Even if you ignore the news for its bias to sensationalism, pay attention to your environment and see the changes for yourself.
Look into your extended family and see how many graduates are struggling to find a job, and as they venture into any hustle, entrenched official and unofficial hurdles aim to kill them. At least 5 million youths out of job. Something will give.
People feel unsafe in the hands of those who should ensure their safety. They got tired of being harrassed and killed by security operatives and fought back with #EndSARS. This revealed the soft underbelly of our security architecture. The politicians could not see beyond past entitlements and understand that the future, represented by the youths, was revolting.
Education and health care are in such a downward spiral, investing in either has become a sunk cost – money in with no value out.
Opportunists have seen the weaknesses and are exploiting it in dispersed pockets using a predictable strategy. They are making different areas ungovernable, requiring a state of emergency that cannot work because the enforcers are the victims; planting despair in the populace; and ultimately substituting government with local militias.
Things are stacking up. The villages that surround major towns are being decimated and the violence is circling in. The solutions are not obvious, but they exist. Sadly, the longer we remain in our current direction, the longer a new direction will take to get back to ground zero.
– Osasu Oviawe
State of the Nation
