#nigeria

President Bola Tinubu has announced a monthly minimum pension guarantee of ₦52,500 for eligible retirees under the Contributory Pension Scheme, alongside a new healthcare plan.

The Nigerian Senate has promised a ₦100 million reward for the Flamingos following their historic World Cup triumph in Morocco.

Every Nigerian family now seems to have at least one WhatsApp group chat dedicated entirely to "japa gist." You know the one. Someone shares a Canada Express Entry update, another person asks about UK skilled worker visa sponsorship for nurses, someone else drops a screenshot of a UCAS deadline, and somewhere in the middle of it all, an uncle who traveled in the 90s reminds everyone that "things were not this hard when I left o." I have that group chat too. Everyone does.

A few weeks back, I watched my neighbour's teenage son pay for suya from a mai suya using his phone, tapping a QR code taped to the man's wooden cart, no cash, no change wahala, no "abeg you no get change." The suya seller, who I'd guess is somewhere in his fifties, didn't even blink. He's been accepting bank transfers and mobile wallet payments for at least two years now.

Independence came with a dream. Decades later, Nigerians are still asking the same questions their grandparents asked. What happened to the promise — and who is responsible?

Nigeria prays more than almost any nation on earth. We fast more. We tithe more. We build more churches per square kilometre than hospitals. We name our children Chukwuemeka, Oluwaseun, Abubakar, and Chisom — every name a declaration of faith, a tiny sermon pressed into a birth certificate. We spray "God is good" on danfo buses, paint "By His Grace" on container trucks barreling down the Lagos-Ibadan expressway at 120 kilometres per hour, and open PTA meetings, company board sessions, and even football press conferences with prayer.

There is a particular kind of tension that settles over Nigeria in the years before a general election. It arrives quietly — in whispered conversations at beer parlours, in the restless energy of party meetings, in the way newspapers suddenly find their voices on topics they spent the previous year tiptoeing around.

Nigeria does not wait for election season. Politics in this country is a permanent condition — a round-the-clock negotiation of power, loyalty, betrayal, and survival that never truly pauses between cycles. By the time a president is sworn in, the next election has already begun. And so it is today: with the 2027 general elections still over a year away, the chess pieces are already moving, the alliances are already shifting, and Nigerians who are paying attention can already see the shape of what is coming.