Aare Amerijoye DOT.B

There are seasons in the life of a nation when politics ceases to be a contest of parties and becomes a question of conscience. Nigeria is standing in that season. This is no longer about slogans, press conferences, or rehearsed optimism. It is about survival.

Another four years of APC governance, without radical correction, is not continuity. For millions of poor Nigerians, it is the steady tightening of a rope around fragile livelihoods. It is the normalisation of hunger. It is the quiet burial of dreams.

These are not dramatic words. They are lived realities.

In Ibadan, a widow named Mama Titi stood before a small basket of rice and counted her money three times. She had already reduced her family’s meals from three to two. That afternoon, the price had risen again. The shop owner apologised; his own suppliers had increased rates overnight. Mama Titi nodded with the tired dignity of someone who has no room left for outrage. That evening, she boiled water, added salt, and told her children they were eating “light for health.” Her youngest asked why healthy food makes the stomach ache.

Policy debates do not capture that question.

The philosopher Max Ehrmann once wrote, “Be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe.” Ehrmann composed those words in a time of global anxiety, after war and economic instability had shaken societies. He understood that citizens need calm leadership, not noise; stability, not aggression. But how does a government preach resilience when its policies make gentleness toward oneself a luxury? Dignity cannot survive indefinitely under economic assault.

In Lagos, Seyi, a commercial bus driver, calculates before he starts his engine. Fuel consumes half his expected income. Daily levies consume another portion. By nightfall, after settling his conductor and feeding his family, he returns home with less purchasing power than he had years ago. His daughter needs textbooks. He tells her to wait until next month. Next month has become a permanent postponement.

In Kano, Aisha wraps her biochemistry degree certificate in nylon to protect it from moisture. She graduated with distinction. Two years later, she remains unemployed. Her father’s pension, once modest but stable, has been devoured by inflation. She avoids certain relatives to escape the quiet question: “Have you found work yet?”

The French thinker Paul Valéry warned, “The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.” Valéry wrote after witnessing the collapse of European certainties. He saw how fragile civilisations become when leaders misread reality. When the future becomes unpredictable, people stop planning. When planning stops, ambition shrinks. When ambition shrinks, nations decay silently.

Nigeria’s poor are living inside that silent decay.

What happens when fuel reforms are executed without sufficient cushioning? When currency adjustments destabilise informal traders without calibrated transition? When food prices rise faster than wages? The insulated adjust. The vulnerable absorb the shock.

Absorption has limits.

The great Nigerian statesman Obafemi Awolowo believed governance must consciously uplift the weakest. He insisted that the welfare of the people is the supreme test of leadership. Awolowo did not treat poverty as a sentimental talking point. He treated it as a structural enemy requiring deliberate planning. It is said he would study budgets deep into the night, convinced that figures must translate into tangible social protection.

Compare that seriousness to the improvisational hardship millions now endure.

In Enugu, a father withdrew his son from school because fees doubled. The boy asked quietly, “Did I fail?” The father looked away. In Port Harcourt, a small manufacturer shut his workshop because diesel costs erased profit. In Kaduna, a nurse now skips breakfast so her children can eat before school.

These are not isolated anecdotes. They are multiplying across regions, religions, and ethnicities. Poverty does not discriminate. It simply spreads.

Another four years on this same trajectory risks entrenching hardship into permanence. Hunger that lingers becomes frustration. Frustration that festers becomes instability. No democracy thrives on exhausted citizens.

Ehrmann reminds us that dignity is sacred.
Valéry reminds us that civilisations are fragile.
Awolowo reminds us that welfare is statecraft, not charity.

Their philosophies converge in a single warning: leadership must protect the common man, not test his endurance.

The Nigerian poor masses are not demanding luxury. They are demanding breathable economics. They are asking that salaries regain meaning. That businesses function without daily shock. That children remain in classrooms. That survival does not require daily humiliation.

Nigeria must not choose suffering again.

History will record decisions. But hunger records them faster.

And for millions standing on the edge of economic exhaustion, another four years without decisive recalibration is not patience. It is peril.

A nation that repeatedly votes for its own hardship does not suffer by accident; it suffers by decision and history is merciless to decisions made against the stomach of the poor.

Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
Director General,
The Narrative Force