I just returned from a one week trip to Nigeria travelling by road doing Lagos – Sagamu – Abeokuta – Ibadan – Sagamu – Lagos – Ibadan – Osogbo – Erin Osun – Ibadan – Sagamu – Lagos, and I need to get this off my chest.
A slightly long thread. What I saw on this trip isn’t just a a country struggling, it is a Nation trapped in cycles of extreme political sycophancy, deep and intentional dysfunction and collective delusion.
The future of Nigeria is bleaker nothingness and despair.
A country where praise matters more than progress. You travel from Lagos to Ogun to Osun and Oyo, from Abeokuta to Sagamu to Ikeja, Apapa, Ibadan and Osogbo.
What hits you is the same theme, neglect disguised as governance.
Roads are falling apart. Public spaces are run down. Infrastructure is either abandoned mid project or done so poorly it becomes unusable. Basic things like waste management and drainage are still a fantasy in many places.
Have you seen the state of Agege Motor Road?
In the middle of all the decay, there are giant billboards standing tall with glossy pictures of governors and political figures praising them as the best things that has ever happened to their respective states. Wild.
Praise is mass produced. Progress is missing in action.
The sycophancy and needless praise singing isn’t even accidental, it’s systemic. An entire industry and livelihoods have been built on worshiping politicians.
Influentials, civil servants and media houses are paid to praise, not to question.
In Oyo, Ogun and Osun State, Ondo. there are more billboards of Seyi, Dapo, Ayedatiwa, Adeleke. than they have streetlights.
We’ve turned governance into theatre. A place where leaders don’t need results, just optics.
Paint a few buses, start a road you’ll never finish, hold a rally and boom…you are a performing governor.
In Lagos, the BRT bus system has fallen apart die to poor maintenance. The few buses on the road are rickety.
What’s wrong with everybody?
Oh, let’s not even talk about the POS business. Maybe it was once a clever idea at to solve a gap in the banking system but what you now have is a permanent crutch.
All of you have accepted that you shouldn’t be able to access your money without paying someone else to do it.
Banks close branches. ATMs are either down, empty or overcrowded. No one is even talking about fixing the core issues again, you’ve just normalised POS as the solution.
The lines are endless. Congratulations Nigerians, you have solved a problem by creating a new one.
Everywhere you turn, lawlessness just exists. It’s not even in the dramatic sense but in the quiet everyday kind that slowly kills a Nation.
No traffic rules, you all drive like crazy people or like you have an appointment with death.
No control whatsoever. Just stupid vibes.
Let’s not start with the rot that welcomes you when you step into public institutions. Overstaffed and unproductive brats.
You ask a simple question and you are directed to four desks. Buying and selling is prioritised instead.
It all ends with “oga, wetin you bring?”
The airport. Oh my God. Some of you travel abroad, come back to Nigeria and claim you can see the development or growth at Nigerian airports. Shame on you.
Immigration officers ask for tips like they’re doing you a favour. Customs and NDLEA officers nudge you for it.
No, these are not isolated incidents, this is the system.
And the people? Tired in a dangerous way. A quiet surrender. You are all laughing at dysfunction. Adapting to nonsense.
“But what can we do about it?”
This is not resilience. This is trauma.
Development isn’t just about roads and bridges. They can’t even doing that well.
It’s about systems that works but Nigerian politicians are profiting from the disorder. That’s why there are no consequences for failure.
We’ve normalised too much that shouldn’t be acceptable.
Celebrating mediocrity and rewarding corruption is exactly how a nation is set on a continuous path of decline. Nigeria is spiralling and there seems to be no end in sight.
Potential without honesty is a lie.
Our collective tolerance for failure need to die.
You are not going to build a successful nation on billboards, shortcuts and selective outrage.
A change of faces without a total system reset will not even fix the country as it stands.
The people have stopped believing in better. Sigh.
End of disjointed rant.
Bye.
A NATION TRAPPED IN DEEP DYSFUNCTION BY KAYODE OSO
