Sir: There was a time when education was the crown jewel of our society. A time when scholars commanded respect and learning was the ladder that lifted families out of poverty. When children grew up wanting to be doctors, engineers, professors, not because of the pay, but because of the honour. That time is gone.
Today in Nigeria, we laugh at those who went to school. We clap for crooks, worship fraudsters and hail thugs as “honourables.” We vote in illiterates to govern literates. We watch convicted looters return as heroes, while the best of us beg for contract jobs.
Last week, a TikTok influencer popularly known as Peller staged a viral stunt: he offered a N500,000 job requiring a Master’s degree, only to mock the applicants in a video. Educated Nigerians, dressed with hope and dignity, showed up for an opportunity they thought was genuine. Instead, they became content. They were filmed, edited and ridiculed for clicks.
It is easy to blame the boy with a phone. But the real tragedy is deeper.
We have created a culture that rewards ignorance and ridicules intellect. A country where the man with muscle commands more respect than the man with method. Where violence pays more than virtue.
Today, thugs ride SUVs. Professors queue for fuel. The joke is not on those scholars. The joke is on us. Because when a country starts mocking its best minds, it is already mocking its future.
The TikTok app itself? Built by engineers. The phone used to film the scholars? Designed by developers who studied in classrooms. The algorithm that made the video go viral? Written by educated minds in Silicon Valley.
Even the money made from the views? Processed through financial models taught in business schools.
Every part of that mockery was enabled by the brilliance of people who valued education.
And yet, in our corner of the world, we turn professors into memes. How did we get here?
We got here because our leaders, many of whom barely passed exams make no effort to protect the dignity of education. Because universities stay silent while their graduates are shamed. Because we now believe the shortcut is more powerful than the syllabus.
Integrity, once the foundation of leadership and public service, has now been tossed into the dustbin in Nigeria. In a nation where deception is often rewarded and truth is treated as inconvenience, morality has been turned on its head. The lines between right and wrong are deliberately blurred, and those who cut corners are praised as “smart.” Men with no clear educational background lead our institutions, forge certificates, falsify records and still receive standing ovations. Values like honesty, transparency and accountability once revered are now seen as weaknesses in a system that glorifies shortcuts and survival by any means necessary.
We got here because we have allowed mediocrity to masquerade as “smartness” and made it fashionable to insult what we no longer understand.
But we must not stay here. To every scholar at Peller’s interview who was mocked that day, you are not a fool for showing up. You are the reminder that hope still lives. You stood with dignity. You believed in process. That is never a mistake.
To the students burning midnight candles in poorly funded classrooms, keep going. Your efforts may not be trending, but it is not in vain. And to Nigeria, no nation can rise above the quality of minds it mocks. If we continue to shame scholars and crown scoundrels, we will remain a country spinning in reverse, loud, lawless and lost. Until we restore dignity to education, we will remain ruled by those who cannot spell the word dignity.
•Dayo DaSilva,
dsv123ng@yahoo.com
