FAILURE IS A CHOICE: We Must Stop Treating Crisis as Normal.

By George Omagbemi Sylvester | Published by SaharaWeeklyNG.com

“Enough excuses; SURVIVAL-BY-SCRAMBLE is a policy of defeat. We rebuild or we perish.”

We Nigerians (and Africans in general) have perfected the art of normalizing chaos. We wake up to crises and go to bed with dysfunction, yet we call it “RESILIENCE.” We take pride in surviving under the worst possible conditions and label it strength. Though survival is not success; it is a symptom of systemic failure. And failure, no matter how common, is not culture, it is a choice.

From Nigeria to Sudan, from Congo to Zimbabwe, we have allowed incompetence to masquerade as destiny. Every collapsed building, every unlit street, every unpaid teacher, every unstaffed hospital is not fate but a decision MADE BY PEOPLE in POWER and TOLERATED BY CITIZENS who have grown numb to pain. As long as we treat crisis as normal, progress will remain abnormal.

Nigeria, the supposed “GIANT of AFRICA,” is a tragic case study of how nations die slowly, not from war, but from the silent acceptance of mediocrity. With over 220 million people, vast arable land and abundant natural resources, Nigeria should be a global success story. Instead, it has become a living contradiction, a rich nation of poor people.
The World Bank reports that over 63% of Nigerians live in multidimensional poverty, lacking access to health care, education and decent living conditions. That is nearly 133 million Nigerians struggling daily in a country blessed with oil, gas and human capital. In 2024 alone, inflation climbed above 30% and the naira depreciated to over ₦1,500 per dollar, eroding wages and crushing small businesses.

Electricity generation, the heartbeat of modern development, remains a national embarrassment. As of mid-2024, Nigeria generated barely 5,000 megawatts for a population exceeding 200 million and a figure lower than what South Africa, with just 60 million people, produced even at its lowest point of energy crisis. A single state in the United States, Texas, generates more than 80,000 megawatts, yet we continue to claim “GOD WILL DO IT.” God has done His part and it is our leadership that has failed to do theirs.
As Chinua Achebe once wrote in The Trouble with Nigeria: “The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership.” Four decades later, nothing has changed. We have replaced bad leaders with worse ones and mistake RECYCLING for REFORM.

Leadership Without Accountability. The African condition today is not primarily a lack of intelligence or resources but a deficit of integrity. Leaders who should be custodians of national progress have become custodians of personal wealth. Nigeria ranks among the bottom 25% of countries on Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, where billions vanish yearly under dubious projects.

Corruption is not merely an economic issue; it is a moral cancer that kills national ambition. It diverts funds from hospitals to foreign bank accounts, from classrooms to convoys and from industries to individual greed. The late South African leader Nelson Mandela warned: “Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity; it is an act of justice.” Justice cannot prevail in a society where the CORRUPT are celebrated and the honest are silenced.

The Myth of “RESILIENCE”. Africans often boast of being resilient people. Resilience without results is SELF-DECEPTION. When a people adapt to hunger, power failure, unemployment, insecurity and bad governance, they are not being resilient, they are being conditioned. We have learned to survive what we should have rebelled against.

Look at our neighbors who refused to normalize their pain. South Africa in 1994 said “NEVER AGAIN” to apartheid and began the journey toward equality. Ghana in 1981 stood up to military decay and embraced democracy that has since stabilized its economy. Rwanda, after a genocide that killed nearly a million people in 1994, rebuilt itself into one of Africa’s cleanest, safest and most disciplined nations.
Each of these countries made a collective choice to stop romanticizing failure. Meanwhile, Nigerians are told to “ENDURE.” We have endured for too long. Endurance without accountability is slow suicide.

The Cost of Accepting Crisis. When a nation normalizes dysfunction, it loses its moral compass. Today, insecurity has become the new normal; from Boko Haram in the northeast to banditry in the northwest and kidnapping in the south.

Over 80,000 lives have been lost to terrorism and related violence since 2009, according to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Yet our leaders treat it as routine.

Education is collapsing before our eyes. The UNESCO data shows that Nigeria has the world’s highest number of OUT-OF-SCHOOL CHILDREN, over 20 million. Hospitals have turned into mortuaries and brain drain has stripped the nation of skilled professionals. More than 15,000 Nigerian doctors now practice abroad, particularly in the U.K. and Canada (this 2025 alone). Even universities that once stood as pillars of excellence now stagger under strikes and underfunding.
As the late Prof. Claude Ake, Nigeria’s foremost political economist, warned “Development is not possible in a country where POLITICS is everything and PRODUCTIVITY is nothing.” We cannot talk our way out of failure; we must work our way out.

The Culture of Excuses. The saddest phrase in Nigeria’s vocabulary is “NA SO WE SEE AM OO.” It is the anthem of surrender, the acceptance that nothing will change. We blame colonialism, global capitalism and bad luck, but never our own refusal to act. While colonialism left scars, it has been over 60 years since independence.

Nations like Singapore, Malaysia and South Korea gained independence around the same time, today they are economic giants. Why? Because they chose COMPETENCE over CORRUPTION, PLANNING over POLITICS and ACCOUNTABILITY over APATHY. Nigeria chose the opposite.

As long as public office remains a retirement plan for the corrupt, no divine intervention will save us.

Choosing Change. We must realize that DEVELOPMENT is a DECISION. It begins with leadership that understands that governance is not about sharing spoils but building systems. It requires citizens who demand performance not peanuts; who vote with their conscience not their stomach.
To quote Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of modern Singapore: “A nation is great not by its size alone. It is the will, the cohesion, the intellectual and moral quality of its people that makes it great.”

Nigeria has the people; what we lack is the will.
It is time to reject the politics of TRIBE and RELIGION, the two tools that have kept us divided and distracted. Progress has no ETHNIC IDENTITY. Light, jobs, schools and security do not belong to one tribe. They are national rights not regional privileges.

The Path Forward. To rise again, Nigeria must take five urgent steps:

Fix Power: Electricity is not a luxury; it is the lifeblood of modern civilization. Without it, industries will continue to die and unemployment will worsen.

Educate for Innovation: Quality education must replace political education. Nations that invest in human capital do not beg for aid.

Fight Corruption with Consequence: Until politicians and civil servants fear the law, theft will continue to be profitable.

Reward Productivity: Celebrate builders, inventors and reformers, not thieves and sycophants.

Unite for a Common Goal: Stop treating governance as ethnic conquest. Unity is not a slogan; it is a survival strategy.

The Final Word.
We are not cursed, we are careless. We are not doomed, we are distracted. We are not victims, we are volunteers in our own destruction.

As George Omagbemi Sylvester writes:
“Failure is not inherited; it is repeated. And repetition of wrong choices is the surest path to ruin.”

Nigeria’s salvation lies not in prayers alone, but in policies, principles and people ready to reject mediocrity. We must stop applauding survival and start demanding success. The time to choose progress is now, because nations that normalize crisis eventually vanish under it.

Let it be said that this generation refused to adapt to failure. Let it be written that we rose, not because it was easy, but because we were tired of excuses. And let it be remembered that we finally understood: FAILURE is not CULTURE, it is a CHOICE.