Why Aje, The Deity Of Wealth, May Not Return – By Funke Egbemode

By Funke Egbemode

Once upon a time, Ajere-Ile, a prosperous kingdom, started losing its wealth and the people started grumbling and pointing accusing fingers. Oh, and the people were very good at complaining. They complained about their king, his chiefs, the lack of rain and the long dry spells of harmattan, poor harvest and the high cost of food. They complained in the marketplace, at weddings, funerals and even while making love. Everybody agreed that the kingdom needed change. Urgent change.
But Oba Lalonpe was truly stealing from the treasury. His chiefs were also stealing from the king. The tax collectors were stealing from the people. The traders were adjusting their measurements bowls called peregi. The farmers were mixing stones with their grains. The palace guards were collecting bribes from thieves, and the thieves were complaining about the high cost of bribery.
One day, the kingdom’s chief diviner announced that Aje, the god of wealth, had left the kingdom and would only return when everybody stopped stealing.
There was a long silence.
Neither the ruler nor the ruled wanted to change. They just wanted change. They wanted change to rain down like the Christian manna. They didn’t want to stop their bad habits or turn from their evil ways. All they wanted was for the deity of wealth to return while they were allowed to continue to steal, cheat and even kill for money.
That kingdom sounds disturbingly familiar, doesn’t it?
Welcome to Nigeria, where everybody wants change, but too many people want the change to begin in somebody else’s compound.
Who is using who? Who is cheating who? Who is strangling who? And who exactly is expected to rescue this country from the darkness we have collectively helped to create?
Let me tell you what happened to me recently.
I received a message from Eko Electricity Distribution Company, EKDC, informing me that my prepaid metre had earlier received more energy than I paid for. According to the company, I owed N168,889.35. Consequently, 50 per cent of every subsequent electricity recharge would be deducted until the alleged debt was cleared.
Just like that!
No prior reconciliation presented to me. No transaction-by-transaction explanation. Just a notification and a decision to take half of my money.
I bought N50,000 worth of electricity. Within 72 hours, the units were exhausted. I have bought another N50,000 and it has also disappeared. Previously, that amount lasted me more than a week.
Now, I understand that if half of my payment goes towards an alleged debt, only half purchases fresh electricity. But who established this debt? Who calculated it? Who made the mistake? And why should the customer first suffer the deduction before receiving a satisfactory explanation?
If a customer deliberately bypasses a metre, prosecute him. If he steals electricity, make him pay. But if your vending system develops mathematical malaria, show the customer your calculations before dipping your hands into his pocket.
Electricity consumers have obligations. Distribution companies have obligations too. Accountability is not supposed to be a one-way street.
I am now seriously considering solar power.
And that decision led me to a frightening thought.
What happens if 10,000 Lagosians become sufficiently frustrated to abandon Eko DISCO for solar?
Assume each previously spent N50,000 monthly. That is N500 million in monthly electricity sales potentially lost. N6bn annually!
Of course, not every solar customer will disconnect completely, and revenue losses do not translate automatically into job losses. But imagine the pressure on a company already struggling to retain customers. Imagine the possible consequences for workers, contractors, revenue and investment.
And here is the bigger irony. Solar creates opportunities too. Engineers, technicians, installers, battery specialists and maintenance companies can find work. But how much of that equipment are we manufacturing locally? Are we building an industry or merely replacing one category of imported dependence with another?
One industry’s decline should create another industry’s growth. In Nigeria, we have a remarkable talent for ensuring that both industries struggle and eventually die.
Now, leave electricity and follow me to the petroleum sector.
Nigeria produces petroleum engineers, chemical engineers, geologists and other highly trained professionals every year. Their parents sacrifice to educate them. Universities graduate them with colourful ceremonies and congratulatory speeches.
Then what?
Where exactly are these young people supposed to work?
Our public refineries have consumed enormous public resources over the years without delivering sustained commercial performance. In October 2026, NNPC was still awaiting technical assessments before deciding on further investments in the Port Harcourt and Warri refineries.
More disturbing, support staff at the Port Harcourt Refining Company protested over seven months of unpaid salaries.
Seven months!
Imagine working in an industry built around one of Nigeria’s most valuable natural resources and being unable to collect your wages for seven months.
Meanwhile, another university is preparing to graduate another batch of petroleum engineers.
To do what? Study the history of refineries that refuse to refine and write these on ‘’The Rise and Fall of Government-owned Refineries in Nigeria”.
How many productive jobs could functional refineries and associated petrochemical industries support? Think of the engineers, welders, laboratory technicians, transporters, suppliers, caterers and small businesses that depend on industrial activity. Think of how and why Nigerian universities produced brilliant Engineers to service foreign economies or pushed them into jobs that should ordinarily be beneath them. Yes, like Warehouse or Carer jobs!
When a major industry fails, the casualties extend far beyond its payroll.
The barber loses customers. The food seller loses sales. The landlord loses tenants. The young graduate loses hope.
And then we advise everybody to become an entrepreneur.
Excellent advice. Let us visit agriculture.
A young graduate decides to establish a poultry farm. He wants to produce eggs, employ workers and contribute to food security.
