Rice is now the national solution. Security, jobs, schools, health care everything answered with a bag of rice. But a sack of grain cannot feed a nation. Nigeria deserves more.
We are tired. Not just tired of waiting, but tired of being treated as if survival alone is enough.
In this country, every demand we make of those in power is answered the same way. Security, a bag of rice. Roads, a bag of rice. Schools, a bag of rice. Jobs, a bag of rice. Health care, a bag of rice. Inflation, a bag of rice. Our hopes, our futures, our dignity, all reduced to a bag of rice.
They arrive again, smiling for cameras, sharing what should never have become a substitute for governance. Rice has become the response to hunger, to poverty, to broken infrastructure, to unemployment, to corruption. Just a bag of rice, as if that is enough to quiet a nation.
I often wonder what this rice really tastes like. Does it taste like relief, or like deception? Gratitude, or manipulation? How many times will we chew and swallow before we admit that this is not care, it is control?
This is not generosity. It is manipulation. It is democracy reduced to transactions. It is a system that feeds on hunger and survives on desperation. Hunger becomes policy.
Survival becomes strategy. Dependence becomes design.
And the deeper tragedy is not only in the giving, it is in the acceptance. Not because people do not know better, but because hunger has a way of silencing questions. It lowers expectations. It forces dignity to negotiate with survival.
How did we get here? How did the measure of leadership shrink to the weight of a sack? How did a nation of such promise allow its future to be counted in grains?
A bag of rice can fill a stomach for a few days. It cannot fix broken roads. It cannot rebuild failing schools. It cannot equip hospitals or employ the millions without work. It cannot stabilize a currency weakened by poor decisions. It cannot replace vision, courage, or accountability.
Yet, time and again, it is offered. And too often, it is received with applause. Not because we are blind, and not because we are foolish, but because hardship has a way of making the bare minimum look like mercy.
This is where we are now. A country rich in potential, reduced to distribution. Governance has been replaced with sharing. Leadership has been reduced to optics. Who gives, when they give, and how much they give.
But let’s not get things twisted. A bag of rice is not policy. It is not progress. It is not governance. It is a pause. A distraction. A temporary quieting of justified anger.
And every time we accept it as enough, every time we trade our voice for it, we send a message that our future can be bought cheaply. We teach those in power that performance is optional, that accountability is negotiable, that survival is all we will ever demand.
A bag of rice will finish in a week. The consequences of bad governance will remain long after the last grain is gone.
Every time we trade our voice for a bag of rice, we teach them our future has a price.
Nigeria deserves more than this cycle. More than survival. More than gestures that fade as quickly as they appear. Nigeria deserves leadership that builds, that protects, that plans, and that understands that dignity cannot be distributed in food packs.
We are more than hungry stomachs. We are citizens with expectations, with voices, with a future that should not be bargained away for temporary relief.
And until we insist on more, until we refuse to be reduced to recipients instead of citizens, nothing will change.
A bag of rice is not policy.
Governance has been replaced with logistics.
A bag of rice will finish in a week. Bad governance will last for years.
Stephanie Shaakaa
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