigeria yet very accessible in its writing. I highly recommend as this book interrogates through water, electricity, education, transportation, security, and telecommunication, the ways in which despite the state's inability to provide these basic infrastructures, Nigerians have created a bustling informal economy that makes up for the lack of these resources, yet it is that bustling informal economy that continues to sustain state failure and inequities. Anywho, wonderful book and you should definite pick it up. Next up, Judith Byfield's A Great Upheaval: Women and Nation in Post-War Nigeria!
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