Imagine how many inventors, scientists, and creators Nigeria has lost to poverty.
The system punishes poor children for being born poor.
Tomorrow is Childrenās Day.
But honestlyā¦
What exactly are we celebrating?
The Nigerian child wakes up in a country where survival has become a curriculum.
A country where a child can score 9 Aās and still have no future.
Where intelligence is punished by poverty.
Where brilliance dies in classrooms without teachers.
Where dreams are buried under school fees.
Where children read under candles while politiciansā dogs live better than them.
Some children trek kilometers to school barefoot.
Some sit on broken floors to learn.
Some havenāt touched a computer in their lives, yet we expect them to compete globally with children building robots at age 10.
Some children are hungry in class.
Some are abused at home.
Some are already losing hope before adulthood even begins.
And the painful part?
We have normalized it.
We have normalized failure.
Normalized mediocrity.
Normalized a broken education system.
Normalized leaders who send their own children abroad while the children of ordinary Nigerians are trapped in collapsing schools.
A country that destroys its education system is not just failing students.
It is committing slow suicide.
Because every abandoned classroom today becomes insecurity tomorrow.
Every child denied quality education today becomes a wounded adult tomorrow.
Every broken school today becomes a broken nation tomorrow.
I have traveled across Nigeria.
I have seen children who are incredibly brilliant.
Children who could become world-class scientists, inventors, doctors, engineers, creators.
But they were simply born in the wrong environment.
That is the tragedy of Nigeria.
Not lack of talent.
Lack of opportunity.
And this is why I fight.
Why I speak.
Why I refuse to stay silent.
Because I believe the Nigerian child deserves more.
A child should not need to āknow somebodyā before succeeding.
A childās future should not depend on whether their parents are rich.
A child from Enugu, Kano, Bayelsa, Zamfara, Lagos, Ebonyi, or anywhere in this country should be able to dream again.
Real nations are not built in government houses.
They are built in classrooms.
The greatest investment any country can make is not oil.
Not buildings.
Not politics.
It is children.
And until Nigeria treats education like a national emergency, we are only decorating poverty.
So tomorrow, while people post happy Childrenās Day graphics, I want us to ask ourselves one uncomfortable question:
What kind of country are we handing over to these children?
Because one day, history will judge this generation.
And it will ask us whether we protected the futureā¦
or destroyed it.
Happy Childrenās Day to every Nigerian child still daring to dream inside a system that keeps failing them.
Please donāt stop dreaming.
Some of us are fighting for you.