My Man of the Year — KWAM 1 -By Prince Charles Dickson, Ph.D

It takes a special kind of Nigerian to stop a moving airplane. Not with a gun. Not with a presidential order. Just with audacity, entitlement, and a sprinkle of juju confidence. Alhaji Wasiu Ayinde Marshal KWAM 1, the Mayegun of Yorubaland did not just halt a plane; he held up a mirror to the soul of this great republic. And what a reflection it was chaotic, comic, and completely Nigerian.

Picture it: the engines humming, the pilot ready for takeoff, safety belts fastened. Suddenly, one man stands up and says, “Hold it!” Not for an emergency. Not for a medical evacuation. But because his spirit wasn’t ready to fly. And the amazing part? The plane actually stopped. The crew paused, the passengers sighed, and the system as always adjusted to accommodate nonsense. That single act, dear reader, was the perfect metaphor for Nigeria in 2025.

We are the nation that halts progress for trivialities, holds development hostage to personality cults, and then claps when mediocrity becomes ambassador for “good behavior.” KWAM 1 did not just stop a plane; he symbolized how we have stopped ourselves in politics, in morality, in governance, in common sense.

2025 has been that kind of year, a medley of laughter and lamentation. From the President’s mysterious “pardon list” (a cocktail of saints and sinners) to Trump’s global tweet on “Christian genocide in Nigeria” that left our foreign ministry scrambling to find grammar, we’ve seen it all.

We debated whether genocide was happening, not how to stop it, but whether it qualified by UN definition. Some said Christians. Others said Muslims. The rest said “Let’s form committee.” Meanwhile, people were still dying in the same headlines. We even managed to make tragedy trend like a meme before moving to the next scandal.

Remember the Super Falcons debate? Whether they should have been paid a million dollars each. We argued for days, not about building sports infrastructure or supporting women’s football, but about whether they deserved dollars or applause. That’s us: experts in trivialities, allergic to sustainability.

Doctors went on strike. Teachers followed. The naira fainted again and was resuscitated by wishful thinking. Yet somehow, there was no election violence in Anambra; a miracle so rare we should declare a public holiday for it. Of course, vote buying replaced bullets; so technically, peace won or maybe na “rice” won.

Then there was the global spectacle; Trump threatening to intervene in Nigeria’s “Christian genocide.” Nigerians didn’t unite in outrage or reflection; we split into factions: the “Trump-for-Savior” camp and the “Trump-na-Madman” camp. Everyone became a foreign policy expert overnight. Hashtags were flying, threads were typing, and in true Nigerian fashion, by the next week we had moved on to arguing about Davido’s private jet.

Our staying power is like PHCN light, bright in the beginning, gone before you finish boiling water.

So, when KWAM 1 stopped that plane, I laughed, then sighed. Because truly, he is our man of the year. The living metaphor of a system that halts for privilege, bends for power, and rewards impunity with honorific titles. He could have been arrested. He could have been fined. Instead, we turned him into an “ambassador for good behavior.” Only in Nigeria can madness become a ministry.

He is us. The country that breaks rules, explains it with proverb, and somehow gets national endorsement for it. We cheat traffic lights, build on waterways, fake results, dodge taxes — and still expect miracle breakthroughs. KWAM 1’s act wasn’t an aberration; it was performance art, and the nation clapped.

If years had personalities, 2025 would be that passenger delaying everyone because they forgot their boarding pass inside hand luggage. We’ve been taxing for takeoff — full of potential, fuel loaded, but held back by the same characters who keep insisting they must “pray first” before allowing the plane of progress to move.

We saw hope flicker: young Nigerians innovating, communities rebuilding after conflict, women rising in leadership, even citizens daring to dream again. But as usual, someone shouted “Hold it!” and we paused for another round of political theater and recycled manifestos.

Humor has always been our anesthesia. We joked about Wike and Sowore, turned insecurity into skits, and made memes out of ministers’ blunders. But beneath the laughter lies exhaustion — the slow fatigue of a people used to disappointment. When a man stops a plane and gets applause, it’s not just absurdity, it’s symbolism of how deeply broken our definition of accountability has become.

So yes, my Man of the Year is KWAM 1 not because he inspired us, but because he defined us. A nation of incredible talent and chronic impunity. We stop planes, progress, reforms and yet we dance to the music of survival.

Maybe one day, we’ll let the engines roar again, not to escape, but to arrive. Until then, Nigeria remains on the runway: full of spirit, full of stories, and, like KWAM 1, always ready to stop mid-air and sing about it.

God bless the Federal Republic of Irony—May Nigeria win

Epilogue: The Runway We Cannot Keep Avoiding

Meanwhile, Nigeria’s insecurity has grown into a shadow that stretches longer than any runway we have ever tried to take off from. Farmer-herder clashes, banditry, kidnappings, insurgency, communal reprisals, and now the creeping boldness of criminal networks have created a country where fear is no longer breaking news; it is the background noise of daily life. What is worse is how quickly each tragedy becomes another headline we scroll past. The fatigue is real; the normalization is dangerous. From Bassa to Birnin Gwari, from Mangu to Maradun, communities are living the same script: attacks, condemnations, committees, silence, repeat. The tragedy is no longer only the violence, it is our national habit of adjusting to it.

Yet, insecurity is not a storm that will simply pass. It is a system, fed by poverty, weak governance, political timidity, ethnic suspicion, arms proliferation, and a justice system too slow to matter. Until we confront these roots with the same urgency we give to our politics, our music, our online debates, or even our scandals, we will keep circling the same airspace of grief. The plane of this nation wants to take off; its engines are loud, its people resilient, but the runway is littered with the debris of unattended problems. The question is no longer whether Nigeria has potential; it is whether we have the discipline to clear the path. Because in the face of insecurity, hope alone is not enough. Action must finally match rhetoric. And maybe, just maybe, we will stop halting our own journey and allow this country to fly.