By Wahala Reports
I am ashamed.
Not because Nigeria is poor. Not because we lack oil, farmland, or brilliant minds.
I am ashamed because one state has just proven that compassion is possible—and 35 others have been caught naked in their indifference.
While Abia State’s Governor Alex Otti signs into law a historic Senior Citizens Welfare Law—guaranteeing every Abia elder aged 60 and above a monthly stipend, free comprehensive healthcare, annual medical check-ups, and dignified support until death—what are the rest of you doing?
Tell me, Governor of Lagos: your state now routinely collects over ₦70 billion monthly in Internally Generated Revenue, with some months exceeding ₦90 billion. Where is your law for the grandmother selling garri under the bridge in Agege?
Governor of Rivers: your treasury swells with crude revenue. Why does your elderly father walk miles to a broken clinic in Diobu?
Governor of Kano: your state boasts Islamic principles of care for the aged. Yet your elders beg at Sabon Gari junctions. Is this your *Ummah*?
Do not insult us with “we don’t have money.”
Abia doesn’t have oil. Abia doesn’t have seaports. Abia doesn’t have the federal largesse you enjoy.
Yet Abia chooses humanity. Abia chooses memory. Abia says: “Those who built this land shall not die forgotten.”
This is not charity. This is justice delayed.
For decades, our elders paid taxes, raised children, farmed land, taught in schools, and kept faith—only to be discarded like used wrappers when their strength fades. And we watched. We normalized it. We called it “Nigerian hardship.”
But Abia has shattered that lie.
Governor Otti did not wait for Abuja. He did not blame inflation. He did not hide behind committees. He looked at his people, his mothers, his fathers and said: “You deserve dignity.”
So I ask again: Where is your law?
If you govern a state collecting billions monthly as most of you do then your silence is not oversight. It is moral treason.
To every governor reading this:
Your legacy will not be your flyovers or your new secretariat. It will be how you treated the voiceless. The wrinkled hands that once held this nation together now tremble in hunger while you commission bronze statues of yourselves.
Abia has drawn a line in the sand.
On one side: leaders who serve.
On the other: looters who rule.
Choose your side.
Because I am ashamed—not of Nigeria, but of the men who wear power like a stolen agbada while our elders sleep hungry.
I AM ASHAMED.
And I end with this:
If your state can fund a new governor’s lodge, a fleet of SUVs, or another vanity flyover yet cannot guarantee food, medicine, and dignity for its elders… then whose blood is on your hands?
