By Stephanie Shaakaa
When a country rewards each Super Falcons player with N150 million and a three-bedroom house for a 90-minute football match, yet sends police and military pensioners who served 35 years home with N2–5 million, no housing, no healthcare, and a pension too small to feed a family, what we have is not just imbalance it’s a moral crisis.
And just like that the copy-paste generosity extended to the women’s basketball team. More cash, more houses, same hypocrisy. Meanwhile, the heroes of this country from other sectors rot in silence.
By the way, the Nigerian men’s table tennis team also bagged a gold medal. Someone should kindly remind the presidency so their own ¦ 150 million, National awards and three-bedroom apartments can arrive on schedule. After all, it’s raining gold, let everyone get wet. Get me right, I’m not against rewards for excellence in sports. I strongly believe that what is good for the Goose is also good for the Gander.
Thousands of retirees, many who served this country for 35 years languished in poverty, despair and neglect. These pensioners, who built this nation brick by brick, remain unpaid, unheard, and unhonoured. Athletes get mansions while pensioners live on ¦ 30,000
Is 35 years of service equal to a lifetime of poverty? It’s not just about money, it’s about dignity.
This isn’t just mismanagement, it’s a national disgrace. We glorify games and ignore grit. We celebrate short-term glory and spit on lifelong service. If this is what we honour, then we’ve lost the plot as a nation. Millions for a match while the same millions is been denied veterans. Do we now. reward glory and punish service?
We now go from stadium applause to retirement silence. Why does a short sports victory command higher public reward than a lifetime of service?
A two year toy trophy brings more reward than decades of loyal service?
Who sets the criteria for national rewards and why is public service so chronically undervalued?
When will pensioners be removed from exploitative schemes and paid their rightful entitlements on time?
What message does rewarding athletics over education and service send to the next generation?
Is the government’s borrowing supposedly to meet constitutional obligations funding nostalgia projects rather than urgent needs.
This is not just a story of football glory. It is the dilemma of a nation’s warped value system, a country that rewards spectacle over sacrifice, cheers over character, and temporary applause over lifetime service.
Nigeria, a country perpetually borrowing to meet its constitutional obligations, somehow found over 3.7 billion to reward 24 players and 11 officials for a two-year trophy. Each player walked away with the Naira equivalent of $100,000, while each official received $50,000, courtesy of the federal government. Add to that the housing gifts, and what we have is a country in economic intensive care giving out organ donations. The president called it an act of gratitude. But gratitude, when misdirected, becomes an insult.
Because on the other side of that same country, a retired police officer who gave 35 years of his life to national security is handed 1 million gratuity, 35,000 monthly pension, and nothing else no housing, no healthcare, and no dignity. One viral video showed a retired officer in tears, asking, is this the Nigeria I fought for?
Another lamented,even my children no longer respect me because I have nothing. This is not to downplay the dedication of our athletes. The Super Falcons are champions, and they deserve to be celebrated. But in what world does a 90-minute match earn more than 35 years of teaching, nursing, policing or military service?
What kind of society prioritizes trophies over textbooks, goals over governance, and stadiums over classrooms?
How do we, with straight faces, hand out cash and homes to footballers while retired army officers protest outside the Ministry of Finance demanding unpaid Security Debarment Allowance, arrears stretching back 43 months?
These are not fictional grievances. These are cries from the very people who protected the unity we claim to be celebrating with football victories.
We must confront the fact that Nigeria is operating under a colonial hangover, trained to entertain, not innovate, to run, not reason, to score goals, not solve equations. We reward showmanship but punish scholarship. We gift gold to athletes but barely clap for a mathematics prodigy who represented Nigeria on a global stage and got just N50,000 barely enough to buy a flight ticket in today’s economy.
I just saw a Head of Department award for the best graduating student of a university the prize was N1,000 (One thousand naira). That’s not even enough to buy a decent pen to sign their employment letter, let alone reflect the years of hard work, sacrifice, and academic excellence. How did we get here?
A Professor, after three decades in academia, still can’t afford a bungalow in the capital. Meanwhile,a winger who scores two goals earns more than all the lecturers in a federal university put together in a month. One Mr. Yusuf Garba, a retired inspector, now sells phone recharge cards under a bridge in Abuja. After 35 years of service, he earns less than ¦ 1,500 a day.
Who decides the reward system in Nigeria? What policy framework justifies this imbalance? Where is the justice in handing out national medals to athletes and giving nothing but silence to pensioners who took bullets, taught in crises, and policed during insurgencies?
What moral lesson do we teach our youth when we celebrate footballers with gold and houses but ask teachers to retire into oblivion or tell them their reward is in heaven?
Is it any wonder that our brightest minds are fleeing the country, not to chase trophies, but to chase dignity?
It’s time to recalibrate our national compass. Football is important, yes. So is national pride. But fairness matters more. Equity, and gratitude to those who gave this country their youth, strength, and lives.
Have the protesting pensioners been paid their entitlements? Have the retired police officers who served through civil unrest, Boko Haram, and communal crises received justice? Have teachers who educated every footballer on that pitch been honoured for their role in the nation’s story?
How can the government justify that?
Why is the welfare of public servants, those who build our schools, protect our cities, educate our children consistently devalued compared to sports success?
When will the government overhaul the pension system to deliver full entitlements transparently and promptly?
If we had N3.7 billion to gift for a two-year trophy, we should have money to fix our hospitals, restore our schools, and rescue our pension system from the abyss.
Some may read this and shrug, That’s just how Nigeria is, But we refuse to normalize absurdity. We refuse to remain quiet while the people who built this nation live in lack, watching televised ceremonies honouring people for entertainment while they starve. We speak because silence is betrayal. We write because no one else will.
We rage because this must end. And we will not stop until service is celebrated, not just sport, until the teacher, the nurse, the soldier, and the police officer are given more than just tired “thank yous” and forgotten file numbers.
This is a national alarm.
The next time you clap for a trophy, remember the pensioner begging for bread just beyond the stadium gates.
To stay silent now is to endorse injustice in full volume.
*Shaakaa is a commentator on public issues
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