My friend, who has lived in Nigeria for decades, asked me this question with the exhaustion of someone who has seen hope abused too many times. I paused—not because the answer was hidden, but because it was infuriatingly clear.
Yes. They know.
It look like God did not put our love in their heart ni.
Nigerian politicians and senior civil servants know that the people are suffering. They know that salaries die halfway into the month. They know hunger has become routine, electricity optional, healthcare a gamble, and education an endurance sport. They know because suffering is no longer silent—it is loud, visible, and impossible to deny.
So let us stop pretending.
The problem is wickedness.
This country is governed by men and women who have perfected moral distance. One Nigeria queues for fuel; another Nigeria escorts fuel with armed convoys. One Nigeria dies in teaching hospitals; another flies abroad for coughs and checkups. One Nigeria debates garri prices; another debates which foreign currency to hold wealth in.
Look at the National Assembly: lawmakers earning allowances so obscene that even international observers struggle to explain them—yet these same lawmakers preach sacrifice to a minimum-wage worker.
Look at the civil service elite: officials whose legitimate salaries cannot explain their mansions, convoys, and foreign-schooled children. Nigerians remember Babachir Lawal and the so-called “grasscutter” scandal—not because it was unique, but because it was careless enough to be exposed.
Look at the fuel subsidy era: trillions vanished, refineries collapsed, and no senior figure truly paid the price. The people paid—through inflation, scarcity, and debt.
Recently, even Aliko Dangote—hardly a radical—publicly expressed outrage at allegations surrounding Farouk Ahmed, a senior regulator, whose children were said to be spending millions of dollars abroad despite his status as a civil servant. What shocked Nigerians was not the allegation itself, but how believable it sounded. That is the tragedy. Excess has become normal. Theft has become plausible. Integrity has become suspicious.
This is a country where a pensioner waits years for entitlements, while a public officer’s child lives a life funded by a system that bleeds the poor dry.
And yet, every election season, the same ritual repeats. Politicians suddenly discover suffering. They wear local fabrics, speak of hardship, and promise reform. Once power is secured, empathy expires.
So let us answer the question honestly.
Yes, they know we are suffering.
They know—and they have decided that our pain is an acceptable price for their comfort. They govern without shame, steal without fear, and explain nothing because consequences are rare.
Nigeria’s tragedy is not a lack of information at the top.
It is the presence of conscience-free leadership—men and women who know exactly what they are doing, who is hurting, and who is benefiting.
Until power in Nigeria becomes truly accountable, suffering will remain policy, not accident.
Final Indictment
This is not merely a failure of policy. It is a failure of character.
The Nigerian state, as presently run, is not neutral—it is complicit. It protects excess, excuses theft, and punishes honesty with poverty. It asks citizens to be patriotic while rewarding those who loot it. It criminalizes protest but normalizes plunder.
When a civil servant’s lifestyle resembles that of a global tycoon, and no alarm is triggered; when lawmakers earn fortunes for passing bad laws; when pensioners die waiting while public officials’ children live extravagantly abroad—the message is clear: suffering is not a bug in the system. It is the system.
So yes, they know we are suffering.
They know—and they have chosen to rule over ruins rather than serve a nation.
That choice, more than anything else, is the crime.
Mogaji Wole Arisekola, Publisher of the Streetjournal Newspaper, writes from Ibadan.
