THANOS WAS RIGHT. HALF OF US NEED TO GO.

Music: Take a Slice — Glass Animals

This might be my most controversial post yet, but fuck it. Some things need to be said.

And before anyone starts, I’m not Uncle Ruckus. I’m not writing this because I hate being Black. I’m writing this because sometimes I look at the state of humanity, particularly the societies I’m part of, and genuinely wonder what the fuck is wrong with us.

I know our history.

I know colonialism happened. I know foreign intelligence agencies, including the CIA, interfered in African politics. I know slavery, exploitation, artificial borders, economic dependency and decades of foreign interference have contributed to where we are today.

I’m not dismissing any of that.

But here’s my question.

At what point does historical explanation become an excuse for present-day stupidity?

Because there’s only so much you can blame on outsiders before you have to examine what you’re doing to yourselves.

The greed. The selfishness. The tribalism. The religious manipulation. The violence. The complete inability to think beyond personal survival or immediate benefit.

It’s exhausting.

And before someone tells me that African countries can’t simply overcome their histories, let’s talk about Asia.

Look at China. Look at South Korea. Look at Singapore. Look at Taiwan.

Look at the Asian Tigers.

These societies weren’t handed functioning economies on silver platters. Some experienced devastating wars, occupations, political repression, extreme poverty, and foreign interference.

Yet within a few generations, they built manufacturing industries, infrastructure, educational systems, and economies that became globally competitive.

Was it perfect? Absolutely not.

China has serious problems with political freedom. Singapore has its own restrictions. South Korea and Taiwan experienced authoritarian periods. Their success stories have enormous complications.

But look at what they managed to build.

So why are we still struggling with the same basic fucking problems?

Why is electricity still a luxury?

Why is access to decent healthcare a privilege?

Why are good roads, functioning schools and public safety treated like some extraordinary favour politicians are doing us?

We’ve reached a point where NEPA takes the light, and people start praying for electricity to return.

Think about how fucking ridiculous that is.

We’re praying for the restoration of basic infrastructure in 2026.

Something that should be so ordinary that nobody even thinks about it.

And then there’s Nigeria.

Our sitting president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, represents much of what I despise about our political establishment. I find his leadership selfish, deeply disappointing, and utterly disconnected from the everyday suffering of ordinary Nigerians.

But you know what frustrates me even more?

The people defending it.

People who can barely afford food. People struggling with transportation, rent, electricity, and healthcare.

People whose children have limited opportunities.

Yet some of these same people will defend political leaders with every ounce of energy they have.

Why?

Because he speaks their language?

Because he comes from their tribe?

Because they hope to receive some tiny benefit from being associated with power?

How do you look at your own suffering, recognise the people responsible for addressing it, and then attack those demanding better governance?

Someone speaks about accountability, reform, or a better future, and suddenly people benefiting from the status quo mobilise against them.

And ordinary citizens, who have almost nothing to gain from protecting that system, join them.

Poor people fighting other poor people on behalf of wealthy politicians who wouldn’t recognise them in a crowd.

It’s almost impressive how successfully we’ve been manipulated.

And don’t tell me this is just politics.

It’s tribalism. It’s religious loyalty. It’s the normalisation of mediocrity. It’s a culture in which personal access to power matters more than whether that power serves the public.

We’ll excuse incompetence because the person responsible shares our surname, language or religion.

We’ll defend corruption because we believe our turn to benefit might come someday.

We’ll sacrifice collective progress for the possibility of individual advantage.

Then we’ll wake up tomorrow and complain about how nothing works.

Are we genuinely interested in fixing anything?

Or do we simply want our own opportunity to exploit the same broken system?

And here’s another uncomfortable subject.

Anti-Blackness.

There are societies where Blackness is treated as something undesirable. In parts of the Arab world, anti-Black racism and colourism have deep historical roots. Some people actively distance themselves from Black identity as though association with it diminishes their status.

And yes, there are Black Arabs, and Arab identity isn’t a single race. But the existence of those distinctions doesn’t erase the prejudice.

What bothers me is how easily racial hierarchies become accepted, even internalised.

Sometimes I look at the state of our societies and catch myself thinking the very things racists have said about us.

That we’re inferior. That we’re incapable of organising ourselves. That we’ll never get our shit together.

And then I have to confront how dangerous that thinking is.

Because failure isn’t genetic.

Corruption isn’t encoded in melanin.

Stupidity doesn’t have a race.

