Kaka: Koko, this country is under attack.
Koko: By who? America? China? Russia? Or it Burkina Faso?
Kaka: Worse.
Koko: Jesus! Worse than Russia?
Kaka: Yes. It is what Yorubas call Ogun Abele. Nigerians are working against Nigeria.
Koko: (nearly choking on the hot akara in his mouth) Are you kidding me? That’s worse than Ogun Abele, that’s a blend of efun and eedi. Has everyone gone bunkers?
(He coughed like a faulty generator before continuing). Are you talking about terrorists and kidnappers?
Kaka: No.
Koko: Corrupt politicians?
Kaka: They are part of it.
Koko: Out with it, guy. The suspense is giving me ulcer pain. Who exactly?
Kaka: (leaning forward like a village elder about to reveal the hiding place of a stolen goat) All of us. Rich and poor. Old and young. Leaders and followers. We are all members of one dangerous secret cult.
Koko: Which cult?
Kaka: The Grand Conspiracy Against Nigeria.
Koko: (blinking like a dozen times) You have started again.
Kaka: Koko, tell me I am lying. Is everyone not digging at the foundation of this country like hungry rats under a mud house?
Koko: Quit the parable and speak clearly jare.
Kaka: Look around you. Nobody wants to build anything anymore. Everybody wants to collect. Everybody wants to eat. Everybody wants to hammer overnight. Nobody wants to plant. Everybody wants to harvest. Everybody wants easy or free money or both.
Koko: (sighed) That one is true.
Nigeria today is like a village where nobody wants to farm but everybody wants to attend harvest festival.
Kaka: The poor are waiting for crumbs. Politicians are waiting for contracts. Young boys are waiting for betting odds. Some pretend- pastors are waiting for seed offerings. Some women are waiting for one rich chief to marry them. Yahoo boys are waiting for one mugu abroad. Even voters are waiting for election rice and two thousand naira.
Koko: You forgot those waiting for giveaway on social media.
Yes! A whole generation refreshing Instagram like farmers waiting for rainfall. How did we even become like this?
Kaka: It did not happen in one day. A nation dies gradually. First, people stop believing in hard work. Then they stop respecting integrity. Then they start worshipping sudden wealth. Before you know it, thieves become role models.
Koko: True.
See our elections now. Voters no longer ask candidates: What is your plan for agriculture? Education? Technology? Skills? Industrialisation?
Kaka: What do they ask? How much for one vote?
Koko: One woman in my area said any politician who does not ‘drop something’ does not love the people.
Kaka: Exactly! We have turned democracy into a marketplace. Vote-and-buy.
Kaka: A politician will arrive with five trailers of rice, wrappers, umbrellas and cheap motorcycles and everybody will start dancing and shouting ‘our son! our son!’
Nobody will ask where he got the money.
Koko (slapped his thigh):
In fact, if he looks too clean and speaks too much English, people become suspicious.
That is the tragedy.
Kaka: In sane countries, citizens suspect politicians who suddenly become rich. In Nigeria, people suspect politicians who are not rich enough.
A man will sell his house, borrow money, mortgage his future just to contest election to serve his people.
Koko: Serve his people, my foot!
And people will clap for him. Instead of asking the obvious question: if you are losing billions to get power, how exactly will you recover your money?
Koko (whistled)
True, o. My brother, politics here has become investment banking. Some people contest election the way gamblers stake money on virtual football.
Kaka: And once they enter office… They recover capital with wicked interest.
Koko: And the voters who collected five thousand naira will still complain four years later.
Kaka: After selling their future at roadside price.
Koko: You know the saddest part?
The poor are becoming comfortable with poverty.
Kaka:
You think that is another dangerous conspiracy?
Koko: In the past, poor people struggled to escape poverty. Today, many people have settled inside poverty like tenants who just renewed rent.
Kaka: Exactly. Everybody wants palliative. Few people want skill.
Koko: Apprenticeship is dying. Craftsmanship is dying. Young people don’t want to learn work that soils the hand. They want work that shines on TikTok.
Sharp sharp wealth now now.
Kaka: A young boy who should spend five years learning electrical engineering now wants one miracle connection. One politician uncle. One Yahoo client. One betting ticket.
One skit to blow or one rich sugar mummy to change his life forever.
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One dubious crypto platform.
Koko sighed deeply.
The hunger is real though.
I know. Poverty is terrible. But poverty should push people toward productivity, not permanent dependency.
Koko: Our fathers suffered too.
But they believed in building something. Tailors learned tailoring. Mechanics learned mechanics. Farmers farmed. Traders traded. Teachers taught with dignity.
Kaka: Today, everybody wants to be ‘big’ immediately.”
Koko: My brother, the disease is called Impatient Prosperity Syndrome, IPS.
Kaka: (laughed loudly) You just invented another sickness.
Koko: And Nigeria is full of infected people.
Politicians are now obsessed with titles and power. They want to rule forever.
A man becomes councillor today. Tomorrow he wants House of Assembly. Then House of Reps. Then Senate. Then governor. Then minister. Then ambassador. Then board chairman.
Kaka: These people don’t retire. They don’t mentor successors. They don’t build institutions. They want to contest forever and die in office. If you ask them, they say they want to stay relevant. Can you imagine the greedy audacity? Or is it audacity of greed?
Koko: We are becoming a nation addicted to status instead of substance.
Meanwhile, roads are bad. Schools are collapsing. Hospitals are begging for oxygen.”
But every weekend there is another chieftaincy title ceremony, everybody wearing embroidered agbada heavy enough to sink a small canoe and spraying money borrowed from tomorrow.
