Governments often struggle with a specific tendency: prioritizing minor annoyances over deep-rooted structural crises. While nations should focus on reinforcing essential institutions like schools and hospitals, many leaders prefer the performance of governance, treating surface-level issues as if they were national priorities. A prime example is the recent debate regarding the Federal Road Safety Corps amendment bill, which targeted preaching and hawking on public transport. Focusing on whether or not a preacher should speak in a bus ignores the genuine struggle of the citizenry.
A morning commute in Nigeria reveals the true state of the nation. Passengers carry invisible burdens: the woman with tomatoes calculating survival, the graduate anxious about employment, and the elderly man worried about medical results. These individuals endure life’s pressures in silence, their lives defined by economic instability and the constant struggle to make ends meet. The commercial bus serves as a microcosm of society where people grapple with inflation and uncertainty.
The debate over regulating preachers inside buses is a distraction from the larger failures of governance. True leadership should not focus on policing petty inconveniences but on fixing the underlying economic and social systems that make daily life a struggle. Policy should be measured by whether it improves the lives of ordinary citizens, like the tomato seller, rather than by the creation of new rules that provide only an illusion of progress. Until the government addresses the core issues of economic viability and institutional integrity, these legislative efforts remain performative, leaving the fundamental challenges of the people unresolved.
