When the Prince Adeniyi–Gbajabiamila saga broke, I had no intention of commenting, until I had a dream.

I am not joking. I am not claiming clairvoyance, nor am I speaking figuratively. I literally had a dream. I have not suddenly joined the company of the prophets, like Saul among their sons. No, this dream is simply proof of a burden. Nigeria and her affairs have so consumed my subconscious that they now follow me into my sleep. The Book I read says a dream comes through the multitude of business, a dream is the product of one’s dominant thought. Go to bed hungry, and do not be surprised to find yourself feasting in your dream. So the dream itself matters less than what it reveals about my heart: that a matter trending concerning a nation yet to be born would find its way into my private night.

In the dream, I saw Mr. Gbajabiamila blabbing, incoherent, unable to defend his position before the public. And when I woke, the interpretation was plain: this is a matter the government cannot defend. You do not deny the existence of an agency that reportedly sits in the 2026 Appropriation Bill, kept an office in the Federal Secretariat, and photographed itself beside top functionaries of state. What exactly are we talking about?

Now, why had I planned to keep silent? Not because the matter is unserious, but because I have read Nigeria. I am fifty-six years old, born and bred in this land. I have followed her story since independence, and I understand her. And what I understand compels me to reason in two layers, which must not be confused with each other.

The first layer is Nigeria herself. Our foundation was faulty from the beginning. A nation is defined by its vision, its mission, its values, and the institutions built to sustain them. Nigeria has none of these in any settled form, no shared national vision, no binding culture of accountability, no institutions that outlive the men who capture them. Somebody once wrote that there was a country. I submit, with respect, that there has never been a nation. What we have is a nation waiting to be born and whether she will ever be born depends on our actions and inactions, our contributions and our complacency.

The second layer is this present government. Here I speak specifically, and from the record. I have followed the principal characters of this administration from their antecedents in Lagos State to the federal stage. The head of this government has trailed controversy at every turn, allegations of certificate forgery, an identity and even a name contested in public, schoolmates nobody can produce, documented questions of forfeited funds linked to drug proceeds, questions of dual citizenship. I observe that probity, integrity, and accountability have simply never been the strong points of this government. Yet these are the people we have put forward as the representatives of the nation. And if it is true that a people deserve the leaders they get, then the mirror is turned on us.

Now place the two premises together and the conclusion writes itself. A nation without institutions, led by a government without a reputation for probity, will inevitably produce a spectacle like the PFIPC saga. That is why I was neither shocked nor moved to comment. Fela Aníkúlápó Kuti supplied the vocabulary decades ago: government by ‘arrangee masters.’ This is not news; it is arithmetic.

But will this scandal count? Will it change anything? Not so long as we remain a people of surface thinking, treating each eruption in isolation, holding inquests over symptoms while the disease reigns. The disease is the absence of a nation. The cure is not another probe; it is the birth of a nation indeed, a people bound not by tongue or tribe but by vision, mission, values, and character, where informed followership births informed leadership. Other nations have risen from colonization, from rubble, from ashes, to build greatness. Nothing stops us, except us.

Do have an INSPIRED weekend with the family