What Nigeria faces today isn’t just bad governance, it is a complete national hijack. A ruthless, insatiable elite has held the country hostage, gorging on public funds while the masses suffocate under the crushing weight of poverty, insecurity, unemployment, and despair. For over sixty years, the same decaying hands that once wrecked this country have refused to let go, clinging to power like parasites, draining the life out of over 200 million citizens, most of them young, brilliant, and desperate for a better future.
Corruption is no longer a scandal in Nigeria, it is a tradition. When Ahmed Idris, the former Accountant-General, was arrested in 2022 for allegedly looting ₦80 billion, it sparked a brief uproar. But as with all scandals involving the elite, the storm quickly passed. Why? Because Idris was just a pawn, one visible claw of a monstrous hydra of systemic looting. The truth is brutal: from crude oil heists in the creeks of the Niger Delta to inflated contracts in ministries and bogus budget lines, the Nigerian state is nothing but a sophisticated criminal enterprise wrapped in democratic jargon.
Even the judiciary, once a beacon of justice, has become a cynical caricature of itself. It now operates like an open market, where verdicts are auctioned off and justice is reserved only for the highest bidder. Figures like Justice Rita Ofili-Ajumogobia, disgraced for money laundering, casually return to the bench without consequence. Court orders are routinely disregarded or manipulated. The rule of law is now a privilege, not a right. The system protects the powerful and punishes the powerless.
The legislature is no better. What should be the voice of the people has degenerated into a theater of greed. Lawmakers no longer craft policies, they broker deals. Oversight has been reduced to extortion. The 2016 budget padding scandal wasn’t a rogue event, it was standard procedure. Today’s National Assembly is a conclave of political entrepreneurs more interested in bloated allowances and “constituency projects” that exist only in the imagination than in meaningful governance.
The executive arm, on its part, oscillates shamelessly between absenteeism and authoritarianism. The 2025 declaration of emergency in Rivers State by President Bola Tinubu, suspending the elected governor and the House of Assembly, wasn’t just a power grab, it was a chilling reminder of how fragile our democracy has become. That a single man could effectively dissolve democratic institutions under the flimsiest pretext, and face no resistance from other power brokers, exposes a deeper rot: the entire system is complicit.
At the very heart of this national catastrophe is the toxic dominance of gerontocracy. In a nation where the median age is 18, political leadership remains locked in the clutches of men nearing 80. These are men who crashed the economy in the ’80s, weaponized ethnicity in the ’90s, and rebranded as “elders” in the 2000s, now seeking to lead a digital age they neither understand nor belong to. In the 2023 elections, both major parties shamelessly paraded septuagenarians, one visibly infirm, the other dragging a trail of unresolved controversies. That these were the best options presented to a youthful nation is a damning indictment of our political system.
Worse still, these old guards are not planning to leave anytime soon. They’re grooming their children, allies, and political offspring to inherit the machinery of looting. Politics in Nigeria has become a family business. Power is no longer about service, it’s about succession. The corridors of leadership have been barricaded against merit, vision, and innovation. The political space is a fortress where ideas are starved and sycophancy is rewarded.
The result? A country on life support. Universities are underfunded and frequently shut down. Hospitals are under-equipped and overcrowded. Roads are death traps. Electricity is erratic. Hunger walks the streets like a ghost, haunting every household. Millions of citizens go to bed without food, while their leaders feast in luxury, chartering private jets to medical appointments abroad and sending their children to Ivy League schools, paid for by the very taxpayers they’ve abandoned. Instead of bold policies, we get rice-filled goody bags. Instead of development blueprints, we’re fed jingles and slogans. Instead of justice, we get bullets and cover-ups, as the #EndSARS movement so tragically revealed.
This is Nigeria’s last chance. We are standing on the precipice of irreversible collapse. The system, as it stands, cannot and will not save us. The same gerontocratic elite who led us into this mess are incapable of leading us out. Their primary instinct is self-preservation. Their version of peace is silence. Their definition of progress is profit. They will not stop until the nation is bled dry, until every young dreamer has either fled the country or buried their ambitions in frustration.
Let’s be clear: this is not a call for quiet reform. It is a call for political and civic war. The kind of war that demands strategy, unity, sacrifice, and an unrelenting sense of purpose. A war not waged with bullets, but with boycotts, ballots, mass mobilizations, global pressure, and unflinching resistance.
We must bankrupt their empire of corruption. Hit them where it hurts, their businesses, their brands, their offshore accounts. Refuse to fund their banks. Boycott their telecom monopolies. Demand transparency from every government contractor and leak the names of those who enable this parasitic order. Freeze their assets abroad with help from the diaspora. Expose them in global financial networks and international courts.
We must paralyze their engine of oppression. General strikes must last beyond a day. They must cut deep into the veins of the economy until the system begins to cannibalize itself. Occupy public spaces, refuse to go quietly, and let every sector, from aviation to academia, grind to a halt until a new social contract is on the table.
We must infiltrate. Plant lawyers, auditors, whistleblowers, tech-savvy patriots and principled insiders into every government agency. Dismantle the machine from within. Leak documents, expose crimes, empower citizen journalists. Use data and documentation as ammunition. Hack their secrets, illuminate their lies, and turn the very system they built into a weapon against them.
The diaspora must not sit this out. From London to Atlanta, from Toronto to Dubai, protests must storm embassies. Political action groups must push for sanctions, asset seizures, and visa bans. No corrupt leader should be allowed to stash stolen wealth abroad and still be welcomed into Western economies. Let international shame follow them like a shadow.
And for those still in Nigeria: this fight begins at home. Organize not just online, but on the ground. Build political movements that aren’t personality cults. Train young minds to run for office, not run from hardship. Fund grassroots campaigns. Demand televised debates, scrutinize manifestos, and call out the charlatans hiding behind party symbols. Weaponize every vote, every tweet, every town hall. Stop surrendering power to men who cannot even define innovation, let alone implement it.
We must abandon tribalism, it is a poison weaponized by the elite to divide us. Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, Ijaw, Tiv, our common enemy is not each other. It is the class of corrupt political warlords who exploit our differences while uniting to loot our collective future. Their children are not fighting. They are golfing together in London and vacationing in the Maldives. So why should we kill ourselves in their name?
Let us reclaim Nigeria, not for ourselves alone, but for the generations unborn. Let history remember that when our nation was gasping, we gave it air. When it was bleeding, we became its bandage. When it was betrayed, we chose to fight.
This country cannot be rebuilt by those who broke it. It cannot be saved by men who don’t believe it’s worth saving. It will not be rescued by retired generals, recycled senators, or geriatric gatekeepers. It must be reborn by visionaries, innovators, builders, and warriors of truth. The future belongs to those who can dream it, and fight like hell to birth it.
We don’t have another decade. We barely have another election cycle. The time is now, not tomorrow, not next year. We either rise and reclaim Nigeria from the vultures that circle overhead, or we accept a fate of permanent decline and global irrelevance.
The choice is ours. The time is short. The battle is righteous. The future is waiting.
By Hon. Chimazuru Nnadi-Oforgu
Duruebube Uzii na Abosi
OBLONG MEDIA UNLIMITED 
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