Nigerian elites, middle class are depriving common masses
The world appears to be sliding into a long dusk. Crime expands, values erode, and the language of power increasingly sounds like noise rather than meaning. Global anxieties—rumors of a Third World War, diplomatic theatrics, and strongman interventions—mirror a deeper moral fatigue. Yet, beyond global headlines, Nigeria’s crisis is intimate and local. It lives in […]
The world appears to be sliding into a long dusk. Crime expands, values erode, and the language of power increasingly sounds like noise rather than meaning. Global anxieties—rumors of a Third World War, diplomatic theatrics, and strongman interventions—mirror a deeper moral fatigue. Yet, beyond global headlines, Nigeria’s crisis is intimate and local. It lives in markets where desperation is normalized, in offices where compromise is rewarded, in clubs where illusion is currency, and in gated estates where comfort coexists with indifference. The nation’s hollowness is not merely economic; it is psychological, ethical, and generational.
Nigeria’s elites and middle class have fashioned a personality that thrives on appearances. They speak reform while perfecting deception, preach patriotism while privatizing public goods, and celebrate success while divorcing it from service. This culture of unreality has confused a younger generation already struggling under unemployment, insecurity, and eroded trust. When leadership models shortcuts, the youth learn shortcuts. When influence is wielded without accountability, ambition mutates into recklessness. The result is not simply poverty, but a poverty of meaning.
Instituted poverty in Nigeria is sustained by rhetoric, gimmicks, and enchantment. The poor are not mocked merely because they lack money; they are mocked because knowledge has been withheld and emancipation delayed. Ignorance becomes a tool. Hope is rationed. Civic education is neglected. In this vacuum, the powerful exploit the uninformed—youths hungry for relevance, local women seeking survival, and the greedy tempted by quick gains. Exploitation wears many uniforms: recruitment into violent networks, financial fraud disguised as hustle, ritual economies fed by superstition, and organ trafficking enabled by silence and fear. The mounting toll—lives lost to terrorism, banditry, kidnapping, and criminal enterprise—is not accidental; it is the harvest of prolonged neglect.
The average well-to-do Nigerian—business moguls, directors, executives, and entrepreneurs—must confront an uncomfortable truth. Too often, success is pursued without conscience. Profit is decoupled from people. Philanthropy is performative, while tax evasion and regulatory capture hollow out institutions. In families, children absorb cynicism; in companies, shortcuts are normalized; in offices, loyalty is traded for favors. Behind heavily guarded government residences, policies are drafted with distance from daily suffering. This emotional detachment is not neutrality; it is complicity.
Political power amplifies these patterns. The federal government under the APC, by many citizens’ assessment, appears undeterred in consolidating wealth and influence, even when policies intensify inequality. Governance becomes a contest of cabals, and the public interest is reduced to a slogan. Regardless of partisan loyalty, Nigerians experience the consequences in fuel queues, inflation, insecurity, and a justice system that often feels selective. When power signals that outcomes matter more than process, society learns to cheat the system.
Yet despair is not destiny. Redirection begins with the mind. Literate citizens must reclaim their intellectual agency—reading beyond propaganda, questioning policies, and insisting on evidence. Knowledge dismantles enchantment. The will follows: choosing integrity over convenience, refusing to normalize corruption, and building enterprises that value people as much as profit. Emotion must be disciplined—outrage guided into civic action, compassion translated into mentorship, and hope grounded in work rather than wishful thinking. Finally, personality is formed at the intersection of values, beliefs, convictions, and standards. When these are compromised, society limps; when they are aligned, nations heal.
Young Nigerians deserve a clear charge: stand for something meaningful or risk being used for anything. This is not a call to violence, but to courage—civic courage, ethical courage, and the courage to dissent responsibly. Register, vote, volunteer, organize, innovate, and hold leaders accountable through lawful means. Build communities of learning. Demand transparency in markets and merit in offices. Refuse to trade dignity for proximity to power.
The hope of the common masses does not lie in saviours, but in a reformed elite and an awakened middle class that understands its stewardship. Nigeria’s renewal requires leaders who measure success by lives improved, not luxuries acquired. It requires citizens who remember who they are—and who they can become—when values are honoured and knowledge is shared. In reclaiming the mind, the will, the emotion, and the personality of the well-to-do, the nation can redirect its future from darkness toward durable light.
Obiotika wrote from Living Grace Restoration Assembly Inc. in Nkono-Ekwulobia, Anambra State.