If it did, how would we explain the African societies that have made meaningful progress? How would we explain Black excellence across science, engineering, literature, politics and countless other fields?

The problem isn’t that Black people are inherently incapable.

The problem is that dysfunction can become so deeply normalised that people start defending it as a way of life.

And that is terrifying.

Even outside Africa, some Black communities continue to struggle with gang violence, crime, poverty, and destructive cycles that hurt the very people living within them.

Of course, historical discrimination, unequal opportunities, and economic exclusion matter. They matter enormously.

But explaining why something happens doesn’t mean we should stop questioning the behavior itself.

Why do we sometimes glorify the things that destroy our own communities?

Why are we so quick to celebrate individual escape while accepting collective decline?

Look at how many children grow up believing that becoming a professional athlete, musician, or celebrity is their only realistic chance at financial freedom.

Think about the NBA. Roughly 400-plus players occupy those extraordinary positions at any given time, while millions of young people dream of getting there.

There’s nothing wrong with ambition. There’s nothing wrong with sports or entertainment.

But what does it say about society when extraordinary talent and extraordinary luck feel like the only alternatives to poverty?

Why can’t someone just be an ordinary person and live a decent life?

Why should being a teacher, engineer, nurse, technician, or small-business owner mean struggling to survive?

Why must everybody become exceptional before they’re allowed to be comfortable?

A functioning society shouldn’t require every citizen to become a superstar.

It should make ordinary life worth living.

And somehow, we’ve made survival itself an achievement.

This is where my frustration with humanity goes beyond race or nationality.

Because maybe this isn’t exclusively a Nigerian problem.

Maybe it’s a human problem.

Greed exists everywhere. Tribalism exists everywhere. Religious extremism, political manipulation, exploitation, and the desire to dominate other people aren’t unique to any continent.

Human beings are astonishingly good at inventing divisions.

Race. Religion. Tribe. Nationality. Class. Language.

Give us any difference, and we’ll eventually find someone willing to turn it into a reason for hatred.

And even when people have the same problems, they’ll find reasons to fight each other instead of confronting those responsible.

Which brings me back to Thanos.

Half of us need to go.

Not because I genuinely believe mass murder or racial extinction would solve anything.

But because there are moments when humanity’s capacity for stupidity makes Thanos’s frustration feel disturbingly understandable.

Imagine removing every racial division tomorrow.

Would humanity suddenly become united?

Or would we simply invent another hierarchy?

Would we segregate ourselves by nationality? Religion? Wealth? Language? The colour of our fucking shoes?

Maybe even wiping out half the population wouldn’t change anything.

Because the real problem isn’t how many people exist.

It’s what we choose to tolerate.

It’s how easily we surrender our judgment to politicians, religious leaders, and powerful individuals who benefit from our division.

It’s how readily we mistake loyalty for intelligence.

It’s how comfortable we’ve become with suffering, provided someone convinces us that the people suffering alongside us are our enemies.

And maybe the most depressing part is that I’m tired of having conversations about problems that shouldn’t exist in the first place.

I don’t want to spend my life arguing that people deserve electricity.

I don’t want to explain why hospitals should function.

I don’t want to defend the radical idea that citizens deserve competent leadership.

I don’t want to live in a country where asking for basic accountability is treated as a personal attack against someone’s tribe or religion.

I’m tired of low-quality problems.

I’m tired of seeing human potential wasted because a few people want to protect their wealth and millions more have been convinced to protect those people.

I’m tired of societies where those who try to improve things are treated as enemies, and those who perpetuate dysfunction are celebrated.

And yes, I understand that changing a country isn’t as simple as changing a president.

It requires institutions. Education. Economic transformation. Civic responsibility. Long-term planning. Accountability.

But none of those things will happen if people refuse to question the systems they’ve been taught to defend.

So maybe Thanos was wrong.

Maybe half of us don’t need to disappear.

Maybe the part of humanity that needs to die is our willingness to keep reproducing the very conditions that make life miserable.

The tribalism.

The blind loyalty.

The greed.

The celebration of ignorance.

The idea that because something has always been broken, it must remain broken.

Because if we can’t overcome those things, we could have all the resources in the world, all the foreign aid, all the investment, and all the opportunities imaginable, and we’d still find a way to fuck everything up.

And if you think this is simply an attack on Black people, you’ve missed the point.

It’s a criticism of how easily human beings, including people in my own society, can become active participants in their own oppression.

The question isn’t whether we’re capable of being better.

The question is whether we actually want to be.