In serious and responsible societies, individuals who have climbed the ladder of achievement eventually shift their competition. The contest moves from what they can buy to what they can leave behind for those that will come after them. Bill Gates put it simply: “If life happens to bless you with talent or treasure, you have a responsibility to use those gifts as well and as wisely as you possibly can.” Education and organised giving become the new measure. Foundations are built. Scholarships are funded. Research and entrepreneurs are supported. The people at the top understand that a society which cannot produce competent young people is already declining.
unfortunately, what we parade in Nigeria is a different performance. It is the big-man show. Success is measured by how much can be displayed rather than by what has been built. Luxurious cars acquired, Convoys grow longer. Houses multiply. Campaign seasons is close by, but we will all hear recycled three cardinal promises that have defined political speech for decades: roads, pipe-borne water, electricity. New ideas are treated as optional. Mediocrity is not an embarrassment. It is rewarded with airtime, titles, and the soft applause of a media class that has forgotten its duty is to be questioned, not to celebrated.
Look closely and you will notice something even more revealing. These same big men are quick to copy what they see from the West when it comes to lifestyle. They import cars, watches, houses, and latest mobile phone, private schools for their own children, foreign medical trips, educational titles, and the expensive desires. They accept the surface of Western success with open arms. But when it comes to the deeper things the serious Western elite prioritize the hard work of cultivating minds, funding education, building research, and preparing the next generation they suddenly lose interest. They take the glitter and leave the substance. They wear the clothes of progress while rejecting the responsibility that actually produces it.
To be more specific, there is the loud politician whose public performances fill timelines and generate noise, yet who collapses into confusion the moment a serious discussion on governance is required. The cars and lifestyle are expensive but the ability to present a clear plan for the people whose votes keep him relevant remains stubbornly missing. Then there is the wealthy political figure whose private life has become a running public drama, collecting wives and headlines with equal energy while the harder work of building anything that outlives him remains untouched. And there is the former fighter, once the loudest critic of privilege and excess, who eventually settled comfortably into the same privileged circle he spent years attacking, trading the language of struggle for the soft comforts of the very class he once opposed.
These are not random individuals. They are the public face of a particular understanding of success: arrival measured by display rather than by contribution. Do they see themselves as standing in the same company as those Western figures and foundations that still prioritize education and structured giving? The question is uncomfortable because the answer is revealing. What we often see is closer to scavenging than to leadership. Resources are taken. Attention is harvested. Status is performed. The long-term health of the society that made the extraction possible is treated as someone else’s problem. Vultures circling the carcass of public hope, not builders of the next generation.
The hypocrisy is sharpened by a simple fact. The same people who cannot be bothered to raise the standard of public education at home routinely buy excellence abroad for their own children. The children are put on planes to systems that still believe laboratories, libraries, critical thinking, and continuity matter. Then the parents return to defend a local arrangement that treats education as an afterthought, a campaign slogan, a residual item. To know the value of a functioning educational system well enough to purchase it for one’s own children, yet refuse to build even a basic version for the children of the people whose taxes and votes sustain everything, is not mere carelessness. It is a quiet form of wickedness.
Education is not a sentimental appeal. It is the minimum requirement for any society that wants a future. A country that cannot educate its young people to a competitive standard in a technological age is not merely lagging. It is choosing to become irrelevant. Artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing, data systems, renewable energy, and complex logistics do not respond to campaign songs or social-media theatrics. They respond to trained minds. Every year that serious investment in those minds is postponed is a year in which the gap between those who can compete and those who cannot grows wider.
The show must end. The solution is not another season of slogans. We already know what the next governor will come to promise us: good roads, water, light, and the usual list. Those things matter, but they are no longer enough. What we need is innovation.
What about adopting the Computer-Based Test(CBT) format used by JAMB for Ogun’s public school unified examinations? What about providing standard ICT facilities in every public school without excluding any school, whether in the city or the remotest community? What about real curriculum reform that prepares students for the technological age, backed by a serious task force that monitors compliance and publishes results? These are the kind of concrete steps that move a state forward instead of recycling the same old promises.
First, the public conversation itself must change. Stop celebrating wealth that is not matched by contribution. Media houses and commentators should shift attention from lifestyle theatre to measurable investment in education, research, and skills. The loud performer without the foundation should be treated as what he is: a distraction, not a model.
Second, education must be treated as the most important infrastructure. This means competitive pay and continuous training for teachers, especially in science, technology, engineering, Arts, Humanities and mathematics. It means laboratories that actually work, digital tools that reach beyond the big cities, and a curriculum designed for the problems of 2035 rather than the nostalgia of the past. Schools in neglected communities must receive the same urgency as showcase projects in the capital. A child should not have to apologise for the place he was born.
Third, create clear pathways between skill and opportunity. Scholarships alone are not enough if they lead into emptiness. Government, private capital, and serious givers must fund structured apprenticeships, innovation hubs, and research partnerships that turn learning into livelihood. The potential of young people is not unlocked by motivational speeches. It is unlocked when a young person can see a clear route from competence to income and influence.
Fourth, introduce a new form of accountability for those at the top. Those who claim leadership must be measured by the schools they strengthen, the research they fund, and the talent they develop, not by the size of their personal estates. A public ranking of educational and skills investment by the wealthy and those in office would create a competition more useful than the current contest of display.
Finally, the next generation must refuse to inherit the show. Young people should demand systems rather than handouts, institutions rather than photo opportunities, and measurable results rather than recycled promises. The real people at the top are those who expand the circle of capability. Everyone else is merely performing.
Power without the deliberate cultivation of human capacity is empty. Wealth that does not reproduce competence is temporary. The difference between societies that still treat education as a serious duty and the performance we currently endure is not destiny. It is choice. And the price of that choice will always be paid by those who were never invited to the masquerade.
Ise ya, ise ya, omo Ogun ise ya ……
