17/05/2026
A Republic of Brown Envelopes
We now live in a country where corruption is no longer a problem; it has become a national costume. Everybody wears it proudly and pretends not to notice the smell.
Those who are appointed to clean the rots in the system are now too busy chasing FOOD (The Media People) for instance. The youths, instead of demanding accountability and transparency, have become unofficial praise singers — chanting political slogans in exchange for “small chance” and promises of jobs and the likes that may not arrive.
The professionals who should question the government have also discovered a new profession: survival (EMPHASIS). Lawyers, analysts, and supposed activists now sell their souls wholesale for relevance, brown envelopes, and front-row seats at government banquets.
Governors have graduated from public servants to demi-gods. Some citizens now speak about them with the kind of fear and reverence usually reserved for thunder.
Meanwhile, fake youth organizations keep multiplying like mosquitoes during rainy season — all “fighting for the people” from inside government hotel rooms.
Everybody wants to be relevant. Nobody wants to be truthful.
Even honesty has become unemployment. If some lawyers refuse to lie, people say they may not survive in practice. Security has disappeared so completely that even fear now moves around with bodyguards.
And then comes the famous assurance from the Governor:
“Your money is with me. Nothing has happened to it.”
Of course, nothing has happened to it — except that the tenure is almost ending while the local governments are bleeding like accident victims abandoned on the roadside. Citizens are now wondering whether the money will eventually be accounted for or spiritually transferred into private family history.
At this point, governance is beginning to look like a family inheritance project — where a few powerful individuals treat the country and the states like ancestral compounds reserved for their children, cousins, in-laws, and political worshippers.
May God deliver the ordinary people from professional patriots, seasonal activists, and leaders who mistake public office for personal property.