by Mohammed Bello Doka
3rd July, 2026.
Nigeria of today is a nation where everything is for sale. A journalist charges desperate individuals to fabricate news articles and interviews, turning the fourth estate into a marketplace of lies where truth is the first casualty. The police charge citizens to detain the innocent or to release the guilty, transforming justice into a commodity for the highest bidder, where the scales are tipped not by evidence but by currency. Prisoners can pay money to secure better detention facilities, converting incarceration into a luxury hotel experience for those with means, while the poor rot in squalor for crimes they may not have committed. Doctors charge for fake medical reports, betraying the Hippocratic oath for a few thousand naira, trading the sanctity of life for the filth of profit. Lecturers charge for results, selling grades to students who should have earned them through hard work, destroying the very foundation of merit and excellence. The judiciary sells judgments allegedly. The legislature sells laws. The executive sells contracts. In Nigeria today, everything is for sale, and the only competence that matters is the one that fits in a brown envelope. Is anyone reading the handwriting on the wall? Yet the political elite thinks they can bribe their ways out of this menace through propaganda and lies. They believe that controlling the narrative is the same as solving the problem, that silencing the media is the same as silencing the hunger, that purchasing the loyalty of a few is the same as securing the allegiance of the many. They are tragically, dangerously, and catastrophically mistaken. You cannot bribe a starving stomach with a press release. You cannot arrest desperation with a state-sponsored broadcast. You cannot purchase loyalty with lies when the people have nothing left to lose. The bubble must burst, and when it does, no amount of propaganda will protect those who have spent years perfecting the art of deception while the nation burned.
The mathematics of survival in Nigeria today are brutal and undeniable, and they expose the cruel joke that Nigeria's salary structures have become. A Nigerian Army General earning approximately two million Naira a month, roughly $1,428 at current exchange rates, cannot afford to feed a family of ten in today's Nigeria. The cost of feeding ten people three meals a day for one month now exceeds the General's entire gross salary. If a General, a man who has dedicated his entire adult life to the service of his country, cannot afford to feed his own extended family, what hope is there for the rest of the nation?
The Consolidated Public Service Salary Structure (CONPSS) reveals a civil servant on Grade Level 01 earning just ₦77,500 monthly. Grade Level 07 earns ₦106,472. Grade Level 10 earns ₦150,503. Grade Level 15, once considered a comfortable middle-class income, earns ₦251,211, an amount that cannot cover rent for a decent two-bedroom apartment in the capital. The Consolidated Armed Forces Salary Structure (CONAFSS) paints an even more disturbing picture. A Private soldier earns between ₦49,000 and ₦104,500 monthly. An Aircraftman earns ₦53,892. A Second Lieutenant earns around ₦120,000. A Captain earns ₦220,000. A Major earns ₦380,500. A Lieutenant Colonel earns ₦420,500. A Colonel earns up to ₦580,500. A Brigadier General earns ₦750,500. A Major General earns ₦1,150,500. These are the men and women sent to fight Boko Haram and bandits, paid less than the cost of the ammunition they use, their families starving while they risk their lives on the front lines. The academic sector is no exception. Following the January 2026 agreement between the Federal Government and ASUU, a Professor on CONUASS 7(1) earns approximately ₦465,532 monthly after a 40% pay increase, while a Senior Lecturer earns ₦323,000 and a Lecturer with a PhD earns approximately ₦182,000. A Graduate Assistant earns approximately ₦193,000. These are the intellectuals shaping the next generation, and they cannot afford to feed their own children. The salary structures that once defined status and achievement have become instruments of humiliation, documents that prove how little the state values those who serve it.
The Nigerian middle class, broadly defined as individuals earning between ₦300,000 and ₦1.5 million monthly, is being rapidly decimated. A worker earning ₦200,000 a month, still above the minimum wage, cannot even meet his transportation needs in Abuja, Lagos among other major cities. He is forced to choose between putting food on the table, paying for his children's education, or commuting to the job that provides the meager income. The same workers laying the golden egg are being reduced to beggars, forced to rely on the very system that exploits them to survive. The middle class is not just shrinking; it is being systematically annihilated, and with its destruction goes any hope of a stable, prosperous Nigeria.
