Two days before Nigeria’s 66th Independence Day celebration, a court in Benin City sentenced four young Nigerians to death for kidnapping, armed robbery and cultism. In Abuja, the Federal Government was finalising plans for parades and a Presidential address on National renewal.
That is the duality that defines Nigeria at 66. A state celebrating longevity while its courts condemn its youth; a Nation producing both the condemned and the celebrated under the same harsh conditions. One wrong choice moved their names from the voters’ register to death row. Yet in this same Nigeria of epileptic power supply, scarce jobs and a depreciating naira, other young people refused to rot with the system. They built, coded, filmed, organised, sang and played their way to relevance without picking up a gun. At 66, here is an unavailable question every Nigerian youth must ask & answer: How did the same country raise both the prisoner and the pathfinder, and which path will define the generation coming next?
On September 29, 2026, Justice Aigbona Momodu of the Edo State Special Criminal Court pronounced the words no Nation at 66 years should still be hearing so often: Death by hanging. The convicts were Marvellous Isaac, 32; Wisdom Michael, 36; Rufus Emete Michael, 30; and Gift Raphael, 27, (the only woman among them). They faced eleven counts charges, including kidnapping, conspiracy, armed robbery, cultism and unlawful possession of firearms, all arising from the daylight abduction of a woman at the vegetable market on Airport Road, Benin City, on June 14. The judge said the law left him no discretion. The sentences ran from seven years on some counts to life imprisonment on others, and death by hanging or lethal injection on the gravest. He even ordered their pump action gun destroyed within thirty days. The four retain the right of appeal, and since Nigeria has carried out no execution since 2016, they may simply join the thousands already waiting on death row. But in every sense that matters, four young lives have already been lost.
Look again at those ages, 32, 36, 30, 27. By the yardstick most Nigerians still use, these are young people, with only one past 35, and by a single year. These are the years when a person should be nursing a startup, dreaming of a first shop, a first degree or a first child. Instead, the court found, they drove an SUV to a market in broad daylight and snatched a woman going about her business. Now the state has chosen to take their lives in return.
It is easy to shout that they deserve it, and many Nigerians did. Kidnapping has turned our highways into prayer points, our farms into forests of fear, and our cities into places where a woman cannot buy vegetables without looking over her shoulder. The victim deserves justice, and nothing here excuses the crime. But if we stop at anger, we miss the mirror.
Those four are not aliens. They are products of a country where disappointment has become a curriculum. That is the painful truth we must speak at 66. Too many of our young people have become a disappointment, not because they were born evil, but because they were born into a system that teaches them that hard work is foolishness and shortcuts are wisdom.
Look around, A 22 year old in Lekki does not want to learn a trade for three years; he wants to learn how to send a fake alert in three days. Cultism on our campuses is no longer a secret; it is a uniform. “Yahoo Yahoo” is no longer a shame; it is a career path celebrated on Instagram & Facebook. Ritual killings, kidnapping for ransom and political thuggery, where a young man will carry a gun for a politician in exchange for fifty thousand naira and a bottle of codeine, now define too much of the landscape. The same energy that should be building factories is digging shallow graves.
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And yet, here is the mystery that makes Nigeria both heartbreaking and beautiful. On this same soil, in this same hard economy, under this same light that blinks and with this same naira that keeps falling, other young Nigerians looked at the same disappointment and said, “No, I will be different.” They did not wait for Nigeria to become good before they became good. They became good so that Nigeria might have a chance.
Consider Samson Itodo. He was not born with a silver spoon. He simply believed that young people should not only die for elections but decide them. Through Yiaga Africa, he led the Not Too Young To Run campaign. Before 2018, a 28 year old could vote but could not contest for a seat in the House of Representatives. Itodo and his colleagues lobbied, marched and explained, in plain English, to federal lawmakers and State Assemblies until the constitution was amended. Today, a 25 year old can run for the House and a 35 year old can run for President. While some youths were snatching ballot boxes,Itodo was rewriting the rules for millions.
Beside him stands Hamzat Lawal, who asked a simple, dangerous question: “Where is our money?” Through Follow The Money and Connected Development, he taught ordinary young people to track government projects. Was the borehole in your village completed? Was the school roofed? He turned tweeting into tracking and anger into evidence, and his model has since spread to several African countries. He proved that accountability is not only the business of the EFCC; it belongs to every young person with a phone and some courage.
Then there is Tunde Onakoya, the young man with the chessboard in the slum. He could have used his brilliance purely for himself. Instead, he took chess to Makoko, to Ikorodu and to children who had never seen a chessboard. His Chess in Slums Africa project tells a child who hawks pure water that her brain is not pure waste. In 2024 he played chess for 60 hours in Times Square, New York, to raise money for those children, putting Nigeria on the world map not for fraud but for intellect. When a boy from Oshodi now thinks three moves ahead, you are seeing what one young man can do when he refuses to think like the crowd.
