Nigeria - The Stark Reality and Smoothing Groove
At times, it feels like Nigeria is treated less like a country and more like contraband, meaning something a few people grab, divide, and protect when challenged. Citizens shouldn’t have to fight to know who leads, where public funds go, how agencies form, or who is responsible when things go wrong. Even these simple questions can seem like asking for a special favor from those in power. Meanwhile, millions of Nigerians are too busy trying to survive to keep asking.
Every day, millions of Nigerians struggle with food, transport, rent, school fees, medical bills, electricity, and personal safety. Poor leadership appears at home as hunger, debt, failed businesses, missed school, fear of travel, and the shame of not providing. Hardship forces people to focus on their next meal, fare, or emergency. Economists call the choices people make under this pressure 'smoothing.'
Families with unstable incomes manage risk by planting different crops, working several jobs, borrowing from relatives, skipping meals, or delaying school fees. Some protect their motorcycle, land, livestock, or equipment that could help them earn in the future, even if it means sacrificing their well-being now. These choices might help them get by today but often make poverty worse in the long run. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs helps explain how this affects politics.
When people fight for food, shelter, and safety, they have little time or energy to follow government budgets, join protests, or demand answers. Just surviving takes all their effort, and holding leaders accountable feels out of reach. Politicians take advantage of this exhaustion since hardship keeps people too busy to challenge them. The large number of people living in poverty makes this problem worse.
In 2022, the National Bureau of Statistics said 63 percent of Nigerians, about 133 million people, were poor in more ways than income. The measure included education, healthcare, living conditions, jobs, and safety. Politicians know a bag of rice, some cash, or a short-term subsidy can mean a lot to desperate people. While this relief can help a hungry family, it is not the same as real governance.
When leaders tolerate conditions that make people desperate and later return with food packages, cameras, and speeches, they help citizens manage pain rather than escape it. The family survives the week, the politician gets the photograph, and the conditions causing hardship remain untouched. It is like repairing the same damaged road every year while refusing to fix the drainage causing its collapse. The same mistake repeats whenever poverty is patched with palliatives instead of addressed at its source.
The rain returns, the drainage fails, and the newly repaired road breaks apart again. Inflation, unemployment, insecurity, broken schools, failing hospitals, and unreliable electricity continue to destroy whatever temporary relief families receive. The government then celebrates another intervention while citizens remain trapped in the same conditions. This is why public advice by the Nigerian First Lady to sell akara or produce kuli-kuli can sound insulting, even when the work itself is honorable.
There is dignity in selling akara, producing kuli-kuli, roasting corn, farming, or trading. Many Nigerians ask for an economy in which the woman selling akara can become a food processor, employer, supplier, or exporter rather than remain trapped on the edge of survival. The government should create room for people to grow rather than praising them for enduring conditions that keep them small.
Affordable credit, reliable electricity, good roads, security, storage, insurance, and access to markets can turn survival businesses into growing enterprises. Comfortable commentators, like some friends I discussed with just last week in Ikeja, still call struggling Nigerians lazy while ignoring the farmer who cannot safely reach his land, the trader who must buy fuel before opening, and the graduate who has searched for work for years. Hard work matters, but it cannot replace institutions that make hard work productive. The weakness of those institutions is also evident in how Nigeria now practices democracy.
The Senate President leads the chamber expected to question the executive, examine budgets, investigate government failures, and restrain presidential excesses. He should not regularly appear to function as the president's spokesman or personal representative. When the Senate President repeatedly speaks for the president or represents him at occasions, the boundary between the executive and legislature becomes difficult to see. Cooperation between the two branches is necessary, but cooperation should not become surrender.
Checks and balances have meaning only when institutions work together without becoming extensions of one another. The Senate loses its purpose when its leadership appears more interested in defending the executive than holding it accountable. Citizens lose an important layer of protection when every arm of government speaks with the same voice. The PFIPC scandal shows the danger of allowing authority, responsibility, and oversight to become blurred.