There is a carefully constructed lie being sold to Nigerians every single day, peddled by a government desperate to maintain its grip on power and amplified by a complicit media more interested in access than truth. This lie is that the current hardship is a temporary phase, a necessary adjustment on the path to a brighter future. But the salary structures laid bare tell a vastly different story. In Nigeria today, almost everybody is poor, with the sole exception of the one to two percent who belong to the political and business elite. The elite, who flaunt their opulence, got rich at the expense of the masses. They have created a system where poverty is not an accident but a weapon of control. As one analyst put it, poverty has been weaponized into a political tool and mechanism of control by the elite. The status quo thrives when the majority are too hungry to question, too jobless to organize, and too exhausted to resist. This is why Nigeria can never get rid of corruption. Corruption is the glue that holds the entire rotten structure together. When political office becomes the only reliable means of enrichment, corruption ceases to be an aberration and becomes the governing principle.
With corruption comes deepening insecurity. The $2.1 billion Dasukigate arms scandal exemplifies this, where funds meant to fight insurgency were diverted through politically connected networks. Despite a record N3.15 trillion allocated to the Ministry of Defence in 2026, insecurity continues to worsen, highlighting the gaping chasm between expenditure and results. According to Nextier, Nigeria recorded 1,274 violent incidents in 2025, resulting in 4,654 deaths and 3,141 hostages. With insecurity comes deepening poverty, as farmers are chased from their lands and bandits terrorize communities. With poverty comes illiteracy and disease, as public schools and hospitals rot while the elite fly abroad for healthcare. The Federal Government recently revealed that more than 20 million Nigerian children who enrolled in primary school never made it to senior secondary education, creating a generation of desperate youths ripe for recruitment by criminal gangs. The cycle is self-perpetuating and lethal, each element feeding the other in a death spiral from which there is no escape without radical intervention.
The government's attempts to tone down reportage on the hardship are transparent and insulting, a strategy of distraction relying on palliatives that treat symptoms while ignoring the terminal disease. The tragic stampedes during food distributions are not accidents; they are the desperate, bloody exclamation points on a sentence of state failure. When a bag of rice becomes a life-or-death matter, we witness the complete collapse of governance. These handouts are not relief; they are tools of social engineering and systematic pauperization, conditioning citizens to accept beggarly status as normal.
Eventually, inevitably, civil disorder follows. History is replete with regimes that believed propaganda could silence hunger. France's aristocracy believed peasants would bow forever until the guillotine rose. Apartheid South Africa believed black youths would remain docile until Soweto exploded. Egypt's Hosni Mubarak believed his iron grip would hold until Tahrir Square filled with millions. In each case, the regime mistook silence for consent and propaganda for reality. The ruling class in Nigeria is sitting on a volcano disguised as silence. The hunger is real, the anger is real, and the desperation is real. No amount of propaganda can keep hungry people silent forever. It is not a matter of if, how or why but just a matter of time. When the volcano erupts, it will consume everything in its path.
There is still time to fix this. The Nigerian people have shown remarkable patience, but that patience is not inexhaustible. The solution requires a radical reorientation of priorities, a genuine commitment to fighting corruption, and an acknowledgment that the current system is unsustainable. It requires paying workers a living wage, investing in education and healthcare, and creating an economy that rewards productivity rather than connections. However, with recent cases and happenings, it appears the government is more interested in retaining power than saving the nation. Every four years, they reinvent the same script while billions vanish into poverty-alleviation schemes where the only poverty alleviated is that of the organizers. The leadership treats governance as a performance, not a responsibility, more concerned with the next election than the next generation.
If this is allowed to fester, the consequences will be catastrophic. A nation that cannot provide economic hope, social justice, and security risks losing not only its stability but its moral center. A system built on poverty is a house built on gunpowder, and history is clear: the status quo always looks permanent until the day it shatters. The elite may believe they can bribe their way out through propaganda and lies, but they are wrong. You cannot bribe hunger. You cannot silence a starving stomach with a press release. You cannot arrest desperation with a police state. The handwriting is on the wall, and the question is no longer whether the bubble will burst, but when. The elite would do well to remember that when the hungry finally rise, they do not come to negotiate. They come to destroy.
Mohammed Bello Doka can be reached via [email protected]
Abuja Network News
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