To begin with, that your parents worked two jobs to send you to a private university does not quite make your story one of poverty, because no matter how many meals were skipped or how many sacrifices were made, the ability to make those sacrifices in the first place already sets your family apart. Millions of Nigerians are not poor because their parents didn’t sacrifice; they are poor because no amount of sacrifice could bridge the gap between what they needed and what was possible. But the modern bourgeoisie must construct an ideological superstructure to justify their material reality and in the popular imagination, suffering is proof of moral worth. It is what lets the upwardly mobile romanticise struggle as their origin story. That fantasy is why class discussions always crash and burn. Because once you say someone’s success might have more to do with their background than their hustle, you’ve threatened their entire identity. And at the heart of this fantasy is the claim that hard work separates the rich from the poor.

those nepo kids still outworking most of you, continue basking in foolishness and rubbish discourse here

— Fadahr (@pdstrn2) July 19, 2025

But in reality, poor people often work the hardest jobs. Their work is exhausting and endless, but it does not bring wealth. Capitalism does not make room for poor people to rise through labour alone. The only real pathway out in Nigeria is often through tertiary education, but whether people like it or not, tertiary education is also a privilege, a big one now in this crumbling economy. It costs money and time that many poor people simply do not have. 

Social theorists like Pierre Bourdieu have written extensively on how cultural capital — manners, education, accents, networks — functions alongside economic capital to preserve inequality. People from wealthier families are not only richer; they also learn how to belong in spaces of power. This is what the nepo baby has: unspoken, unteachable familiarity with the codes of success. The playing field was never level, and it never will be, as long as people inherit not just money but entire systems of advantage. Nigeria is a country where 133 million people are multidimensionally poor. That means they’re not just broke; they’re locked out of education, housing, healthcare, and the connections that help people move up. Karl Marx had a word for this kind of thinking: false consciousness. It’s when people don’t see the real reason they’re stuck, and instead blame themselves or each other. 

When privilege masquerades as hard work, it creates a meritocratic myth that justifies inequality. It says that those at the top are there because they worked harder, were smarter, or made better choices. It ignores the generational wealth, the elite networks, and the private safety nets that lubricate the lives of Nigeria’s middle and upper classes. This is not to say that no one from a poor background has ever succeeded to astronomical heights. But those who do often describe a long gauntlet of luck, unusual intelligence, or extraordinary help. There will always be exceptions. Some people will beat the odds. But that does not make the odds fair.

The role of Nigeria’s political elite in the perpetuation of extreme inequality cannot be overstated. Over decades, political office in Nigeria has functioned less as a vehicle for public service and more as an apparatus for the extraction and concentration of resources. It is a structure designed not to alleviate collective suffering, but to shield a minority from it through systemic control of state funds, policy direction, and infrastructural neglect. Even worse, they have cultivated a culture in which wealth is the only recognised metric of legitimacy. In doing so, they have fused economic domination with social prestige, ensuring that inequality is not only protected by law and policy, but also revered in public imagination. People are taught to aspire to this elite status, to see proximity to the political class as the highest form of success, regardless of how that proximity is achieved.

My only problem with nepotism na say no be me, I wish say na me.

— ODINAKA. El Toro. (@TheAjibolaGrey) July 19, 2025

This ideological control is as dangerous as the material deprivation it accompanies because it engenders a pervasive aspiration toward untold wealth which, in a country where deprivation is the norm, is ethically untenable. You shouldn’t desire to enjoy great wealth as great wealth does not exist in a vacuum, it is extracted from somewhere, someone, often many. As Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century articulates, extreme wealth accumulation is not the result of merit or innovation alone, but of compounded capital over time, often made possible by exploitative labour and uneven access to opportunity. To aspire to vast personal wealth within this order is to seek proximity to the power that harms. Philosopher Achille Mbembe calls this “necropolitics”; the power to decide who may live and who must die. It’s a human need to crave a good life but why do you wish to benefit immeasurably from a structure that thrives on the immiseration of others? Capitalism, particularly in its late-stage, globalised form, is a violent system. It cheapens life. It makes you live just to survive, strips you of your rest, dignity, and joy.

Everybody is now saying their kids will be trust fund children. Making the same mistakes your parents made.

We should instead be trying to create a society where every child has access to basic opportunities to make something of their lives regardless of their parents’ status

— ג'ושוע (@A_JOSH27) July 20, 2025

We are never going to be free from the violence of this system if we continue to think only in terms of ourselves. As long as individual success remains the highest goal — measured by how far one can rise above others, how much one can own, how well one can live while others struggle — we remain trapped. No one is truly safe in a world where most are disposable. The healthcare you can afford today may not protect you from a broken system tomorrow. What we call personal success under capitalism is often just temporary protection from a storm that is getting worse for everyone else. We cannot think our way out of collective suffering through individual escape beacuse, again, there is no version of freedom that leaves others behind.