Then he discovers that one point-of-lay pullet can cost N12,000.
One thousand birds? N12 million.
Before feed. Before housing. Before medication. Before labour. Before the first egg!
How many young graduates have N12 million sitting comfortably in their bank accounts? How many banks are helping them start anything? But we don’t want them to embrace crime. We just want them to wait, wail in vain until they die like Berec Batteries or Exide. Yeah, think and make a list of the factories that once employed hundreds of Nigerians but are now dead.
The poultry industry still exists but it is on life support. It is battling shortages of quality chicks, limited hatchery access, expensive feed and supply bottlenecks. Some farmers must travel long distances to obtain birds, while others wait months for hatchery bookings.
And we are surprised that eggs are expensive?
We want cheap food, but we are making food production prohibitively expensive. We want young people to farm, but we have made entry into farming a rich man’s adventure.
Who will employ graduates of Animal Science, Agricultural Economics, Veterinary Medicine and related disciplines?
Government cannot employ everybody. We know that. But government must create the conditions in which businesses can employ people.
That is where our national tragedy deepens.
The old businesses are frustrated. The new ones are strangulated.
A manufacturer buys diesel, installs solar panels, digs a borehole, repairs the road leading to his factory and pays multiple levies. He provides the infrastructure that should support his business, then competes against imported products from countries where infrastructure actually works. Then his workers steal from him. They steal diesel and petrol and sell to his neighbour’s security men. They steal eggs and say the birds are ill and need drugs. They strangle birds and sell birds bought at N12, 000 for a measly 3k.
If this businessman increases prices, Nigerians call him greedy.
If he closes his factory, Nigerians call him unpatriotic.
If he relocates, Nigerians accuse him of abandoning his country.
What exactly do we want this man to do? Manufacture products or manufacture miracles?
And while businesses are fighting for survival, parts of our public service are busy perfecting the art of making public money disappear.
Let us be fair. There are honest, hardworking civil servants. But there are also officials who inflate contracts, manipulate payrolls, invent expenditure and turn procurement into a family business.
Some politicians loot with such confidence that you would think the treasury was included in their inheritance.
They demand sacrifice from citizens while insulating themselves from sacrifice.
Unfortunately, citizens are not innocent spectators either.
Some steal electricity, evade legitimate taxes, bribe officials, sell votes, vandalise public facilities and then complain that government cannot provide services.
A man bypasses his electricity metre and complains that the DISCO is losing money. Another refuses to pay taxes but wants European-standard roads. A third sells his vote for N10,000 and spends four years cursing the government he helped install.
Everybody is using everybody.
The politician uses the voter. The voter uses the politician. The corrupt official uses the contractor. The contractor uses the government. The dishonest customer uses the service provider. The unscrupulous service provider uses the customer.
And the country keeps sinking under the combined weight of everybody’s cleverness.
The World Bank estimates that more than 60 per cent of Nigerians lived below the national poverty line in 2025. It also identifies the challenge of absorbing approximately 3.5 million new entrants into the labour force annually.
Three and a half million!
Where are the industries waiting for them?
We celebrate economic growth, stronger government revenues and improving indicators. These achievements matter. But growth that does not produce enough jobs or improve ordinary lives cannot be the end of our national ambition.
What happens when universities keep producing graduates while factories close, farms struggle and productive enterprises shrink?
What happens when the brightest children conclude that their best chance of success is to leave? Or become runs girls? Or do internet fraud? Or become drug couriers?
What happens when corruption becomes a career path and honest work begins to look like punishment?
We are not merely losing jobs. We are losing faith in the value of work.
And that is more dangerous than any recession.
Can Nigeria escape this dark tunnel? Certainly. Other countries have recovered from terrible economic and institutional crises.
But recovery requires more than slogans, prayers, policy announcements and colourful PowerPoint presentations.
We must make electricity reliable, protect productive businesses, expand agricultural supply chains, revive viable industrial assets, punish corruption and make public institutions answerable to the people who fund them.
We must stop rewarding thieves because they share our surnames, religions, political parties or villages.
We must stop celebrating politicians for doing what taxpayers already paid them to do.
We must stop demanding integrity from government while practising dishonesty in our private lives.
Above all, we must understand that jobs are not created by graduation ceremonies. Jobs are created by functioning enterprises in a functioning economy.
I worry about the young Nigerians whose futures are being postponed while those responsible for creating opportunities are busy sharing the present.
I worry about the honest businessman who is one electricity bill away from shutting down.
I worry about the farmer who cannot afford birds, the engineer who cannot find a refinery to work in, and the civil servant who has forgotten that public service is not private business.
We are standing in a dark tunnel, shouting that we want light while some people are stealing the cables. Others are selling the generators. Some are collecting contracts to install the bulbs. Others are submitting invoices for electricity that was never supplied.
And everybody is praying for a miracle.
Perhaps the most frightening possibility is not that Nigeria cannot find its way out of the tunnel. It is that too many people are making too much money from keeping the rest of us in darkness.
Until that changes, I am afraid Orisa Aje may never be seen in these parts again.