In the savannah of Nigeria’s political and social landscape stands a shepherd draped in the skin of a leopard, a ruler who speaks the language of protection but governs in an era marked by hunger, fear, and exhaustion. This image captures the paradox confronting over 220 million Nigerians today: a nation led by authority, yet besieged by economic suffocation and relentless insecurity.
The flock is restless. The grass is thinning. And the predators grow bolder.
Economic Reforms and the Excruciating Hardship.
Undoubtedly, Nigeria’s economy has become an arena of painful adjustments. Though the removal of fuel subsidy in 2023 was described as inevitable, saving the government an estimated ₦4 to 7 trillion annually; however, the shock to the masses was immediate where petrol prices rose by over 300% within weeks which, invariably doubled or tripled transport fares nationwide; with food inflation crossing 35% in 2024, the highest in more than three decades subsequently, making inflation to surge beyond 33%, eroding wages and savings without any visible respite for the citizenry.
Additionally, what is the rationale behind government through NNPC spending a whooping questionable N17.5 trillion on pipeline security in just one year?; an amount that was previously spent on fuel subsidy for more than 12 years. Imagining the level of respite with succor this amount can give to the citizenry can never be overemphasized. What can this be ascribed to when using the mouth to share the meat that belongs to all?
The World Bank estimates that over 104 million Nigerians presently live in multidimensional poverty. Essentially, millions of Nigerians cannot sustainably afford food, healthcare, shelter, or education. Contemporary situations has shown that, in Kano, daily bread that sold for ₦500 now sells for ₦1,300 while in Lagos, commercial transport fares rose by 150–250%; so also in Benue and Niger states, farmers have abandoned fields due to insecurity and high fertilizer costs, cutting food supply further.
The naira devaluation from about ₦460/$1 to over ₦1,500/$1 at various points has crushed import dependent businesses where manufacturers reported production costs rising by 120–180%, consequently forcing layoffs and closures. Inclusively, youth unemployment has remained above 33% with underemployment affecting another 20/25% while over 2million Nigerians migrate yearly through legal and irregular routes.
Invariably, while macro-economic indicators are being defended from Abuja, the grassroots economy withers consequentially.
Deductions from these indices has to do with intentional weaponization of hardships and poverty towards perpetuation of lordship on the flocks, strangulation of the flocks against any form of strong future challenges, covering up of the shepherd’s lack of integrity and inconsistencies in directional policy idiocy.
A Bewildered Nation: The Skyrocketing Spate of Violence.
Economic hardship is matched by an epidemic of insecurity. Nigeria today ranks among the most terror afflicted countries in the world. Where over 63,000 violent deaths from insurgency, banditry and communal clashes were recorded since 2009; with more than 1 million people displaced internally in addition to another estimated 75–85% of rural farmers in high risk zones that have abandoned full scale farming while Nigeria remains one of the global kidnapping capitals.
In the North West, armed bandits control forests across Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto, and Niger whereby the communities pay bandits’ tax to survive. Likewise, the North-East is experiencing both Boko Haram and ISWAP attacks despite military offensives with festering farmer/herder conflicts in Benue, Plateau, and Nasarawa where thousands of cultivated farms have been destroyed. The sit at home orders, cult violence, and targeted killings disrupting economic and social lives in the South East cannot be over looked.
Despite incessant increments in security allocations that now exceeds N3 trillion annually, there had in recent weeks been increases in schoolchildren, travelers, farmers and clerics’ abductions. Our highways are now invariably corridors of fear.
The shepherd carries a heavy staff while the wolves remain undeterred. Is it then a case of hidden relationships between the shepherd and the wolves against the herd?
Corruption As the Leopard’s Character.
Nigeria’s crisis cannot be divorced from corruption of which the nation has lost an estimated over $400 billion to corruption since independence mostly from the oil sector. Accordingly, Nigeria consistently scores low internationally in transparency, public sector accountability and judicial independence.
Even while anti-corruption agencies announce recoveries running into hundreds of billions of naira yearly, the effects at street level remain invisible. Hospitals lack equipment, schools’ decay, and roads turned into death traps.
When leadership feeds in the same forest as predators, the shepherd becomes inseparable from the beast.
The Denigrated Citizenry Assessments.
The socioeconomic indices of contemporary Nigeria indicates that mothers skip meals for their children to eat once a day, first class graduates now ride motorcycles and tricycles for survival, IDP camps’ children grow up without stable education while small traders shut shops due inability to restock inventory.
Equally, over 26 million Nigerian children are currently out of school; the highest in the world. This is not merely an educational crisis; it is a future security crisis incubating in plain sight.
Hospitals are currently reporting rising cases of severe malnutrition, stress-related illnesses coupled with untreated chronic diseases due to unaffordable health care.
The flock is no longer merely weak instead, exhausted.
The Leadership Idiocy.
Leadership insists that the painful sacrifice is temporary and inevitable yet, history warns that when suffering outpaces hope, nations drift towards instability.
A shepherd who demands sacrifice must be the first to bleed but, this has not reflected in the leadership luxuries, tendentious hedonistic display, and profligacy to the extent of being unsympathetic to the excruciating public agony: government convoys kept growing bigger with increasing unsubstantiated/unjustified allowances, inclusive of national and States’ assemblies padding and voting higher budgets as citizens sink deeper into poverty.
These perceptions have effectively destroyed essential public trust of leadership without which governance collapses into coercion.
The Pathways to Avoiding the Impending Public Uprising.
When the goat is pursued to a brick wall, it must automatically turn back fiercely against the pursuer likewise, the gentility of the Nigeria people must not be taken for cowardice. It isn’t that Nigeria leaders lack solutions rather, it is smacked of disciplined, people centered policies and execution.
Consequently, there is the urgent need for the shepherd to redefine and redesign its action plans accordingly with:
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Targeted Socioeconomic Protections: purposefully designed food subsidies, people centered transport policies and cash transfers that is specifically tied to productivity.
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Sensationalized & Decentralized Security Architecture: actualization of cultural considerations in posting of senior security personnel while ensuring state and community policing with federal coordination.
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Concentric Agricultural Farmlands Monitoring: discrete real time farmlands protection as strategic national assets.
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Targeting Transparent Budgeting: where peoples’ needs budgeting system is considered alongside security votes and emergency funds are opened to real oversight.
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Conceptual Youth Employment: intentional mass industrial and agricultural employment programs.
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Visible Sacrifices from Leaders: reduction of governance cost with idiocy, profligacy and tendentious hedonism to match public sacrificial sufferings.
The shepherd must remove the leopard’s skin or the flock will forever flinch in fear.
In The Final Analysis Within the Uphill Task Therefore.
There are two different options left for Nigeria nation today moving forward, which has to do with an urgent purposeful people’s oriented policy reforms in the areas of justice, equity, national socioeconomic cohesion, rule of law, inclusive of citizens’ protection that aims at rebuilding trust and restoration of national stability or allow poverty, hunger, fear of insecurity with leadership detachment to fester while pushing the nation towards deeper upheaval.
While the leopard garbed shepherd still holds the staff, the flock watches his shadow and not his speeches.
If protection does not soon outweigh predation, the metaphors will fade into history, and the consequences will manifest in ways no policy paper can contain.
For a nation as resilient as Nigeria, salvation remains possible but, time, like grass under drought, is disappearing fast.
Dr. Dayo Kayode, who writes from Lagos, Nigeria, is also the Convener & National Chairman of the current fastest growing political movement in Nigeria: The Unifiers Movement, presently with membership of over 2m members across the 36 states of the federation.
(As always, the views and personal opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of Atlantic Digest or its editorial team)
