This week revealed Nigeria's persistent patterns: celebrating individual triumph over systemic failure, wealth displays amid widespread poverty, and democracy observed behind closed doors. This week's Signal explores what we choose to see - and what we choose to ignore.
What a perfectly choreographed week of misdirection. While farmers are slaughtered with clockwork regularity, we've been treated to the grand spectacle of a chess master meeting his president, musicians squabbling about wealth displays, and democracy being celebrated by excluding the demos entirely.
Let's begin with the least offensive absurdity: Tunde Onakoya's presidential audience. Here is a genuinely brilliant young man whose chess mastery has brought honour to Nigeria on the global stage. His achievement is unquestionable, his dedication admirable, his success well-deserved. The bitter irony is that he has been doing this work for a decade, but it took international recognition for local power to take notice. The message is clear: a prophet remains invisible in his own country until foreigners validate his worth.
His story mirrors a familiar pattern - from Pelé rising from São Paulo's favelas to Victor Osimhen emerging from Lagos streets. Adversity forges exceptional talent, but breaks countless others with equal potential who lack the precise combination of circumstances required to transcend systemic failure. For every Tunde who conquers the world at chess, how many brilliant children remain trapped?
We're supposed to see proof that the "system works." What we actually see is someone who achieved world-class excellence to escape circumstances that shouldn't exist nationwide. His NGO teaches what education systems failed to provide. Most tellingly, Onakoya himself urged continued accountability from representatives—a reminder that honours shouldn't silence criticism of those conferring them.
This is inspiration - but it's inadvertent satire. We're celebrating someone for solving problems created by the people celebrating him.
The second act in our theatrical week featured VeryDarkMan's intervention in the wealth-flaunting Olympics among Nigeria's entertainment royalty. His critique was pointed but incomplete, and curiously selective. Yes, Afrobeats stars displaying obscene consumption while poverty spreads reveals a profound disconnection from reality. But entertainment operates under unique pressures that our grandmother's wisdom about cutting your coat according to your size doesn't quite address.
As Bella Shmurda observed, many artists remain financially unstable despite significant earnings because show business means they're selling escapism while perpetually on show. The pressure to project success creates a performance trap: appearing successful is necessary to remain relevant, but this performance undermines actual stability. The wise counsel is to cut your coat according to your size, but also account for the fact that your coat doubles as your marketing budget.
But here's where VeryDarkMan's moral outrage becomes mysteriously selective. Where was the equivalent fury over politicians whose official salaries couldn't fund their children's overseas education, yet somehow acquire property portfolios that would embarrass President Tinubu's recently declared "four wise men of Nigeria"—Dangote, Rabiu, Ovia, and Otedola? At least musicians earned their wealth by providing entertainment that people voluntarily purchased. Politicians accumulate theirs by providing governance we wouldn't buy if offered the choice.
Democracy Day was observed with characteristic flair, celebrating democratic participation by excluding participants. The president addressed lawmakers behind closed doors while citizens gathered outside, creating the perfect metaphor for twenty-six years of "democratic" governance.
The response to criticism was predictably partisan. Mention that chess success might not validate systemic failure, and you're accused of ethnic prejudice. Suggesting wealth displays during suffering seems tone-deaf, and you're labelled a hater. Question whether democracy requires actual participation, and you're working for the opposition.
This reflexive partisanship is perhaps the week's most depressing revelation. We've lost the capacity for nuanced thought, defaulting to position-taking based on identity rather than evidence.
What connects these events is their function as elaborate diversions from inconvenient realities. While we debated chess achievements and celebrity spending, fundamental questions remained unasked: Why do exceptional individuals need to overcome systemic failures rather than expecting systems to function? Why do we accept exclusion from governance that we fund?
The killing continued in communities whose names we've stopped learning. Poverty deepened while we argued about wealth displays. Infrastructure crumbled while we celebrated individual transcendence of collective failure.
Perhaps that's the point. Keep the populace sufficiently distracted, and they won't notice the house burning. Make individual survival seem like systemic success, and systemic failure becomes tolerable.
The tragedy isn't that some succeed while others struggle—it's that we've learned to see this as natural rather than chosen.
Perhaps we should call it what it is: the Nigerian Dream has become Darwinian. Only the exceptionally fit survive systemic dysfunction, and we celebrate their survival as proof that the system works rather than evidence of how brutally it fails the rest.
Until we develop the courage to face these realities directly, we'll continue perfecting the art of looking everywhere except where it matters most.
This is The Signal - Nigerian Bulletin's weekly reflection on the patterns that shape our national conversation.
What are we choosing not to see while we focus on what's shiny?
