Nigeria has become a paradoxical theatre where intelligence is applauded at convocation grounds but economically punished in real life. The country is manufacturing brilliance only to discard it, exporting the very minds it refuses to empower. In today’s Nigeria, the more educated you are, the more likely you are to be stranded in a system that treats knowledge as ornamental rather than transformational.
This collapse is not random. It is the inevitable fallout of a political economy where power overshadows competence and where mediocrity is rewarded with privileges that intellect can never access. American historian James Truslow Adams once noted that “the greatness of a nation lies not in the loudness of its claims but in the quality of its people.” Nigeria has contrariwise this wisdom—celebrating noise while starving quality.
Everywhere across the country, the evidence is brutal. First-class graduates are earning salaries or dearth wages that cannot fuel a senator’s SUV. Teachers: the custodians of society’s future are treated like afterthoughts. Engineers are fleeing to Canada. Doctors are on the next plane to the UK. Computer scientists are migrating to Kigali, Dubai, or Nairobi. The labour market resembles a collapsed dam, unable to retain the talent pouring through its cracks.
Nigeria has constructed an economy that compensates everything except intellect. The uneducated man who chants political slogans receives more financial reward than the engineer who designs city infrastructure. The social media sensation earns more than the seasoned lecturer shaping young minds. A political thug has more financial leverage than a trained administrator. This is the anatomy of a nation cannibalizing its future potential.
Economists call this a structural malfunction. Institutions are weak, opportunities are thin, and policies are often tone-deaf. Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala warned that no nation can outperform the integrity of its institutions. Nigeria’s institutions are compromised, corrupted, and calibrated to reward loyalty over merit. The economy functions like an overused generator—loud, inefficient, and inhaling its own fumes.
The result is predictable: high knowledge, low opportunity, massive brain drain. Countries like the UK, US, Germany, Rwanda, Ghana, and Canada are absorbing Nigerian professionals at historic rates. They understand what Nigeria refuses to acknowledge—that human capital is the backbone of national wealth. Ghanaian economist George Ayittey was right when he said Africa often behaves as though it is “allergic to prosperity.”
The emotional damage runs even deeper. When a society repeatedly shows its educated citizens that intelligence does not pay, it sends a toxic message to the younger generation: “Hard work is naïve; shortcuts are smarter.” That message is seeping into the psyche of Nigerian youths, breeding disillusionment, desperation, and disdain for genuine merit.
Nigeria is standing at a critical crossroad. Reward intelligence or lose it completely. Rebuild institutions or watch them disintegrate beyond repair. Create meaningful opportunities or continue exporting the very people who could rescue the economy. No nation becomes great by humiliating its thinkers; greatness comes from converting intellect into innovation, and innovation into economic firepower.
As Kenyan scholar PLO Lumumba warned, “A society that marginalizes its thinkers is scripting its own downfall.” Nigeria is dangerously close to this precipice. The country must re-engineer its value system: strengthen institutions, protect merit, reward creativity, expand scientific research, rehabilitate education, and dignify labour.
The Nigerian mind is not impoverished. The Nigerian system is.
The brilliance exists. The opportunities do not.
The ideas are abundant. The courage to use them is missing.
Until that courage emerges, Nigeria will continue to bury its brightest minds under a mountain of systemic failure leaving intelligence to shine only on paper, not in bank accounts. But celebrating corrupt leaders and Yahoo boys. This social ills must end if we must rise as a nation
– Inah Boniface Ocholi writes from Ayah – Igalamela/Odolu LGA, Kogi state.
08152094428 (SMS Only)
