A puppy thinks: “These people feed me, love me, give me warmth—they must be gods!”
A kitten thinks: “These people feed me, love me, give me warmth—I must be a god!”
Same situation—different thinking.
That’s the story of Nigeria: same soil, different minds. We make our own realities by the thoughts we normalize; and when our thinking is crooked, our systems bend with it.
Credit to Lengdung Tungchamma for the searing parable of the segregated restroom—and to the late sage Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, who turned humiliation into horn sections and absurdity into rhythm. Both expose the same wound: a nation where performance replaces principle and where class theatre defeats common sense.
The “Oga” toilet and the “everyone else” toilet aren’t about sanitation; they’re about psychology. Management keeps the special key. The “everyone” toilet festers because no one with power must see it.
Visitors smell the neglect; staff endure it; the organisation’s image suffers. Yet the solution is laughably simple: let the boss use the same restroom. Instantly, cleanliness becomes policy. Why? Because care follows power. Where leaders go, maintenance goes; where they don’t, rot reigns.
Fela’s Expensive Shit taught the same lesson on a national stage. The state spent a fortune policing his intestines, just to prove who was boss. In the end, all they proved was the absurdity of power without sense. Public funds became a public joke. Nigeria still repeats the ritual—building spectacles instead of systems, special toilets while the lobby stinks, chasing men instead of mending institutions.
We guard keys to elite comfort as though separation itself were progress. But a country is like a shared restroom: if the commons are filthy, everyone steps in the mess.
Classism in Nigeria is an art form—designed, budgeted, and maintained. It works by creating visible distance between them and us.
LGEA schools for the poor, “model” schools for the respectable. The same government funds both, yet roofs leak only where officials’ children don’t sit. When leaders’ kids share the same desks with the poor, standards rise faster than circulars. “General” hospitals with VIP wards—air-conditioned for some, corridor beds for others. The poor memorise pharmacy names like bus stops; the rich memorise hospital gate numbers. Yet malaria respects no title.
Gutters for the poor, culverts and manicured roads for the estates. Floods follow the path of least resistance, which is usually the slum. Tankers and generators for those who can afford them; “UP NEPA” is the band playing for the rest. Scarcity becomes a badge of status. Escorts for the big man, vigilante for the rest.
The result: when leaders secede from public services, those services decay. Not because Nigerians are dirty or lazy, but because systems are loyal to their highest users. The broom sweeps only where the boss walks.
Classism masquerades as efficiency—premium lanes to quality. In truth, it’s wasteful theatre. The management-only restroom may gleam, but the organisation’s reputation rots when the public one reeks.
Multiply that by the nation, and you get human-capital collapse. Poor schools don’t just fail poor children—they shrink the talent pool for everyone, including the elite who later complain about “capacity gaps.”
Disease, illiteracy, and bad infrastructure do not recognise hierarchy. A city is only as healthy as its dirtiest water point; the supply chain only as smooth as its roughest feeder road.
When people watch officials avoid public services, they conclude “public” means inferior. The message spreads faster than cholera: escape, don’t reform. The commons then lose both funding and faith—the two ingredients any system needs to survive.
So, classism is, quite literally, expensive shit: a lot of money flushed down the pipes of vanity.
Often, it’s not even conspiracy—just incentives wearing agbada. The powerful build escape routes—private schools, VIP wards, boreholes—and call them solutions. Over time, the escape becomes the plan.
Budgets drift upward, following the loudest complaints and closest contacts.
Procurement mirrors privilege: those who dine with management win the contract to clean management’s restroom. And paradoxically, even the workers defend the hierarchy. The cleaner wants to hold “madam’s key”; the guard wants to salute “oga’s pass.” Everyone protects their micro-status because, in a poor economy, symbols are the safest savings account. When substance is scarce, show becomes currency.
Underneath the drama lies fear. The elite fear contamination—physical, political, reputational. They think sharing space dilutes mystique, invites accountability. The poor fear humiliation—“don’t bring oga here to see our mess.” So both sides maintain the choreography. Separation becomes a peace treaty: “I won’t demand your standards if you won’t inspect my performance.”
A nation trains itself by its toilets. When the strongest smell in a public building is exclusion—“this door not for you”—then the curriculum is classism. When the strongest signal is shared access and shared maintenance, the lesson is citizenship.
Yoruba wisdom says Ile ni a ti n k’eso rode—character begins at home. Replace “home” with “public services,” and you have our policy diagnosis: the habits we nurture in schools, hospitals, roads, and yes, toilets, become our civic DNA. Igbos add, mmiri mara mma anaghị agba n’elu igwe—good water doesn’t flow in the sky; quality must pass through the ground. Any standard that skips the commons is illusion. And Hausa completes it: ruwa baya tsami sai da dalili—water doesn’t sour without cause; decay has architects.
If policymakers enrolled their children in public schools, there’d be no need for motivational memos. PTA meetings would feel like Parliament. Libraries would open, roofs would mend before the rains.
Abolish VIP wards funded by public money—except for true isolation cases. Replace them with transparency dashboards: drug stock levels, staff-patient ratios, waiting times. Let the commissioner’s mother queue modestly; the queue will straighten itself.
These are not radical ideas; they’re common-user principles applied upward. We discipline the poor—hawkers, pupils, motorcyclists—while subsidising elite indiscipline with public funds. Flip the script: discipline the powerful through proximity to the commons. Let governors sit in general outpatient queues, permanent secretaries attend PTA meetings at LGEA schools, CEOs use visitor toilets. If repeated, these acts become civic curriculum.
Stop calling public services “free.” They are prepaid by taxpayers. Ownership language changes behaviour: when citizens see themselves as owners, they demand quality; when leaders see citizens as owners, they serve like stewards.
The “management key” is a gospel of separation—salvation by distance. If I can stay apart, I’ll stay pure, safe, important. But nations don’t rise by distance; they rise by standards. The shortest route to excellence is not more keys, but more shared doors.
Test the theory: let management use the “everyone” restroom for three months. No consultants, no memos. Return and inhale the change.
Fela laughed at a government so insecure it examined his faeces. Lengdung weeps over organisations that polish private toilets while their public face stinks. Between those two emotions lies our national choice: keep paying for expensive shit—rituals of class masquerading as governance—or invest in the inexpensive wisdom of common sense: one standard, one dignity, one republic.
Adaptability may be our survival skill, but when survival becomes a substitute for reform, adaptability becomes decay. Nigerians are geniuses at workaround culture—but genius wasted on escape routes only deepens the hole.
Power that cannot maintain the commons turns to spectacle to prove it still exists. It polishes private doors, orchestrates convoys, prosecutes dissenters—anything but fix systems. The more we normalise workaround culture, the more inequality becomes infrastructure. What then shall we do—beyond lamentation?
- Common access: All publicly funded facilities must default to shared use, with exceptions strictly justified.
- Shared accountability: Maintenance budgets should follow public footfall, not job titles.
- Unified standards: Collapse “model” and “ordinary” into one transparent national baseline.
- Open data: Track drugs, teachers, toilets, and potholes in public dashboards.
- Symbolic leadership: Reward leaders who use public services, not those who escape them.
These are not acts of charity; they are acts of citizenship.
A society that humiliates the poor will eventually humiliate itself. Dignity is indivisible—you cannot hoard it in a VIP lounge and expect it to perfume the lobby.
May our restrooms teach our children the politics we want them to inherit. May our leaders rediscover the simple genius of shared standards. May the music of governance sound less like sirens and more like service—steady, humble, and sane. May Nigeria finally flush its expensive shit.
