Every December, Nigeria becomes a theater of contradictions, a place where hunger wears designer clothes, poverty sips champagne, and failure throws a concert. The streets of Lagos glitter with imported lights while the national grid collapses for the hundredth time. Fuel sells above ₦1,200 per litre, inflation soars past 33.4%, the naira trades over ₦1,500 to the dollar, and yet, the air reeks not of outrage but of barbecue smoke. Nigerians have mastered a rare art: celebrating their oppressors while starving in designer wear.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration could not have scripted a more convenient distraction. While citizens rush to buy Christmas rice that now costs between ₦70,000 and ₦85,000 per bag, his government has perfected a fiscal sleight of hand — outsourcing Nigeria’s tax collection infrastructure to France, the same former colonial power whose African record reads like a manual in economic domination. The government calls it “modernization”; history calls it monetized servitude.
This new Franco-Nigerian tax pact is not about efficiency; it is about dependency. A nation that cannot refine its crude oil now trusts another to refine its revenue. The symbolism is nauseating: a supposed giant of Africa handing its wallet to a European babysitter. Even as public debt balloons to ₦97.3 trillion, Tinubu’s government continues to borrow with the arrogance of someone using another man’s credit card.
The result? Nigeria now spends ₦9.18 trillion annually servicing debt — more than the combined allocations for education, health, and infrastructure. This means the government spends more on paying its creditors than on its citizens. Yet, while these fiscal tragedies unfold, Nigerians are shopping for fireworks. It is as if national bankruptcy has become a festive tradition.
The National Bureau of Statistics reports that 133 million Nigerians live in multidimensional poverty — meaning they lack access to basic human necessities like food, shelter, and healthcare. But walk through any major Nigerian city this Christmas, and you would think you were in a music video. Luxury SUVs jam traffic as families buy imported wines, foreign chocolates, and fake happiness. The same citizens who cannot afford electricity spend millions on Christmas decorations powered by diesel generators.
Meanwhile, the Federal Government’s much-trumpeted “Renewed Hope” agenda has turned into a “Renewed Taxation” regime. VAT, customs duties, and levies have all increased. Nigerians now pay more for fuel, food, electricity, and education, while their leaders earn more allowances and fly new private jets. Public universities remain chronically underfunded; hospitals are death traps; the naira has become a tragicomedy. Still, Nigerians continue to worship at the altar of escapism.
In Lagos, a single table at a December concert costs ₦15 million. In Abuja, luxury hotels are fully booked. Influencers preach financial discipline online but pose in rented outfits at Christmas galas. Everyone is trying to outshine everyone else — while the country itself grows dimmer. The tragedy is not poverty; it is our relationship with it. Nigerians do not reject suffering — they accessorize it.
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President Tinubu, of course, understands this psychology well. He governs through exhaustion, knowing that a hungry nation cannot organize resistance. Every policy misfire — from fuel subsidy removal to currency devaluation — is cloaked in the language of reform. The pain is justified as patriotic sacrifice, while cronies enrich themselves through inflated contracts and opaque appointments.
And what does the average Nigerian do? He updates his status: “God no go shame us.” He doesn’t protest; he prays. He doesn’t demand accountability; he dances. The oppressor has no reason to fear a citizen who mistakes endurance for strength.
Consider the irony: Nigeria’s life expectancy is 54 years — one of the lowest in the world — yet no one complains about dying young. Instead, we boast about surviving. Our children study under leaking roofs while politicians send theirs to Harvard. We queue for fuel in an oil-rich nation and call it “resilience.” We are the only country where dysfunction has been rebranded as destiny.
And so, December becomes an annual purge of conscience. Nigerians forget everything: the insecurity that has displaced over 3.5 million people, the unemployment crisis affecting over 40% of the youth, and the Naira’s catastrophic free fall. The season demands cheerfulness, not consciousness. Churches organize concerts instead of civic debates; comedians replace activists. We do not read budgets — we read horoscopes.
Tinubu’s government thrives in this fog of distraction. As citizens drink to forget, he legislates to remember. While Nigerians plan for Christmas, the government plans new tariffs, new loans, new taxes. It’s a partnership of mutual delusion: the state steals, the people celebrate, and the future weeps silently in the background.
When the music fades in January, the hangover will be national. Parents will struggle to pay school fees. Traders will lament dollar volatility. Civil servants will stare at shrinking paychecks. The fireworks will have died, but the fire remains — burning quietly in the belly of a country that mistakes survival for success.
Nigeria’s tragedy is not that its leaders are corrupt; it is that its citizens are complicit through forgetfulness. Each December, we drown our pain in champagne, only to wake up in chains.
And so, as the lights twinkle this Christmas, remember this: the brightest bulbs often hang over the darkest rooms.
Professor MarkAnthony Ujunwa Nze is an acclaimed investigative journalist, public intellectual, and global governance analyst whose work shapes contemporary thinking at the intersection of health and social care management, media, law, and policy. Renowned for his incisive commentary and structural insight, he brings rigorous scholarship to questions of justice, power, and institutional integrity.
Based in New York, he serves as a full tenured professor and Academic Director at the New York Center for Advanced Research (NYCAR), where he leads high-impact research in governance innovation, strategic leadership, and geopolitical risk. He also oversees NYCAR’s free Health & Social Care professional certification programs, accessible worldwide at:
👉 https://www.newyorkresearch.org/professional-certification/
Professor Nze remains a defining voice in advancing ethical leadership and democratic accountability across global systems.