I have watched with trepidation the madness that unfolds daily in our polity—the waves of political saga, the unending scandals, the brazen impunity. From the sexual harassment debacle that has seized national attention to the State of Emergency in Rivers State, the air is thick with crisis, yet the hands that should steer the nation’s course seem either incapable or unwilling to do so. The people groan, yet those in power remain unbothered, cocooned in their arrogance, treating leadership as a personal estate rather than a sacred duty.
We are a people adrift, unmoored from the very essence of our identity. Africa—Nigeria—once pulsed with the spirit of Ubuntu, the profound philosophy of communal humanity: I am because you are. But the moral compass has shifted. Now, as one of our sages lamented, it has become I am because I can grab. Those entrusted with power have turned governance into a feeding frenzy, a ruthless enterprise of self-aggrandizement at the expense of the common good. The ideals that should bind us—justice, equity, and service—have been trampled beneath the feet of greed.
Yet, what is most painful is not just the corruption, not just the injustice, but the cruel betrayal of those who fought hardest for the cause. The people who carried the manifesto of change like a cross, who risked life, reputation, and comfort to birth a government they believed in, are discarded like husks, irrelevant after the harvest. They were not merely foot soldiers; they were the lifeblood of a movement, the architects of its momentum. But when the spoils of victory were shared, their names were erased, their sacrifices forgotten.
Meanwhile, those who contributed nothing, those who never faced the storm, those who stood aloof in the heat of battle, now sit at the table of governance, smug and bloated. They enjoy the privileges of power without its burden. They control the levers of state, not by merit, not by sacrifice, but by sheer proximity to the throne. And so, the cycle continues: the best among us are sidelined, the worst among us are enthroned. This is the cruel irony of our nation.
But beyond politics, beyond party betrayal, lies the deeper tragedy—the suffering of the land. The streets hum with despair, the markets with hunger, the hospitals with silent cries. Our people endure a darkness that should have lifted long ago. And yet, it persists, growing thicker, suffocating hope. How long shall we watch a nation of boundless potential strangled by the incompetence of a few? How long shall the righteous whisper in corners while the corrupt bellow from the rooftops?
Chief Sunny Sylvester Moniedafe
Jagaba Jimeta
APC National Chieftain
I do not speak as a politician. I do not crave the empty theatre of power. I am a technocrat, a believer in vision, strategy, and the transformative power of ideas. And I know that across this nation, there are men and women of conscience, people who dream of a Nigeria that works, people like Chief Sunny Sylvester Moniedafe and countless others who have given their lives, their sweat, their last kobo to uplift those around them. They are not in this for profit. They are in it because they believe that leadership is service, not a feast.
But belief is not enough. Hope is not a strategy. The hard truth is that good people—myself included—have engaged the polity too weakly. We have stood on the edges, watching, analyzing, lamenting, but never truly disrupting. We have assumed that righteousness alone will conquer rascality, that truth alone will overpower injustice. But history does not reward passive virtue. It rewards those who seize the moment, those who are audacious enough to challenge the status quo, not by compromising with evil but by outthinking it, outworking it, outlasting it.
The approach must change. Not to descend into the filth of corrupt politics, not to mimic the arrogance of those who oppress us, but to engage with wisdom, with strategy, with an unshakable resolve to build a new order. Leadership must be aggressive—but positively aggressive. We must raise a generation of thinkers, of doers, of warriors—not warriors of violence, but warriors of justice, of integrity, of nation-building. The days of waiting for change to come must end. We must be the architects of that change.
This is no small task. The work ahead is Herculean, the battle fierce. But nations are not transformed by wishful thinking. They are transformed by men and women who refuse to bow at the altar of convenience, who do not flinch in the face of adversity, who understand that a new Nigeria will not be handed to us—it must be wrestled from the grip of those who profit from its dysfunction.
So, let those of us who still believe in the dream of a better nation rise—not just in words, not just in protest, but in strategic, relentless action. Let us outthink, outmaneuver, and outwork those who have held this country hostage for too long. Let us carve a new path, a path of integrity, vision, and service. Let us, at long last, turn the tide.
Above all, fellow compatriots, being patriotic Nigerians, we must change our approach to fighting for the good of our great nation. Nigeria must work. I believe it rests on the shoulders of all patriotic Nigerians.
Pokyes Kavwam
Seniour Managing Editor
The New Africa Magazine
