“When silence becomes a habit, injustice becomes culture.”

As I sit in quiet reflection this midweek, my heart bleeds. Not merely as a legal practitioner or patriot, but as a son of the soil watching his homeland slip deeper into the abyss.

The piercing words of Prof. Mike Ozekhome, SAN, linger:

“Nigerians are not resilient. They are cowards… When you push a Nigerian to the wall, he will break the wall and run away.”

But are we truly cowards—or are we a people battered by decades of betrayal, corruption, and the cruel weaponisation of poverty?

Our survival instincts have taught us to settle for crumbs, to keep quiet just to stay alive. But at what cost?
When survival comes at the expense of dignity, when silence buries hope—what is left of our nationhood?

We are witnessing the slow suffocation of democracy—a deliberate erosion of values, conscience, and identity.

When political leaders shamelessly defect to a party responsible for widespread economic hardship, one thing becomes glaring: Nigerian politics is no longer about service—it is about power, preservation, and personal gain.

We have normalised oppression .
We chant “resilience,” yet wear fear like a second skin.
We call it “wisdom” when we bow to oppression—but it is nothing short of surrender.

Where is our collective conscience?
Where is the righteous anger that ignites revolutions?

A people cannot be free when they are too afraid to feel. We cannot build a future while numb to the present.

The time has come to rise—not with violence, but with vision.
Not with bitterness, but with bold conviction.
Not as lone voices, but as a coordinated force of conscience.

History does not remember those who ran away.
It remembers those who stood up—when it mattered most.

Nigeria is gasping for breath.
But we, don’t have to die with it, we do not have to suffocate in silence

Sir Ifeanyi C. Ejiofor, Esq (KSC)
June 11, 2025.