By Paul Taye Omituyaki
The level of poverty, insecurity, and bad governance in Nigeria should trouble every honest person. What makes it worse is that many of the people who should help fix this mess are part of it. Politicians have failed us. Many religious leaders have failed us. Even ordinary Nigerians now swindle one another just to survive or get ahead. That is how deep the rot has gone.
Somehow, we have been conditioned to define success in a very poor way. For many people, success simply means, “Let me have money while others gather crumbs from under my table.” That mindset is everywhere. It is the same spirit behind the “I better pass my neighbor” generator mentality. It is not progress. It is survival without dignity, and we have normalized it for too long.
What is most heartbreaking is seeing some young people defend this failure. They will praise the same administration that has made life harder for millions, then still come to your DM to ask for as little as 20k. How do you sing for a system in public and then privately beg because that same system has broken you?
When are we going to stand for what is right instead of defending selfish interests?
When will we say enough is enough?
When will we stop behaving like defeated people in our own land?
The painful part is that so many Nigerians are hardworking, brilliant, and resilient, both at home and in the diaspora. Yet the stories that follow us everywhere are stories of killings, corruption, poverty, and shame. Just last week here in the US, I introduced myself to someone and the first thing he asked was, “What is going on with the killings in your country?” That question changed the whole conversation. And the sad truth is, this is the kind of thing many Nigerians abroad now face regularly.
This is the cost of bad leadership. It does not only destroy roads, jobs, security, and power supply. It damages our image, our pride, and the way the world sees every Nigerian.
We must understand this clearly: things will not change until the people rise and take their country back. Not with violence, but with courage, unity, accountability, and the refusal to keep rewarding failure.
Nigeria can still be great, but not if we keep clapping for those who keep destroying it.
Not if we keep choosing tribe over truth, religion over reason, and stomach infrastructure over our future.
At some point, we must all decide whether we want to keep adjusting to suffering or finally fight for a nation we can be proud of.
A country does not die only when leaders fail. It begins to die when the people get used to the failure.
@ Omituyaki writes from the United States of America
