When Trust Is Handcuffed

Femi  Akintunde-Johnson

If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists – to protect and promote their common welfare – all else is lost. – Barack Obama

Let’s face it – as far as trust goes in this country, we’re operating with a broken ribcage. And that’s not hyperbole. Nigeria, as it stands today, is a nation staggering along with no moral spine and a gaping void where public trust ought to reside. We wrote about it four years ago; sadly, it is now worse – deeper in rot, more sophisticated in deception, and depressingly predictable in betrayals.

  Trust, like oxygen, is unseen yet essential. Remove it, and no relationship – between people, parties, or policy – can breathe. Our democracy, if we still dare call it that, is gasping for air.

  The lamentation isn’t exclusive to the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, though he has certainly given it a most operatic performance. This crisis of confidence is an accumulated deficit, starting from colonial handovers to the current cacophony of political theatre. What we now have is a nation populated by citizens who have mastered the art of second-guessing everything their government says – not out of cynicism, but from bitter, generational experience.

  Let’s unpack that. A government elected by the people, even under the haze of vote-buying, INEC hitches, and voter apathy, is supposed to serve all, not just the ethnic kin or political financiers of the winning cabal. Yet, what have we seen?

  Appointments to critical national offices – from security to finance – have shown a blatant disregard for inclusivity. The top brass of our armed forces, for instance, resemble a reunion of old classmates from one half of the country. And despite the constitutional preaching of “federal character”, the government’s casting call has favoured only the same set of actors – predictable, monochrome, and tone-deaf. You don’t have to be Wole Soyinka to see that this breeds distrust.

  Now, consider the insecurity circus that has turned the country into a live-action horror film. Bandits – sorry, “non-state actors” – now operate with the sort of impunity that would make Escobar blush. From Zamfara to Niger, Kaduna to the fringes of the FCT, these killers abduct children, sack villages, collect ransoms via bank transfers, and still find time to post recruitment videos online. What’s worse? The government’s typical response is to “condemn in strong terms” or set up one committee or the other – with all the impact of wet tissue on wildfire.

  Trust? Tattered. When parents pay ₦15 million to retrieve their children from a boarding school in Sokoto, and the abductors are never arrested – even after drones captured their hideouts – what message are we sending? That the state has outsourced security to the Almighty?

  When young men in Abuja are afraid to walk the streets after 7 p.m. for fear of being picked up for “loitering” by SARS 2.0 – the much-touted “reformed” police – it is clear that the rot remains institutional. The ghost of EndSARS still haunts us. No one has been convicted; the victims have been labelled liars; and the panel reports gathering dust in governors’ drawers across the nation. Trust, again, is the sacrificial lamb.

  And let’s not forget the Kwara State hijab crisis – yes, it’s still festering. As recent as April 2025, clashes erupted again between Christian school administrators and Muslim advocacy groups over uniform rules in grant-aided schools. Children, barely into adolescence, have been turned into foot soldiers in an unnecessary religious war. Yet, while the state government dithers and plays both sides, the real crisis – lack of infrastructure, outdated curriculum, unpaid teachers – remains untouched. When trust is blindfolded and tied to a pole on the street, even urchins can take turns flogging it.

  But perhaps the most galling insult to public intelligence is the tragicomedy surrounding our economic policies.

  Last year, the naira danced from ₦750/$ to nearly ₦1,900/$ before rebounding shakily to ₦1,300/$ – courtesy of an IMF-guided CBN “shock therapy” that shocked the poor into deeper poverty and the rich into fatter forex portfolios. Fuel subsidies were yanked with no safety nets; electricity tariffs hiked while blackouts remained national tradition; inflation climbed to 34%, and minimum wage negotiations dragged on like a Nollywood saga. Now, workers supposedly earn ₦70,000 monthly, while senators gulp ₦30 million quarterly for “oversight functions”. The disparity would be laughable if it weren’t tragic.

  You can’t build trust when the same hands squeezing the populace dry are also signing multi-billion-naira SUV contracts “for effective constituency duties”.

  Let’s be honest: even the police, customs, and immigration officers aren’t entirely to blame for their excesses. They’re often symptoms of a deeper decay. As Alexis de Tocqueville warned, “the people get the government they deserve.” These men and women didn’t fall from the sky. They’re our cousins, uncles, sisters, church ushers, mosque treasurers – people who once borrowed your slippers to go write WAEC. Yet, give them a uniform and a little authority, and they become gods of extortion.

  Remember New Treasure magazine? We once ran it with passion and purpose. At the peak, we were printing 50,000 copies a week. Yet, behind the scenes, trusted staff were secretly printing and selling extra copies – 10,000 or more – and pocketing the proceeds. We didn’t notice until those misprints began flooding back (as “unsold copies”), wrecking our sales data. The internal auditors we hired later turned out to be in on the scam! Some of them now lead church choirs and quote Scriptures with a straight face.

  You see, trust isn’t just lost at the top; it’s bleeding at the grassroots. How do you build a nation when a mechanic replaces your fuel pump with a used toothbrush; when graduates forge NYSC certificates; when market women inject cow meat with dye to “freshen” it; when pastors con their flock with oil from used engines?

  The solution? We must start by telling the truth – unvarnished and unfiltered. Leaders must realise that they are not ruling over fools, just a deeply patient people whose hope is being wrung out, drop by drop. Institutions must be rebuilt – not just repainted – with accountability and transparency. Public service must return to its etymology: service, not lootership.

  But more than anything, we must fix our national soul. We must reinsert trust as the missing rib in our collective anatomy – not with speeches or sloganeering, but with sustained, verifiable, and inclusive action.

Until then, this nation will continue to stagger like a one-legged man in a three-legged race…wondering why the finish line keeps moving further away.