38. My Journey with Nigeria
Let me take you through a journey of Nigeria, how I have lived through it over the years and where I have landed:
Childhood Shock
My relationship with Nigeria has always been transitory, marked by shifting seasons that shaped both my outlook and my work. It began with shock. As a child, I could not comprehend why Nigeria had no electricity. We prayed NEPA would not deny us a soap opera or a Super Eagles match. Unlike today, when “I better pass my neighbor” generators hum in every corner, we had no alternatives. That first phase of my relationship with Nigeria was marked by deep frustration and fragile hope. I even scribbled little notes about Nigeria — notes Sister Sade Ajala once shared with Brother Dare Elusakin — the earliest evidence of my restless questioning. This curiosity eventually earned me the title of editor at NIFES, a campus fellowship I was a part of in university.
The Rise of Hope
The second phase was defined by hope and intentional action. Long before BudgIT emerged in 2011, I was already restless about what could be done. In 2009, I launched a climate change sustainability initiative in Yaba, which was attended by notable figures, including Teni Majekodunmi, who now leads the Climate Change Office. Out of such efforts, BudgIT would eventually take shape. In its earliest days, I knew nothing about grants or funding; it was sheer faith that carried us. I poured raw energy into asking hard questions, and governments listened. We earned respect. That season was defined by one word: hope — the belief that we would significantly change the paradigm. It was just a matter of time.
The Crash of Frustration
But hope has limits. When Muhammadu Buhari became president, I believed his government would finally confront Nigeria’s deep-rooted problems. Within six months, my hope had extinguished. The scale of dysfunction was overwhelming, and the country once again flirted with suboptimal leadership at every level. Even the international development community’s enthusiasm for “fighting corruption” waned as people saw through the ruse. Hope turned to deep frustration, and the Columbia Scholars program became my escape hatch.
Reinvigoration and Disillusion
Hope flickered again after the Obama Fellowship, when Prince Clem Ikanade Agba invited me to serve as his technical adviser. For a moment, it felt as though my ideas might finally shape Nigeria’s budget process from within. My naivety quickly unraveled. Two weeks in, I had accumulated enough experiences to fill a mid-sized book. What began as an opportunity turned into a battle — online and offline. Resigning from that role closed one chapter but opened another: new vistas of indifference and escape.
Indifference
From then on, my focus shifted. I poured my energy into expanding BudgIT into other climes, grounding my thoughts in spaces beyond Nigeria’s borders. My relationship with Nigeria became less emotional and more strategic. Around this time, I encountered Achebe’s A Man of the People, a story about Nigeria written in the 1960s. In recent times, I’ve had a run of Achebe’s books. Each page feels less like fiction and more like a mirror — Nigeria staring back at me in stories dressed as novels. Things Fall Apart reminded me of how fragile order can be when power shifts hands. Arrow of God showed me the tragedy of stubbornness in leadership. A Man of the People felt almost prophetic, echoing the politics and elite decay I’ve seen up close. Through Chief Nanga’s flamboyant life and the fickle standards of Max, Eunice, and Edna, I saw Nigeria reflected in an infinite mirror — unchanged across generations.
Emotions and Strategy
Now, as I reflect at 40, I see people still burning with emotion about Nigeria’s future. I understand that fire; I once carried it. But experience has taught me that progress here is rarely linear. Those who thrive at Nigeria’s leadership have either been strategic or simply lucky. Nigeria remains bound by a defective culture — obsessed with grandeur over purpose, more intent on self-preservation than communal growth, more focused on projecting a sense of arrival than on humanity itself. Religion and communal living may mask it, but if you rinse it to its core, the defect shows. Accepting reality is not defeatist; it is a sign of coping with a rush of unanswered questions.
When you look at the sweeping bigotry today, all because of political opportunism — the push to shrink Lagos into a Yoruba enclave — it mirrors the posture of the Action Group against the Federal Government in the 1960s. Nothing truly changes in people who refuse to reinvent their culture. That is why my oft-repeated statement, adapted from Mr. Tunji Lardner, rings true: you cannot fix adaptive (cultural) problems with technical solutions. No PowerPoint slides, legislation, technology, or glossy documents can repair what is essentially a cultural issue. The first step is acceptance: this is who we are. Only then can we begin the slow, deliberate work of crafting solutions that move Nigeria toward real progress.
