Emotional Labour and Governance Fatigue: Bearing the Weight of Leadership in a Wounded Society By Professor Chinwe Obuaku
Visiting Professor, Global Affairs and Sustainable Development Institute (GASDi), UNIOSUN,
Consultant to the Osun State Government on Climate Change and Renewable Energy
Leadership, for all its glory, is an emotional crucible.
In theory, it is a role of vision, coordination, and delivery. In practice, especially within fragile democracies and economically strained societies like ours, it is something more invisible, more consuming, and more humanly taxing. Leadership is emotional labour. It is the work of holding steady, absorbing pain, filtering rage, managing perception, and making peace with the thanklessness that often accompanies public service.
This dimension of leadership is rarely acknowledged in policy circles or the public imagination. But in Nigeria, and particularly at the sub-national level where leaders are closest to their people and yet most constrained in capacity, this emotional burden can be as crushing as the fiscal and institutional ones. It leads to what I call “governance fatigue”: a slow, grinding erosion of empathy, clarity, and stamina that results not from apathy, but from overexposure to the contradictions of leading in a deeply unequal society.
This is not a commentary on poor leadership. On the contrary, it is a reflection on the emotional cost of good leadership, of trying to govern with sincerity and foresight in an atmosphere saturated with distrust, misinformation, and economic pain.
We must ask, with clear eyes and open hearts: How does a leader keep an open ear as democracy requires without being drowned by distracting voices and malicious messages? How does one remain accessible without becoming emotionally available to constant injury?
How does one lead in good faith when even the governed, often unintentionally, become sources of profound discouragement?
The uncomfortable truth is that the same people we lead are sometimes the ones who wound us most deeply. Not out of cruelty, but because poverty distorts the social contract. It turns unmet needs into accusations, delays into betrayals, and vulnerability into volatility. In a context where public trust is thin and material deprivation is thick, leadership is interpreted less through intent and more through optics.
This distortion creates a vicious feedback loop: the leader begins to anticipate rejection and resistance; the people, conditioned by disappointment, respond to policy with suspicion; both sides withdraw emotionally even if they remain formally engaged.
Over time, this leads to a culture where the leader, no matter how well-intentioned, feels unheard, unappreciated, and unprotected. This is governance fatigue. It is the quiet despair that settles in when impact is not visible, trust is eroded, and leadership becomes synonymous with self-defence.
What if we began to see emotional resilience as a core governance capacity? Not a private virtue, but a public necessity. Just as we measure the effectiveness of a leader by their ability to budget or legislate, should we not also measure it by their ability to remain emotionally whole, empathetic and sane?
This is especially important for those of us serving at the intersection of government and community, those who must translate national policy into local relevance while being held emotionally accountable by people who often live in chronic scarcity.
In Osun State, where I serve as a consultant to the Governor on climate change and renewable energy, I have witnessed the fatigue firsthand. Not from lack of ideas or intention, but from the toll that relational governance takes on a person’s spirit. One must constantly balance hope with realism, accessibility with boundaries, compassion with firmness.
The expectation is that one must never be tired, never say no, never miss a cue. And when those expectations are unmet, criticism is swift and often personal.
Where Do We Go From Here?
We need a shift. We need to normalise conversations about the emotional landscape of governance. We need to build support structures for leaders, spaces where reflection, rest, and recalibration are possible. We must train future leaders not just in policy and management, but in emotional literacy, stress regulation, and trauma-informed governance.
We must also deepen public understanding that leadership is a shared journey. That citizens too hold power, in how they speak, what they amplify, and how they engage. It is not wrong for people to demand. But demands made without empathy erode the very people we expect to serve us.
The goal, then, is not a leadership immune to criticism, but one supported by a culture that recognizes the cost of carrying so many hearts, so many expectations, and so much pain on one’s shoulders.
In Conclusion, we cannot build a just and thriving society without strong leadership. But neither can we sustain leadership if we do not protect its humanity.
If governance is to remain ethical and effective, then we must treat emotional sustainability not as a luxury, but as a necessity. For when the leader’s heart breaks silently, the system trembles slowly, and then all at once.
Let us build leaders who can feel, and a society that understands what it costs them to keep feeling.
