no longer shocks us. Fuel prices climb.

Food prices double.

Electricity flickers like a dying candle.

Unemployment and underemployment hang over the youth like a permanent cloud.

Yet at election time, we sell tomorrow for a meal today.

A sachet of rice.

A few ears of agbado.

Five thousand naira pressed into a waiting palm.

We trade four years for five minutes.

The tragedy is not only in the politicians who offer the bribe. It is in the citizens who accept it.

Corruption is not born in the villa alone; _it is incubated in the streets, in the churches, in the mosques, in the marketplaces._

The politician buys because he knows we will sell. He steals because he knows we will defend him.

He fails because he knows we will excuse him.

We call it loyalty.

We call it party.

We call it tribe.

We call it religion.

It is none of these things. It is surrender.

The constitution of Nigeria provides for recall.

It provides for impeachment.

It provides for lawful resistance to bad governance.

But we do not use these tools. We would rather compose songs for men who cannot build roads.

We upload their pictures. We defend their failures online. We insult our neighbors for daring to demand better. We suffer. Then we pretend.

Fela Kuti called it “Suffering and Smiling.” He saw the madness decades ago.

Today it is worse. Now we suffer and perform happiness on social media. We curate poverty with filters.

We celebrate crumbs as breakthroughs. We normalize decline.

The cost is not abstract.

The cost is a graduate driving a keke because no jobs exist.

The cost is a mother choosing between medicine and food. The cost is a child whose dreams shrink to survival.

In any functioning democracy, a government that presides over spiraling inflation, currency collapse, mass unemployment, and deepening insecurity would tremble before its citizens.

It would not survive on slogans. It would not survive on propaganda. It would not survive a single term without fierce accountability.

But here, the inverted becomes normal...

We excuse failure because “our person” is in power. We forgive looting because “others did worse.”

We attack whistleblowers and praise thieves.

We weaponize ethnicity against truth.

We reduce national discourse to insult and loyalty tests.

And so the leaders learn quickly: the people will endure anything.

A nation does not become enslaved in a day. It becomes enslaved when its people prefer comfort over courage.

When they defend the hand that strikes them. When they choose short-term survival over long-term dignity.

Yes, the political class bears grave responsibility. They manipulate. They divide. They exploit. But they do so with our permission.

A corrupt elite without a compliant population cannot stand. We are not poor because we lack resources. We are poor because we lack collective discipline.

We are not helpless because we lack laws. We are helpless because we refuse to enforce them. We are not oppressed only by rulers.

We are oppressed by our own small compromises, multiplied millions of times.

The man who sells his vote says, “It is just me.”

The woman who defends a thief says, “It is my tribe.”

The youth who refuses to hold leaders accountable says, “Nothing will change.” Each one is right, alone. Together, they are the architecture of decay.

A nation’s morality is revealed not in its anthems, but in its choices. If we reward dishonesty, we will be governed by dishonest men. If we celebrate mediocrity, we will be led by mediocrities. If we mock integrity as weakness, we will never produce leaders of strength.

The hardest truth is this: Nigeria will not change when a new party wins.

It will change when Nigerians change.

When votes are no longer for sale.

When tribal loyalty bows to competence.

When citizens understand that democracy is not an event every four years but a daily demand for accountability.

Until then, we will continue in this cycle, electing masters, calling them saviors, and wondering why our chains grow heavier

No foreign power holds us hostage. No invisible hand writes our ballots.

We walk into polling units ourselves.

We take the money ourselves. We defend the failures ourselves.

The mirror is patient.

It waits for a nation brave enough to look into it and say: We have been our own worst enemy.

The Truth and Nothing But the Truth

ECP Channel

Editorial Team