In technology, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji refused to accept that a young Nigerian must beg for a visa to succeed. He was among the founders of Andela, which trained African software engineers for global companies, and later of Flutterwave, which helps small businesses receive payments across borders. When a girl in Aba can sell hair online and receive dollars, part of that road was paved by Aboyeji. He turned code into a bridge.
In film, Funke Akindele turned laughter into an industry. From “Jenifa” to “Omo Ghetto” to “A Tribe Called Judah”, she broke box office records and created jobs, not just fame. Hundreds of young editors, costumiers, drivers and marketers eat because one woman refused to stay in a single lane. Kemi Adetiba did the same behind the camera. A lawyer turned broadcaster turned director, she gave us “The Wedding Party” and “King of Boys”, proving that a Nigerian woman can command a set of two hundred people and deliver cinema that global streaming platforms are eager to buy. These women did not just shine; they made light for others.
In music, Ayra Starr is a whole sermon. At an age when many girls are told to wait their turn, she took the Mavin microphone and sang her way into the global conversation, onto world tours and into award halls, carrying the Nigerian flag on stages we once only watched on television. She tells every teenage girl in Benin or Bauchi that her voice is not too small for the world.
In sport, Victor Osimhen runs like Nigeria’s prayer. He went from hawking in Lagos traffic to becoming one of the most feared strikers in Europe, from Lille to Napoli to Galatasaray, and was crowned African Footballer of the Year. He carries the hunger of every young Nigerian who has nothing but legs and faith. When he scores, market women dance. He reminds us that discipline can take you from dust to dazzle.
And there is Olayinka Sarah Oladipo, a young voice in education and community development, who stands for the army of unsung youth leaders running free tutorials, cleaning markets on Saturdays and keeping girls in school. They do not trend, but they transform.
What separates the condemned four in Edo from these crowned few? It is not luck. It is choice under pressure. Nigeria is hard for everybody. The dollar is hard for Itodo as it is hard for Isaac. Light failure does not know Funke Akindele’s house and skip it. Insecurity does not respect Tunde Onakoya. The difference is what they did with the pain. One group turned pain into an excuse. The other turned pain into purpose.
Look at the choices this generation has faced, without taking sides for any political party. When the fuel subsidy was removed in 2023, some turned to crime. Others innovated; they carpooled, went solar or started delivery businesses on bicycles. When universities shut for eight months during the 2022 ASUU strike, some students drifted into fraud. Others took online courses and came out with international certifications. When politicians offered guns for elections, many collected but Itodo’s generation said, “Give us the nomination form instead.” This is not about the APC, ADC, NDC or PDP. Poverty does not ask for your party card before it slaps you. The choice to rise is personal, not partisan.
So what do we do at 66? First, we stop lying to ourselves. Nigeria will not change because we abuse leaders on social media. It will change when ordinary young people decide they will not sell their future for a small present, and when those in authority stop making that sale so tempting. The four in Edo thought kidnapping one woman would bring them millions. They have lost everything, perhaps even the chance to grow old. The others believed that building one child, one film or one law was worth the long wait. They have gained everything, including the right to be remembered.
What connects all of them is that they met the same Nigeria, the same unstable power supply, the same hard naira, the same deep disappointment. None of them had a perfect country. But the ones we celebrate made a personal decision: “I will not become what broke me.”
To every young Nigerian reading this, this country does not need more complainers; it needs more creators. You may not be Tunde, you may not sing like Ayra, and you may not code like Iyinoluwa. But you can teach one child to read. You can refuse to pay a bribe. You can start a small business and employ one person. You can report an abandoned project, as Hamzat taught us. You can register to vote and encourage someone to contest, as Samson did.
If you feel tired, I understand. It is exhausting to try in a country that too often rewards the corrupt. But look at these names again. They are proof that great things can come from small places. Do not let the story of the condemned four become yours. Let the story of the crowned many become your challenge.
Nigeria still believes in you, even before you make it, because we see the seed. Now water it, Pick one street, one child, one skill or one idea, and serve it faithfully for a year. If you are a parent, stop measuring your child only by the money brought home; ask how it was earned. If you are a leader, create one real opportunity, not another staged empowerment scheme with ten bags of rice and rolling cameras. And if you are a writer like me, let us tell both stories, the shame and the shine, so that the next Marvellous sees Tunde and chooses the chessboard over the gun.
At 66, Nigeria is old enough to know better. We have buried too many talents in prisons and in graves, and we have raised too many stars to give up. The same country that produced kidnappers in Benin also produced the makers of King of Boys and Chess in Slums. Which one will you be? The answer will decide whether, at 76, we are still weeping. I do not write this because I have given up on our young people. I write it because I still believe in them: Painfully, Stubbornly, Hopefully. If we refuse to yield, one day, Nigeria go dey better.
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