By Hon. Kenneth C. Gbandi
Arise, O compatriots. This is not merely a patriotic refrain; it is a question, one that demands an answer. Where is the outrage? Where is the conscience of a nation that once claimed moral leadership in Africa but now appears resigned to ethical collapse?
Nigeria’s decision to confer its second-highest national honour, the Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger (GCON), on Gilbert Chagoury marks a troubling moment not only for Nigerians, but for all who observe the country as Africa’s largest democracy and a regional power of consequence.
Honours are meant to reflect a nation’s values. They signal what a society esteems, what it forgives, and what it chooses to forget. In this case, the signal is profoundly disturbing. Gilbert Chagoury, a Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire, has for decades been linked, credibly and repeatedly to the financial architecture of the late General Sani Abacha’s regime, one of the most kleptocratic governments in modern African history. This association is neither obscure nor speculative. It has been documented by journalists, referenced in court proceedings, and debated in the public sphere both within Nigeria and internationally.
As far back as 1997, Nigerian journalist Bayo Onanuga wrote forcefully about Chagoury’s alleged role in hijacking Nigeria’s economy and “pocketing” its political class during the Abacha years. That history has not been rebutted by transparent public accounting; it has merely been overtaken by elite amnesia.
Today, that same history has been symbolically erased, not through truth and reconciliation, but through national decoration. This is not an isolated act. It is emblematic of a deeper malaise: a governing culture that rewards proximity to power over public virtue, wealth accumulation over accountability, and political usefulness over moral legitimacy.
While Nigeria spends billions of naira on international lobbyists to rehabilitate reputations abroad, its domestic realities deteriorate. Youth unemployment remains among the highest in the world, creating a generation locked out of opportunity and tempted by despair. Insecurity has become normalized, from terrorism in the North, to banditry and kidnapping across regions, to economic violence inflicted by poverty and inflation.
At the same time, so-called “reforms,” including controversial tax policies, are rolled out with little transparency, widely perceived as manipulated to burden the vulnerable while insulating the politically connected. The social contract has frayed to the point where sacrifice is demanded only of those with the least power to resist.
What makes this moment especially tragic is not merely the conduct of the political class, but the silence of much of the elite. Nigeria once produced fearless voices, journalists, lawyers, activists, who understood that democracy requires discomfort and that patriotism sometimes means dissent. Today, too many have chosen convenience over courage.
As one former military ruler once observed, the elasticity of Nigerians is unpredictable. Yet that elasticity now risks becoming numbness. A society that ceases to react to injustice does not become stable; it becomes fragile.
The conferral of the GCON on a figure so deeply associated rightly or wrongly with an era of looting and repression raises a simple but unavoidable question: what exactly does Nigeria now choose to honour?
This is not a partisan question. It is a moral one. Against this bleak backdrop, emerging political alternatives, imperfect, contested, and still evolving, have taken on heightened significance. Movements such as the African Democratic Congress (ADC) and other reform-oriented alignments represent, at minimum, an attempt to disrupt a political order that has grown complacent in its own excesses. The struggle within and around such platforms is not about personalities; it is about whether Nigeria can still generate internal resistance to elite consensus and moral decay.
History is unforgiving to nations that celebrate their plunderers while ignoring their young, their poor, and their dead. A country does not collapse only when institutions fail; it collapses when conscience is formally retired.
Nigeria still has a choice. But choices delayed too long often become decisions made by default. The question, therefore, is no longer whether Nigeria can afford outrage. It is whether Nigeria can survive without it.
Hon. Kenneth C. Gbandi: Diaspora Political Leader | Public Affairs Analyst | Advocate for Democratic Renewal in Nigeria