Where are the elders? Why are they quiet?
Kaka: The elders have gone to the market to watch gelede.
Koko: With our money and on out time too!
My brother, elders of today are spectators. In the old days, elders corrected society. They rebuked greed. They punished indiscipline. They warned irresponsible leaders.
Kaka: Today’s children are uncouth, rude and violent. Didn’t one beat an old woman a few weeks ago, and then proudly announced the great feat on social media?
Maybe that’s why the elders now sit in front row at every nonsense event collecting envelopes for logistics.
Koko: A thief donates one bus to the community and instantly becomes ‘distinguished son of the soil.’”
Nobody asks questions anymore because everybody hopes to benefit somehow.
That is why evil is multiplying.
Kaka: Exactly. Silence is fertiliser for corruption and destruction.
Koko: Things are so bad that even those who are rich are hiding their wealth.
Kaka: The rich hiding?
Koko: Yes. A wealthy man cannot enjoy his wealth openly again. He hides his cars, his house, his children. He hides behind fences, cameras and security guards.
Kaka: In all of this, Nigeria’s biggest headache is kidnapping that has now become a major industry.
Because society has normalised desperate wealth-seeking where honest wealth is not respected and criminal wealth is celebrated, insecurity is spreading like wildfire.
A businessman who has toiled for 30 years is compared to a fraudster who stole public money for eight years.
Koko: Our young people can’t seem to be able to tell the difference.
Kaka: Exactly.
Koko: Add that to some parents who no longer ask where money comes from. They just accept the cars and move into new houses, no questions asked. Are all these what you termed the grand conspiracy?
Kaka: Yes, the conspiracy of short-term thinking. We are eating tomorrow today.
A country survives only when people sacrifice present comfort for future stability and when leaders plan ahead.
Koko: Like planting trees whose shade you may never sit under.
Kaka: Exactly. But here, everybody wants immediate gratification. Leaders borrow carelessly. Followers spend recklessly.
Politicians loot shamelessly.
Young people seek instant fame.
Parents pressure children to become rich at all cost. Religious houses sometimes glorify prosperity without productivity.
Koko: And social media has worsened everything. Everybody is competing with fake lifestyles. A boy sees another boy posing beside rented Lamborghini and suddenly hard work and going to school look stupid. A girl sees influencers changing wigs every three days and starts hating honest struggle.
Kaka: We are raising a generation that wants applause without apprenticeship.
Koko: Hmmm. That line is dangerous.
Kaka: Write it down.
Koko (pretended to type in the air.) Continue, professor.
Kaka: The tragedy is this: wealth is no longer being created. Wealth is merely changing pockets.
Koko: Explain please.
Kaka: A politician steals public funds. He buys a mansion for himself. After exporting his family abroad in a trendy display of affluence, he eventually sells the now-empty and echoing house to another we-have-arrived politician. Note that he didn’t start even a pure water factory to spread his wealth. A contractor inflates contract. A banker finances consumption. Businessmen import toothpick, matches, tomato paste, even things we can produce locally. And we all call it economic activity.
Koko: Meanwhile, real wealth comes from production.
Kaka: Yes, like you turn crude oil to petroleum products, make your car batteries and bathroom wares yourself. Nigeria has enough mineral deposit to be a true giant.
Koko: Not like this one with clay feet.
Kaka: Clay feet that are cracking.
Koko: But we have abandoned all that makes us king of the jungle and rats are playing soccer on our head.
Kaka: And now everybody wants government appointment because many people no longer believe productivity pays.
Koko: A belief that is deadly for any nation.
(A roadside vulcaniser nearby hammered noisily at a tyre rim.
Kaka points at him.)
Kaka: See that man? He may be earning honestly, training apprentices, solving real problems but the society will celebrate the flashy fraudster more than him.
That is why many youths are confused. The reward system is broken.
Koko: What happens if this continues?
Kaka: Then Nigeria becomes a giant marketplace with no factory.
Koko: Ouch!
Kaka: A noisy country consuming what others produce. It is already a country exporting brains and importing toothpicks.
A place where politicians recycle power and citizens recycle suffering.
Koko: So what is the solution?
Kaka: First, citizens must stop worshipping freebies.
Koko: That one will be difficult o.
Kaka: Any politician sharing rice today is indirectly collecting your future tomorrow. Second, we must start respecting skills again: plumbers, electricians, coders, teachers, farmers, and technicians. Not just title holders who want to steal everything and everyone’s lives.
Koko: Oook.
Kaka: Third, parents must stop pressuring children for overnight success and fourth, our elders must recover their voice, correct bad behaviour, shame corruption and reward integrity.
Koko: And politicians?
Kaka: They must understand that leadership is stewardship, service, not inheritance. It is neither a job nor a profession. It is a call to make a difference, not an opportunity to acquire wealth, even obscene wealth.
Koko: Which wealth is obscene?
Kaka: When only one man has 20 cars just by holding political office, what does anybody need so many cars for?
Koko: Do you still have hope for this country, after all this?
Kaka: Yes, because despite everything, millions of honest Nigerians still wake up every morning to work. The farmers are still sweating under harsh sun, the nurses still go on night duty. The mechanics are still boiling.
The woman who begins frying akara at dawn. The young graduate learning software skills. The entrepreneur trying again after failure. The ordinary citizen refusing to steal. They are all still here.
They are Nigeria’s remaining oxygen.
Koko: So perhaps the conspiracy has not fully succeeded.
Kaka: Not yet. And maybe one day, we will stop celebrating consumption and start celebrating creation.
The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.
