Professor Abubakar Roko and Nigeria’s Broken Promises

In 2017, some self-appointed prophets of the Nigerian economy the #AljanunKasuwa as we call them, declared or was it a prediction [?], that private universities would dominate higher education by 2022. They were wrong — not because public universities thrived, but because they collapsed differently. Their collapse was not from market competition, but under the crushing weight of elite indifference, broken leadership, and a state that no longer invests in its people.

Today, the Nigerian public university is not just underfunded, but a symbolic of a much deeper national failure. The collapse of the social protection scheme if at all it existed. To be a worker in Nigeria is to live without guarantees. There is no reliable health insurance. Salaries come late — if at all they come, they last only a day and cannot cater for family needs. Pensions are a cruel joke. To teach, nurse, be a journalist, or even serve as a civil servant is to walk a tightrope between duty and destitution.

We are witnessing the systematic erosion of the idea that the state owes its citizens anything- the morally justified agreement made amongst individuals for an organised society. Nigerian workers — from professors to market women — are one illness, one delayed salary, one job loss away from ruin. The majority retire into poverty. The few who escape do so by playing the dirty game of proximity to power. Everyone else is disposable.

In a country where the state guarantees nothing, corruption becomes a form of survival, people steal not because they are greedy, but because they have seen the void — the nothingness — that awaits them after years of honest labour. This is why creativity dies. Why loyalty dissolves. Why our best minds leave. They “japa” in numbers to US, UK, Canada and Arab countries in search of greener pasture.

Ask any young academic, nurse, or civil servant what their retirement plan is. Most will respond with bitter laughter. Some will mention side hustles. In fact, side hustle is normalized. Quite often, a comment on poor condition of service elicits responses like “you need to adapt with the system”, “find something doing that can cater for your needs”. But at what expense? Many rely on prayer. 

That is what the Nigerian state has become – a prayer point.

Even the so-called elite are not safe. Lose an election, fall out of favour, and the system forgets you. Former governors age overnight. Stories of former governors, ministers, National Assembly members, and local government chairmen who fell into financial ruin are widespread. Without power, even the privileged have no protection. The emperor, it turns out, was never wearing clothes.

The Nigerian system is designed for collapse. There is no two ways about it. When social insurance dies, families are overburdened. The middle class vanishes. The nation bleeds brainpower. And the young — watching the fate of their elders — opt out completely. Some migrate. Others radicalize. Most disengage.

We must now face the truth we’ve long evaded – no serious country in the whole world leaves its citizens this exposed.

Professor Abubakar Roko’s story is one of many that reveal the deeply systemic failure of the Nigerian social insurance scheme and expose the catastrophic state of Nigeria’s healthcare system.

Nigeria’s public institutions — universities, hospitals, schools — are failing not because they are public, but because the state has stopped believing in the public good. We treat these institutions as expired relics instead of the bedrock of development. We outsource public responsibility to markets, NGOs, and God. That is not strategy. That is surrender.

Sincerely to salvage this country we must rebuild the idea of the social contract. A nation that cannot protect its workers from ruin is not a serious country. It is a lottery. We need a universal health insurance system — real, not rhetorical. We need a pension framework that is transparent, reliable, and inclusive — not a tool for political patronage. We need salary structures that respect intellectual and professional labour. And above all, we need a leadership culture that sees social investment as infrastructure, not as waste.

Sometimes people accuse us of being idealists. But in every functioning society, education, health, housing, and retirement systems are interconnected. Productivity increases when people feel secure. Creativity thrives when people are not afraid to grow old. Loyalty deepens when the system honours service. That is how nations are built.

But in Nigeria, we still play musical chairs with power — and only the connected survive. Everyone else is expected to pray, hustle, or die quietly. If we refuse to restore dignity to work, protect labour, and honour service, the system will implode. And when it does, not even the powerful will be spared. History is clear on that, in fact, we have seen Sudan.

The choice before us is not between public and private universities, or between reform and inertia. It is between rebuilding a functional state — or becoming a failed one.