Special to USAfrica magazine (Houston) and USAfricaonline.com, the first Africa-owned, US-based newspaper published on the Internet.
Asiegbu Agwu Nkpa, contributor of opinion/commentary
In an October 2024 interview with Channels TV, Senator Orji Uzor Kalu remarked that President Bola Tinubu, in an effort to “connect” with the people, occasionally drives around Abuja at night to observe their suffering firsthand. According to Kalu, the president knows that Nigerians are suffering and hungry because he’s “a street person.” While the comment was meant to project a leader who is in tune with the agonizing realities of his citizens, it instead reads as an insulting mockery of the millions drowning in poverty, inflation, and insecurity. How does a night-time drive in an air-conditioned, bulletproof convoy equate to meeting, seeing, or understanding the gut-wrenching pain of a people gasping for survival?
The senator’s assertion sounds like something straight out of a political fairy tale – one where Nigeria’s leadership claims to feel the pulse of the nation while being wholly insulated from the crushing reality. Let’s be honest: suggesting that President Tinubu, the man affectionately known as “Lord Bourdillon” in reference to his long-standing influence over Lagos, is taking moonlit strolls in the heart of a city teetering on the brink of collapse, is either fantastically naïve or deliberately misleading. The Abuja of today is not a city conducive to casual night drives by anyone, let alone a detestable president. In fact, even the most protected elites would think twice before wandering outside their fortified zones of safety.
This so-called night observatory stroll paints a disturbing portrait of the disconnect between Nigeria’s rulers and the ruled. While Kalu presents Tinubu as a leader with his finger on the pulse of the street, the truth is that any leader remotely aware of Nigeria’s prevailing conditions would know better than to pull such a publicity stunt. It is not just insensitive – it’s dangerous. There’s a reason the president hasn’t dared this “street excursion” in Lagos or anywhere else. The insecurity that ravages Nigeria is no respecter of person, and hunger transforms citizens into creatures of desperation. To step out of the security bubble is to risk being engulfed by a tide of rage and hopelessness.
Senator Kalu’s remark exemplifies the tragic farce that is Nigeria’s leadership. Rather than addressing the root causes of the nation’s suffering, we are subjected to tales of “streetwise presidents” engaging in performative empathy, while the real issues – poverty, unemployment, inflation, and insecurity – remain unaddressed. Orji Uzor Kalu, a senator well acquainted with the machinery of Nigeria’s political system, should know better. His commentary smacks of condescension, a reminder that for the political class, the suffering of the masses is little more than an abstract concept – something to be managed, spun, or trivialized, but never genuinely alleviated.
Let’s not mince words. Nigeria, under this administration, has become a Criminal Republic where the corrupt roam free while the rest of the population struggles to make ends meet. As the so-called “leaders” bask in their privileges, the ordinary citizen is left to contend with the harsh realities of food scarcity, skyrocketing fuel prices, and a currency that seems to devalue with each passing day. When a 50kg bag of rice costs over ₦100,000 and petrol prices exceed ₦1,200 per liter, one has to wonder what kind of leadership is at play. *Calling it *T-Pain* isn’t just wordplay – it’s a visceral, tangible pain inflicted upon the masses by policies that seem to lack both foresight and compassion.* And yet, these are the metrics of what the government gleefully calls “progress.”
Typical of Senator Orji Uzor Kalu’s sycophantic exuberance in context, the political elite continues to pat themselves on the back while Nigerians are asked to believe blatant absurdity or inexistent. But let’s be real: if the current trajectory continues, the only thing Nigerians will have left to hope for is survival in a country where hunger and insecurity reign supreme. The metaphor of “blood-sucking zombies” ravaging the streets of Nigeria is apt – this is not a land of promise, but one of the living dead, where citizens, once full of life and hope, have been drained by a system that feeds on their suffering.
Who Nor Dey Vex?
In this environment, the question Who nor dey vex? feels like a rallying cry. Who isn’t angry in today’s Nigeria? Who hasn’t been pushed to the brink by a government that seems more interested in self-preservation than governance? The people are vexed – and rightly so. They are vexed at the lies, the deceit, the mockery, and the endless suffering they have been subjected to. They are vexed at a leadership that seems immune to accountability, and they are vexed at a system that continues to fail them at every turn.
Perhaps the most galling part of this whole saga is the shamelessness with which Nigeria’s ruling class tries to spin their failures into successes. Only in a land where logic and reason have been buried could such blatant disregard for reality pass as leadership. But let’s be clear: the people are not fools. They know when they are being lied to, and they know when they are being gaslit by those in power. The day of reckoning will come when the voices of the people rise above the hollow platitudes of the elite.
Until then, let the government continue their fairy tales about night-time strolls and streetwise empathy. Let them continue to fake understanding and boast of phantom progress while the nation collapses under their watch. But let them also be reminded: Nigerians are vexed, and the anger of a people pushed to the brink is a force to be reckoned with. Who no dey vex indeed?
