Despite the troubling times, GODWIN SOGOLO celebrates the intense happiness of being an Octogenarian
As a young man, I was not streetwise; to be candid, I was naive. And, to compound matters, I even looked foolish, as one friend bluntly told me. The result was that my peers easily took advantage of me and often made me the butt of their jokes. Many of them also assumed, without any basis, that they were more intelligent than I was. All of this – together with my poor family background – made me less assertive and therefore an easy target for bullying and humiliation.
Even as I grew older, I still found myself vulnerable to bullying from a number of friends and colleagues, both older and younger – though bullying of a different kind: intellectual bullying. For instance, some friends who had spent only three years as undergraduates at the University of Ibadan – with no further contact thereafter – would presume to lecture me on the academic life and culture of the very institution where I spent more than 30 years teaching and conducting research. To this day, they show no hesitation in imposing their views and judgments on me, even in matters naturally within my professional purview and in which I possessed far greater knowledge.
So, at the celebration of my 80th birthday earlier this year (2026), one of my friends sought to explain to my colleagues and well-wishers who had gathered to rejoice with me, the circumstances of my birth and why there was no record of the exact date I was born – almost as though the blame rested with me. It was, of course, genuinely intended as a joke. Despite my discomfort, I joined in the laughter, determined not to allow anything to diminish the joy of the occasion.
I arrived at the celebration that morning carrying a heavy burden of challenges on my shoulders – some personal, others shared collectively with fellow Nigerians. On the way, I was confronted by one of the harsher consequences of the removal of fuel subsidies early in the administration of Bola Ahmed Tinubu, as the cost of filling my car tank had risen from ₦80,000 to ₦120,000. Yet, despite that irritation, the joy of attaining 80 years of age in good health could not be extinguished. Nor would I allow the astronomical rise in the daily cost of living to diminish that spiritual uplift.
But the distress went deeper than that. As the birthday celebration unfolded – with speeches, tributes, recollections, and jokes – it dawned on me that many of my invited guests, who would dearly have loved to attend, were unable to do so. They had been practically overwhelmed by the devastating hardships inflicted on the population by the current Government.
Invitees who managed to come had – apart from the focus of the occasion – different stories to tell. Among them were workers whose monthly take-home pay could not sustain them for more than a few days; artisans unable to afford transportation in search of work; entrepreneurs – small, medium, and large-scale – driven out of business by harsh economic conditions; tenants unable to meet their rent obligations; parents incapable of paying school fees; and, of course, nearly all of them struggling to feed themselves and their families.
Normally, even in a depressed economic system such as ours, there remains the hope of a brighter future and the possibility that conditions will improve. In our present situation, however, that hope is swiftly undermined by the troubling speculation that our future has, in effect, been mortgaged through the forward sale of Nigeria’s oil reserves – the primary source of national income – purportedly to secure short-term liquidity.
For the ordinary citizen who may not fully grasp what this means, it is that a substantial portion of our crude oil production for the next 10 to 20 years has been sold and paid for in advance, and that the oil will be drawn from the reserves buried beneath the soil of the Niger Delta, including Isokoland and other parts of the country. The information is that a previous Government had already received full payment upfront from foreign buyers. If this is true, the implication is strikingly stark: it means that we have sold our future, plain and simple. And, given Nigeria’s troubled history of mismanagement, there is the grave fear that such funds may already have been stolen, may currently be looted, or may yet be misappropriated by those with privileged access.
Although not partisan in the true sense of the word, I have been a friend to many politicians; unavoidably sympathetic to political ideologies and causes – and, indeed, always intrigued by the interplay of political forces. I do not think Aristotle was wrong when he described man as a “political animal”, meaning that as human beings, we are always an integral part of society and its interactions. That is the fact of social life: anybody may decide to ignore politics, but nobody can escape its impact.
One of the correlates of this social reality is that, whether partisan or non-partisan, every human being possesses some sense of what is normal, what is abnormal, and even that which is bizarre in politics. Such, for instance, is the present state of the Nigerian political landscape. By definition, politics is an activity through which conflicting interests are negotiated and resolved. Yet, over the past one or two years, political alignments and realignments in Nigeria have been marked by massive movements toward a single political party, presumably with common interests. It is not the movements themselves that are troubling, but the motive driving them. Adams Oshiomhole has told us in plain language what defection to All Progressives Congress entails. Though shameful and disheartening, this appalling situation is still not enough to diminish the joy of being 80.
Troubling as political defections may be, they are not the ugliest aspect of Nigerian politics. The ugliest lies in the conduct of elections and their processes – especially the adjudication of electoral disputes by the judiciary. As everyone knows, even a primary school child in Nigeria might mockingly tell you to “go to court,” with utter disregard for due process. This reflects a judicial system widely perceived to operate on a cash-and-carry basis, with a high premium placed on foreign currencies – a stark indication of how low the nation has sunk in matters of electoral adjudication.
I am told that for the men and women who work in the Nigerian judiciary, periods of national elections are like harvest seasons. Of course, those at the lower echelon of the system – junior lawyers and judges – may not reap as much as the “ogas at the top”: Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs) and Supreme Court Justices, who have increasingly become the ultimate arbiters of who wins or loses major elections in the country.
Sadly, much of what transpires between the nation’s politicians and the judiciary is also reflected in other sectors of Nigerian life – in religious institutions (churches, mosques, shrines), universities, the civil service, the private sector, among artisans, and even among market men and women. So, where does one begin to purge such a system, and where does one end?
As the celebrations gradually drew to a close and guests began departing for their various destinations, the issue of insecurity came sharply to mind. Unlike the good old days, when people could travel long distances by road both day and night, no one dares to take such risks anymore. To do so is to openly tempt bandits, kidnappers, armed robbers, terrorists, and other highway predators.
In spite of the growing adversities in Nigeria, I have not allowed pessimism to intrude into my life. I am encouraged by the many young men and women who remain full of hope for the future of Nigeria. I also feel reassured and, indeed, consoled by the numerous blessings that God has bestowed on this nation in general, and on me in particular. As the African adage says, it is the living who experience hardship and hunger. So, in spite of it all, the beauty of life at 80 remains undiminished.
Sogolo, who turned 80 on 4 January 2026, is an Emeritus Professor who has taught and conducted research in Philosophy for over five decades – first at University of Ibadan and currently at National Open University of Nigeria. He also served as a member of the Editorial Board of The Guardian Newspapers in the 1980s and 1990s.
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