How the Suffering Majority Will Confront the Profiteers’ Republic
Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
There are two Nigerias today. Not the familiar North and South. Not Christian and Muslim. The real fracture is harsher and more unforgiving: the Nigeria of the suffering majority, and the Nigeria of the insulated elite. On one side stand millions of citizens navigating rising costs, shrinking incomes, and uncertain futures. On the other side stands a political aristocracy buffered from the consequences of the very policies it proclaims as necessary sacrifice. Between these two realities lies the defining political question of our time.
In May 2023, the removal of fuel subsidy was presented as an unavoidable economic correction. It was framed as painful but necessary, a bitter pill meant to finance long term recovery. Yet for millions, the immediate result was transport costs that multiplied overnight, food prices that outran wages, and a currency whose decline eroded savings built over decades. The naira’s fall dramatically altered purchasing power, while inflation, particularly food inflation, transformed routine survival into daily calculation. Families reduced meals, businesses reduced staff, and young graduates extended their wait for opportunity indefinitely.
Government expenditure patterns, however, created a perception gap that proved politically consequential. Reports of high value official procurements and rising recurrent spending deepened public suspicion that sacrifice was unevenly distributed. The ordinary citizen tightened his belt, while the state appeared to loosen its own. This perception, whether fully accurate in every detail or not, has become political reality. A government survives not only on policy, but on public trust, and trust erodes when hardship appears concentrated below while insulation appears concentrated above.
Statistics do not fully explain suffering. Human stories do. A trader whose capital lost value in months understands inflation not as a percentage, but as a personal collapse. A graduate riding commercial motorcycles to survive understands unemployment not as a rate, but as a postponed life. A parent withdrawing a child from school understands economic reform not as theory, but as interruption of generational hope. These are not abstractions. They are political forces. History teaches that when economic pain becomes collective experience, it eventually becomes collective action.
Every democracy moves in cycles of expectation and reassessment. Citizens compare present realities with past experiences and future promises. Supporters of alternative leadership often point to earlier periods they consider more stable, citing exchange rate stability, stronger growth, and broader economic optimism, while critics counter that those periods benefited from different global conditions, including oil windfalls and debt relief. Both arguments contain truth. But elections are not academic debates. They are public verdicts on lived experience. Citizens do not vote for perfection. They vote for relief. They vote for direction. They vote for belief that tomorrow will not be harder than today. That belief has now become the most contested currency in Nigeria.
Political power in theory resides in institutions. Political power in practice resides in people. Across markets, campuses, villages, and cities, political conversations are no longer abstract but intensely personal, shaped by daily encounters with rising fuel prices, rising food costs, and stagnant incomes. These lived comparisons are shaping political consciousness more powerfully than speeches or slogans. Technology has amplified this awakening. Smartphones have turned citizens into record keepers of their own economic realities, while social media has transformed private frustration into shared awareness. When awareness becomes widespread, it becomes influence.
Elections therefore represent more than routine political exercises. They are moments of national judgment. The incumbent asks for patience, arguing that reforms require time, while the opposition asks for trust, arguing that change requires courage. The citizen stands between these arguments, carrying the weight of consequence. The outcome will ultimately be determined not only by policy or persuasion, but by perception. Perception of fairness. Perception of competence. Perception of hope.
No democracy can permanently sustain a wide gap between rulers and the ruled, and no society remains stable when prosperity appears exclusive while hardship appears inclusive. Eventually, the people decide whether their suffering represents temporary transition or permanent condition. That decision is the essence of democracy itself. The coming years will answer a single question: whether Nigerians will choose continuity in the belief that relief lies ahead, or choose change in the belief that relief lies elsewhere.
That choice, when it comes, will not belong to elites. It will belong to the people. And when the people decide, their verdict will not merely shape an election. Their verdict will shape history.
Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
Director General,
The Narrative Force
