When you have a godfather in this country just forget all your problems are already solve and it is very very crazy when it comes to the time of politics in country if you want to context for any post for this country you just make sure that you have one big politician and you will definately win the post you context for.
The extent to which you can go depends on the level of the godfather o. He must be someone that have capacity, someone that can fix things for you and who will be willing to go dirty to make things align for you. Godfatherism is seen in everything, even in the ministries, educational sector, religious institutions. There is this popular saying: "follow who know road", that is a way of glorifying godfatherism.
It may not actually be a Nigerian thing because in the formal world, they call it mentorship. It is believed that when you have a mentor, you grow faster in your career and in life generally because he will be like a guide to you. Unfortunately, the Nigerian context added some modifications to make it cult-like where the mentee is sometimes bounded by oath, this is where the problems start. This practice also add a kind of master-slave relationship to the entire thing thereby making it look discouraging to keeping a mentor especially in politics.