A NEW year has arrived, and like clockwork, Nigerians are hopeful again. We crossed over. We prayed our way into the new year. New resolutions. New declarations. We boldly declared that this year must be better.
But hope, on its own, has never been a strategy. And prayer, without responsibility, has never fixed a broken system.
Last year, we talked about painm, deep, exhausting, national pain. We spoke about political failure, about mental health struggles hidden behind the popular Nigerian mantra of “we move.” We talked about women carrying entire homes on their backs, children slipping quietly through the cracks, and a country that has perfected survival while completely abandoning accountability.
We observed. We reflected. We questioned. And sometimes, we raged.
This year, we are done only observing.
Because in Nigeria, we have perfected the art of naming problems while skillfully avoiding responsibility.
Take leadership, for instance. We complain bitterly about bad roads, unpaid salaries, collapsing hospitals, and failing schools. We lament fuel scarcity, crushing inflation, and relentless insecurity. We trend hashtags. We argue endlessly online.
Then elections come and go, and nothing changes. The same faces rotate offices. The same excuses are recycled. Accountability is postponed till “next time.” We suffer, adapt, and move on until the next tragedy forces us to remember that silence always comes with a cost.
Mental health is another conversation we pretend to understand. We now casually use words like depression, anxiety, and burnout. Yet the average Nigerian workplace still treats exhaustion as loyalty. Parents still dismiss emotional distress as laziness, stubbornness, or spiritual weakness. Religious spaces still rush people to prayer without asking what is breaking them daily.
When someone finally collapses, we express shock. We sympathise with the breakdown. But we never interrogate the system that pushed them to the edge.
Women carry a disproportionate share of this national failure. We celebrate them endlessly, women who hustle, nurture, provide, endure. We praise their strength and resilience. But we rarely ask why they must be strong in the first place.
We ignore absent fathers, irresponsible husbands, weak laws, and cultural expectations that demand endless sacrifice without protection. We clap for survival while refusing to confront the structures that have made suffering normal.
And our children? We lament moral decay. We complain about bad manners. We blame social media and “this generation.” Yet many of these children are being raised by phones, by trauma, by parents too exhausted to parent and systems too broken to care.
We excuse neglect with busyness. We replace guidance with indulgence. Then we act surprised when the results show up years later. When they struggle, we call them lost never asking who failed them first.
Culture, of course, remains our most sensitive shield. Anytime harm is questioned, culture is rushed to the stand as defence. “This is how it has always been.” “This is our way.”
But culture that protects injustice is no longer heritage; it is a problem. Anything that silences the vulnerable deserves scrutiny, not reverence.
Accountability is uncomfortable in Nigeria because it disrupts familiarity. It asks difficult questions. It demands to know who was in charge when things went wrong. It insists on consequences beyond apologies and condolences. It refuses to stay quiet simply because power is involved.
So let us ask ourselves these hard questions:
Who benefits from our silence?
Who keeps getting away with negligence, abuse, and failure because we are tired of fighting?
Who do we keep protecting at the expense of the vulnerable?
This is not about outrage for noise. It is about clarity. About refusing to clap for resilience while ignoring the conditions that demand it. About moving the conversation from “it is well” to “who will answer for this?”
A new year does not automatically bring change. People do. And people only change when they are held accountable.
New slogans do not fix old failures.
And hope, without accountability, is just another delay tactic.
Because naming the problem was never bravery.
Demanding accountability is.
And this year, that is the work.
Voice just cleared its throat.
- Kabara is a writer and public commentator. Her syndicated column, Voice, appears in News Point Nigeria newspaper on Monday. She can be reached at hafceekay01@gmail.com.