Nigeria today is not merely a country in economic distress. It is a nation deliberately pushed into collective suffering by a political leadership that has mastered the strategy of breaking the spirit of the people through engineered hardship. Since Bola Ahmed Tinubu ascended to power, nothing meaningful has improved in the daily lives of ordinary Nigerians. Instead, what we have experienced is a systematic escalation of pain, hunger, insecurity, and hopelessness, carefully masked with official propaganda and empty promises.
The sudden removal of fuel subsidy was not accompanied by any safety cushion for the masses. Transportation costs tripled overnight. Food prices exploded beyond the reach of the average worker. Electricity tariffs climbed, while power supply remained unstable. Energy costs became so brutal that small businesses collapsed in silence. Families that once survived with dignity now queue daily for survival. This hardship was not accidental. It was calculated. It was imposed without compassion. It was executed with full awareness of its devastating consequences.
Today, Nigerians are forced to spend most of their time struggling to eat, to move from one place to another, and to keep their homes running. In this daily battle for survival, the people have little time, energy, or resources left to challenge governance failure. Hunger has become a political weapon. Poverty has become a tool of control. Exhaustion has become the government’s shield against resistance.
While Nigerians battle hunger, insecurity spreads unchecked across the land. Kidnapping has become a daily industry. Banditry thrives openly. Armed robbery is again rising in both rural and urban spaces. Farmers abandon their farmlands out of fear. Travelers move with anxiety. Schoolchildren are no longer safe. Yet, the Tinubu government displays shocking indifference to this national emergency. Instead of decisive action, we are fed with press statements, recycled excuses, and security theatrics that change nothing.
It is now obvious that the lives of Nigerians do not rank high on Tinubu’s priority list. What matters is power retention. What matters is political survival. What matters is the protection of elite interests. This explains why, in the middle of this suffering and insecurity, government resources are being diverted toward political mobilization long before the next election cycle. Campaign structures are being strengthened while the nation bleeds internally.
Nigerians are being deliberately worn out psychologically and economically so that, by the time political resistance should rise, the people would be too weak, too hungry, and too distracted to respond. This is the silent strategy. Keep the people busy with survival. Keep them poor. Keep them tired. Keep them fearful. Then rule without accountability.
But history teaches us that when oppression becomes too heavy, silence does not last forever. When suffering becomes unbearable, patience expires. When the wall becomes too close, resistance becomes inevitable. Tinubu may believe that hardship has finally subdued Nigerians. He may believe that hunger has permanently broken the will of the people. He may believe that 2027 is already secured through intimidation, elite agreements, and state power. But he misunderstands one fundamental truth of human struggle. Oppression does not kill resistance. It only delays it.
Every bag of rice that becomes unaffordable, every litre of fuel that becomes unreachable, every night a family sleeps without electricity, every community terrorized by kidnappers, every farmer chased from the land, every child withdrawn from school due to poverty is adding to a growing national rage that no amount of propaganda can extinguish. Anger suppressed does not die. It matures.
The greatest mistake of oppressive governments in history is the belief that silence equals consent. Nigerians are not consenting to suffering. Nigerians are enduring it because survival leaves them with little room to breathe. But endurance has a limit. Hunger has a deadline. Fear has an expiration date.
As the Tinubu administration continues to push Nigerians closer to the wall through hunger, insecurity, and economic strangulation, it is also unknowingly pushing the nation closer to a historic reckoning. You can rig elections. You can control institutions. You can manipulate narratives. But you cannot permanently suppress a people whose collective pain has reached critical mass.
This is no longer about political parties. This is no longer about 2027 calculations. This is about dignity. This is about survival. This is about the right of a people to live without permanent suffering imposed by a disconnected elite.
The more this government weaponizes hardship against the people, the more it fertilizes the soil of resistance. A nation cannot be starved into silence forever. A people cannot be frightened into submission permanently. When the hunger, insecurity, and injustice finally overflow the emotional banks of endurance, what follows is not an election cycle but a national awakening.
And that awakening, when it arrives, will not ask for permission.
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