Nigeria's resilience has become a curse, enabling exploitation and hindering development

Nigeria's capacity for resilience, once a source of national pride, has devolved into a detrimental psychological cage, according to Testimony Jesutoye. This celebrated ability to endure hardship has paradoxically enabled a predatory ruling class to exploit the nation while citizens passively await miracles or seek better lives abroad. The author argues that this resilience is no longer a virtue but a curse, an anesthetic that allows systemic indignity and exploitation to persist.

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The burden of our survival can no longer be deferred to the next election cycle, or packaged into desperate prayers. It falls squarely on us. We must shed our fear. We must organise horizontally, build parallel networks of community security, fiercely interrogate every public official, and ensure that every single act of governance failure carries a severe, unbearable social and political cost for the perpetrator.

The article posits that the Nigerian government has fundamentally failed in its primary constitutional duty: ensuring the security and welfare of its people. The widespread abductions of students, attacks on farmers, and violence in places of worship and on roads are presented as stark evidence of this failure. The author contends that these are not mere underperformances but a woeful abdication of responsibility, tearing apart the sacred bond between the government and its citizens.

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But let us be honest with ourselves, our celebrated resilience is no longer a virtue. It has become a curse. It is the psychological cage we have built for ourselves: the very anaesthetic that allows a predatory ruling class to pillage our homeland while we quietly pray for miracles and run abroad in search of a better life.

Jesutoye highlights the devastating impact of this governance failure on education and national development. The transformation of schools into hunting grounds forces parents into agonizing choices, potentially halting children's education permanently and creating a traumatized, illiterate generation. This compounding national decay, the author warns, guarantees a future of unending unrest, a stark departure from the nation's potential. The piece calls for a radical shift from passive endurance to active organization, urging citizens to shed fear, build parallel networks, and impose severe social and political costs on those responsible for governance failures.

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Thus, it can be said that Section 14 (2)(b) is the sacred bond that binds the Nigerian people and the government together, and any government formed in Nigeria which cannot keep children safe in schools, farmers safe on their farms, worshippers safe in their place of worship, and travellers safe on the road, has not merely underperformed but failed woefully.