I recently saw a video clip on social media where a content creator was interviewing a girl who claimed to be an undergraduate. In the brief clip, the content creator asked her to state a reason she ended a relationship and her answer was delivered with a nonchalance that went beyond mere avarice: her boyfriend, she explained, “doesn’t press money”—a popular, chilling euphemism for involvement in cyber-fraud, or ‘Yahoo-Yahoo.’
This young woman’s public declaration was not just a shocking social media moment; I saw it as a deep-rooted symptom of a society that has reached a dangerous moral tipping point.
It lays bare the brutal truth: in contemporary Nigeria, dignified labour is increasingly viewed with disdain, while crime, particularly sophisticated fraud, is openly glorified and validated.
We are witnessing the total degradation of a value system, where honesty has been cast to the dogs and the path to prosperity has been paved with brazen illegality.
The fundamental question is not just who is responsible, but how did we, as a nation, get to a point where a university student, ostensibly the intellectual elite of the next generation, could make such a statement with absolute impunity, knowing it would be seen by millions?
The way I see it, the rot did not begin with the youth, but with the systems designed to nurture them.
For decades, the Nigerian society operated on a clear, if fragile, social contract: hard work, education, and patience would lead to a respectable, comfortable life. This contract has been decisively broken, leaving an environment where honesty is penalised and crime is rewarded.
Decades of economic instability, heightened by crippling inflation, have eviscerated the earning power of the average worker.
Imagine the plight of a seasoned civil servant, a dedicated teacher, or a skilled artisan whose legitimate earnings cannot keep up with the rising cost of living or afford quality education for their children. Their life of honest toil is often one of struggle.
Juxtapose this with the narrative of the ‘G-Boy’ or fraudster, who can, in a matter of months, acquire luxury cars, mansions, and instant status.
The message transmitted to a generation struggling with mass unemployment is tragically clear: the legitimate economy is a scam, and the criminal economy is the only viable path to success.
When honesty leads to poverty, the youth will, unfortunately, gravitate towards the perceived shortcut to survival.
The moral crisis at the grassroots level is a direct reflection of the decay at the highest echelons of power. The staggering, often unpunished, political and bureaucratic corruption has institutionalised the idea that wealth without work is acceptable, so long as one can circumvent the law.
When political figures, public servants, and industry leaders who should be the nation’s moral compass are routinely linked to colossal graft, they send a lethal signal: that theft is merely a high-stakes, high-reward entrepreneurial venture.
His pervasive lack of accountability fosters a cynicism among the youth, leading them to believe that the only moral imperative is to not get caught, not to be honest.
In all of this, what is, however, most shocking, is the complicity of the family unit, which has become a willing participant in the crime.
We are seeing a disturbing shift where parents actively chide their teenage children for not being like their wealthy age mates who have ‘bought houses and built cars for their parents.’
We now live in a society where the honest, struggling graduate who spends years searching for legitimate employment is viewed as a failure; the fraudster who provides instant luxury is hailed as a provider and a success story.
Anecdotal evidence from parts of the country suggest a horrific reality where cybercrime is sometimes treated as a desperate, lucrative apprenticeship. Parents, under intense societal pressure to prove financial standing, are abandoning their moral authority and their duty of care.
When a parent accepts and enjoys the fruits of a child’s clearly illicit income; a new house, an imported car, an expensive medical bill paid, they lose all moral right to preach integrity. They have become direct facilitators and enablers, placing the family’s financial survival above their child’s moral well-being.
The willingness of the society to overlook obvious criminality was recently and dangerously demonstrated in the public reaction to an investigation in Edo State. The state government announced it was looking into the acquisition of 14,000 hectares of land, worth hundreds of millions of Naira, by a 17-year-old boy.
Instead of commending the government’s due diligence, the reaction from many Nigerians was outrage and ridicule, asking, “What is the governor’s business?”
This collective failure to ask necessary questions is the clearest sign of our descent into a moral vacuum.
Beyond the moral question of the source of income for such a young individual, there is a clear legal question that citizens should have demanded answers to. Under the Land Use Act of 1978, the primary legislation governing land ownership in Nigeria, a minor (defined as a person under 21 years of age for the purpose of contractual capacity) generally cannot legally hold a Statutory Right of Occupancy (C of O) directly in their name for commercial or valuable property. While land can be held in trust for a minor, the volume and value of the purported acquisition, coupled with the boy’s age, immediately raise red flags about the transaction’s legitimacy and the source of the vast capital used.
By attacking the investigation, society effectively chose to normalise this ill-gotten wealth, signalling that any form of scrutiny of sudden, extravagant riches is unwarranted interference.
Nigeria is facing an existential crisis. A society that prefers crime to genuine work is a society that cannot sustain itself, for crime only feeds off a legitimate base until that base collapses entirely.
To retrace our steps from this deadly course, a national moral re-armament is urgently required. The government must work assiduously to restore the value of legitimate work. This means drastically improving the minimum wage, ensuring timely payment of salaries and pensions, and investing heavily in sectors like agriculture and manufacturing to create sustainable, dignified jobs.
Also, anti-graft agencies like the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) must be empowered to pursue and prosecute all financial crimes, regardless of the culprit’s social standing or political influence in such a way that justice must be visibly and equally applied to the street-level fraudster and the high-profile corrupt official.
Furthermore, a massive public enlightenment campaign, driven by religious bodies, community leaders, and civil society organisations, must be launched to remind parents of their sacred duty. The focus must shift from raising wealthy children to raising responsible citizens. The community must reinstate the pressure of integrity by questioning and subtly ostracising unexplained, flamboyant wealth.
The young lady who can end a relationship because her partner “doesn’t press” is merely repeating the lessons our broken society has taught her
We must urgently choose to dismantle the support of a culture that celebrates crime and rebuild our nation on the solid foundation of honesty, integrity, and the enduring dignity of honest labour.
If we fail, the audacious decay we see today will become the irreversible rot of tomorrow.
