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Once upon a time, Adams Oshiomhole was the people’s man, the fearless labour champion who roared in the streets, demanded justice from the mighty, and made politicians squirm like schoolboys caught with their hands in the till. Edo State loved him; Nigeria even admired him.
The man who had once marched the dusty roads with workers, fighting for fair pay and better conditions, seemed inseparable from the pulse of the common man.
But ah, politics, that sly little demon! Somewhere along the line, it bit him with a vengeance. The bite was subtle at first, perhaps, a shiny car here, a comfortable governor’s seat there but soon it festered into full-blown plutocratic obsession. Our lion had been tamed.
Fast forward to the present: while bandits roam the countryside, leaving mothers to cry over stolen children, and citizens can no longer walk home without checking their six o’clock shadows, Oshiomhole was busy turning his private jet into a floating pleasure palace. No union protests, no town hall meetings, no shouting in the streets, just champagne flutes, soft lighting, and a South African “professional sugar baby” perched like an exotic bird beside him.
Meanwhile, his beautiful Cape Verdean wife, yes, the one who once believed in a shared dream for her people, was presumably left behind, likely wondering if the man who once promised to fight for justice now even remembered what poverty smelled like.
And yet, in the midst of hunger, inflation, and public outrage, our erstwhile labour hero seemed unbothered. He rubbed, massaged, and frolicked, call it what you will, but the message was clear: the jet is fast, the sugar baby is faster, and the cries of the land? Merely background noise.
The irony aside, one must pause: how does a man who once carried the hopes of many on his broad shoulders now treat the same people’s suffering as mere footnotes in his high-flying romance?
Perhaps, it is the ultimate lesson of politics: if you ride the tiger long enough, it will spit you into a world far removed from the roar of the people you once defended.
And so, while Nigeria burns in hunger and anger, Oshiomhole’s jet climbs higher, carrying him, his sugar coated distractions, and a public increasingly convinced that politics, like jet fuel, burns bright and leaves ordinary folk choking in the smoke.
Oshiomhole is not an exception; he is the template. He embodies a class of politicians for whom hunger is an abstraction, fear is entertainment, and public suffering is scenery for personal indulgence. While Nigerians scavenge for survival, the political elite sip champagne, traverse continents, and celebrate allowances that are never accounted for.
Constituency projects, meant to transform communities, often vanish into the ether, leaving empty classrooms, broken roads, and hollow promises as monuments to government indifference.
The money flows, unseen and untouchable, while the people starve.
Profligacy has become an art form perfected without consideration for consequences. Ministries distribute memos while villages collapse. Budgets are padded, inflated, and diverted, yet official statements insist all is well. Every lavish gala, every overseas trip, every unmonitored allowance is a symbol of a government that spends as if the country belongs to them and not to the people. One can almost hear them announce in mock parliamentary gravity: “Honourable colleagues, we have wisely allocated 80 million naira for catering in this fiscal quarter, because the nation’s moral fibre must be fortified with imported wine and caviar.” Meanwhile, the citizens whose taxes fund this circus debate if they will eat today or survive the bandits tomorrow.
The electoral system itself mirrors this detachment. Resistance to electronic transmission of results is not incompetence; it is convenience. Writing results manually opens doors to manipulation, turning democracy into a playground for personal enrichment while the voters wait in vain for fairness. Votes are rewritten like scripts in a badly directed soap opera, but life continues as if ordinary suffering is mere background noise. Hunger, banditry, inflation, mere soundtrack to the high-flying elite as they float above it all, unseeing, unfeeling, unaccountable.
So sad the complicit World Bank has passed a suspicious endorsement of the suffering of Nigerians because the unfeeling multiple taxes and policies are in tandem with their evil policies.
And so, Oshiomhole’s jet is no mere personal indulgence; it is a national metaphor. The sugar baby, the champagne, the foot massage; they are the visible symptoms of a political system that spends without thought, governs without care, and treats public misery as invisible.
Bandit attacks, inflation, famine, and neglect are inconsequential to those who measure success by private villas, unaccounted allowances, and Instagram applause.
It is not only the people who suffer from this high-flying detachment. Democracy itself grows weak under the weight of such indifference. Electoral transparency is compromised. Votes are rewritten. Funds are diverted. Constituency projects vanish. Accountability is a ghost.
And yet, from above, it all seems irrelevant. The sugar baby does not mind. The champagne does not complain. The jet soars, oblivious, unfeeling, untouchable.
Oshiomhole, once the lion of the people, now serves as the satirical blueprint for Nigerian politicians everywhere. He embodies the art of indifference perfected over decades, a class insulated from the consequences of their own profligacy, ruling in a theatre where appearances matter more than outcomes, and indulgence counts more than empathy. The message is unmistakable: while the nation burns, the jets fly; while the citizens starve, allowances multiply; while morality demands attention, luxury claims priority.
In the absurdity of a lion massaging a sugar baby’s feet while the country trembles below, there lies a mirror for every Nigerian to see what governance has become and demand what it should be. For until the leaders descend from the clouds, until they remember that the lion is meant to roar for the people, not for luxury, Nigeria will continue to endure the bitter comedy of elite detachment.
The sugar baby is not scandal alone. She is the metaphoric passenger on a vessel of national indifference, a reminder that politics divorced from empathy is just performance, and performance cannot feed a nation. High above the hunger, Nigerian politicians continue their frolic, but the people below watch, wait, and hope, because no matter how high the jet flies, reality eventually descends.
And when it does, the country will remember the lesson Oshiomhole now teaches without meaning to: a lion that abandons the streets for indulgence becomes the emblem of governance divorced from humanity, a spectacle for the few while the many endure.
Anthony Iwuoma
Journalist/Columnist/Pastor -Marriage & Family; Politics & Power