The presidency has claimed that the purported Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council did not legally exist and accused Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew of using forged documents and false claims of presidential backing. Yet, the body reportedly operated from the Federal Secretariat for about two years and appeared in the 2026
Appropriation Act with approximately ₦1.3 billion attached to it. Head of the Civil Service Esther Walson-Jack told lawmakers recently that the office PFIPC occupied had been allocated to the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation. A man may forge a letter, but he cannot casually allocate himself government office space or insert public money into an appropriation act.
Investigators must therefore establish who granted the council access to that office, who knew it was operating there, who processed the budget entry, and who accepted its official correspondence. President Bola Tinubu has directed the ICPC (Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offenses Commission) to investigate how an entity disowned by the presidency as fraudulent could operate from within the Federal Secretariat. The administrative trail matters more than the convenience of placing the entire scandal on one suspect. Following that trail should inevitably bring the investigation close to some of the most powerful offices in government.
The ICPC has confirmed that Chief of Staff, Femi Gbajabiamila appeared at its Abuja headquarters on July 20, 2026, at the investigators' invitation. Gbajabiamila gave a statement, attended to inquiries, and left after spending some time with the commission. The ICPC stated that he was not arrested and that its investigation remained ongoing. Adeyemi had already been arrested, questioned, and prosecuted, leaving a visible difference in how those connected to the affair were being treated.
Gbajabiamila controls access to the president and holds one of the most powerful positions in government. Remaining in that office while investigators examine how the PFIPC acquired public space, budgetary recognition, and the appearance of official authority casts a shadow over the process. Temporarily stepping aside would protect the investigation's integrity and show that powerful officials are not treated differently from others.
Loyalty may be valuable in politics, but the government's reputation should matter more. Keir Starmer faced serious criticism over the appointment of Peter Mandelson as Britain’s ambassador to the United States despite concerns about Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and questions about the vetting process. Mandelson was later removed, while Starmer’s Chief of Staff, Morgan McSweeney, resigned and accepted responsibility for recommending the appointment.
The controversy increased doubts about Starmer’s judgment and added to the political pressure surrounding his leadership. Protecting a trusted official can eventually damage the entire government when the public believes accountability has been sacrificed for loyalty.
Investors, diplomats, international partners, and ordinary citizens will judge the PFIPC investigation by how it handles both the weak and the powerful. Every public council or program should have a clear legal basis, identifiable leadership, a supervising authority, an approved budget, and auditable records. Calling the PFIPC fake does not explain how it obtained office space, budgetary recognition, appointment documents, and access to public institutions. Accountability loses its meaning when it applies only to those who are easy to arrest, detain, or sacrifice.
The House committee should identify every official involved in allocating the office, processing the budget entry, opening accounts, or accepting correspondence from the council. The ICPC should also follow the evidence without stopping where political convenience begins. While Nigeria’s casual treatment of responsibility has weakened public confidence in nearly every institution, its treatment of human life can be even more disturbing.
I have sometimes felt ashamed discussing Nigeria with people in the United States because of how seriously even the mistreatment or death of an animal can be treated there. Animal cruelty can lead to criminal charges, and a necropsy may be ordered to establish how an animal died. Yet, a human body can remain beside the road for days in some Nigerian cities while traffic passes and no urgent effort is made to identify the person, contact the family, or investigate the death.
The painful question is why a human life can attract less urgency in Nigeria than an animal’s life would receive elsewhere. Mary Habila’s death struck such a deep nerve because of that contrast. Mary died on June 27, 2026, at the Uburu residence of Works Minister David Umahi, but it took media reporting, public pressure, and growing outrage before serious calls for a forensic examination gathered momentum.
A sudden death in such circumstances should trigger an immediate and thorough investigation, regardless of who owns the house or how powerful those connected to it may be. Nigerians should not need journalists, activists, and the internet to force the state to value a young woman’s life. Nigeria is not contraband, and it should not be managed as the private property of a small group of people.
It also belongs equally to citizens without political connections, famous surnames, or voices powerful enough to command national attention. Government should not merely teach people how to smooth over, manage, and endure hardship caused by public failure. It should remove the conditions keeping them poor, protect the living, respect the dead, and make power answer to the people equally.
