Good morning,
He had a second-class upper degree in Psychology, an NYSC discharge certificate, and a WAEC result. He tore them up on camera. “I don’t want to be a graduate again. It didn’t favour me,” he said. He had the papers. He did not have the job. The same week, a new HP study found that over 70 per cent of Nigerian workers are happy with AI adoption in the workplace, with 59 per cent using work-provided AI tools daily or weekly. The tools have arrived. The jobs have not. And PiggyVest’s Odunayo Eweniyi reminded us at OpenHouse Lagos that only one in ten Nigerians can raise ₦156,000 in a week for an emergency. The naira has stabilised. Reserves are up. The maths on the ground says otherwise.
The state’s instinct is still to block the microphone rather than answer the question. In Kano, heavily armed police officers barricaded both ends of the road leading to a “Tinubu Must Go” event, with more than ten mobile police vehicles deployed to stop a peaceful assembly. Amnesty International and CITAD condemned the blockade as a violation of the constitutional right to peaceful assembly, warning it reflected a troubling pattern of repression against opposition voices ahead of 2027. Meanwhile, the Federal Government has launched a National Database of Contractors, Consultants and Service Providers to screen companies by technical competence, financial capacity and past performance before they bid for public contracts. It is a sensible tool. Whether it is enforced is another matter. And President Tinubu has approved a realignment of the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway to merge with the existing East-West Road corridor in Edo State, raising sections of the roadbed by two metres to counter flooding. The original alignment, it turns out, was planned without accounting for the terrain it would cross.
The week also delivered its quieter, harder stories. Nollywood actress Toyosi Adesanya revealed she underwent five surgeries in 2022 while trying to conceive before her doctor told her, “Enough of this”. She welcomed a baby girl in March 2026. A UK visa crackdown has seen study visa refusals for Nigerians jump from 4.5 per cent to 22.7 per cent, with universities pre-emptively withdrawing offers to avoid breaching a new refusal threshold. Nigerian students are caught in the middle of a Home Office policy they did not write. And the Federal Government repatriated 111 more Nigerians from South Africa amid renewed xenophobic attacks, bringing the total evacuated since June to 2,037.
On the economic front, the numbers keep moving in the wrong direction for households. Dangote Refinery raised its diesel price by ₦100 per litre to ₦1,800, just days after reducing it, with retail outlets in Abuja now selling between ₦1,920 and ₦1,990. UNCTAD reports that Nigeria recorded the world’s highest diesel price increase at 82.7 per cent between February and August 2026. Diesel runs generators, trucks and factories. When it climbs, transport fares climb, food prices climb, and the cost of survival climbs with them.
A graduate tearing his certificates. A rally blocked by armed police. A visa revoked at the airport gate. A child born after five surgeries. A diesel price climbing again. These are not separate stories. They are the same story: a country where the systems meant to carry people keep falling short, and the people keep carrying themselves.
Warmly,
Lolade