The Monsters We Made. - by Stargirl.

I was scrolling through my feed when I saw the phrase"olodo uprising "and somewhere between the jokes, the outrage and the very Nigerian habit of turning almost every serious conversation into something we can laugh about, I found myself thinking about the idea of an “Olodo Uprising.” It is such a funny phrase until you actually stop to consider what it is saying about us. If you grew up in a typical Nigerian household, olodo was hardly a word you wanted attached to your name. It was not merely a description of poor academic performance; it was almost a verdict on your potential, delivered with the kind of disappointment that could make a parent reach for a slipper before they had even finished the sentence. You were supposed to read your books, pass your examinations, get good grades and, if possible, graduate with something impressive enough to be announced at family gatherings. Yet somehow, in this strange digital age, the very people we once would have called olodos are increasingly the ones occupying our screens, commanding attention, securing brand deals and, sometimes, making more money than the people who spent years working their ass off for certificates.That is where the conversation becomes interesting, because perhaps the question is not really whether Nigeria has suddenly decided that ignorance is brilliant. Perhaps the more uncomfortable question is what exactly we have been rewarding all along. A scroll through social media is enough to show that the people receiving the biggest platforms are not necessarily the people with the most polished vocabulary, the most impressive academic records or the most conventional definitions of success. Sometimes, they are the people who are loudest, funniest, most outrageous or simply most capable of holding our attention. They know how to make us stop scrolling, send a video to our friends and return to the comment section even after we have already declared that the content is “nonsense".In fact, there is a special kind of Nigerian hypocrisy in saying, “Who is watching this rubbish?” while having watched the entire five-minute video, shared it twice and refreshed the comments to see what everyone else had said.And perhaps that is because the people getting these platforms are not entirely separate from us; they are a reflection of us. This is also where I think the “Olodo Uprising” becomes much bigger than social media. For years, we were taught that education was the surest path to a better life. We were told to study hard, get good grades, obtain a degree and become somebody. But while that message was being passed down to us in classrooms and family meetings, Nigeria was quietly teaching us another lesson through the people it chose to elevate. We watched individuals occupy powerful positions without the kind of traceable academic credentials we were told were so important, and we watched people whose competence could reasonably be questioned still find their way into rooms where competence should have been the first requirement. We watched connections open doors, watched influence become a currency and watched people succeed through methods that would never have appeared in the school curriculum. Somewhere in all of that, the country kept sending one very loud message: find a way, anyhow. The Nigerian child who is told that a certificate is important eventually grows up and notices that the certificate is not always enough. The young person who is told to be excellent eventually notices that visibility can sometimes take someone further than excellence. It becomes difficult to blame that young person for asking whether the traditional formula still works. If society keeps saying, “Get qualified,” while simultaneously rewarding people who found success without following the qualification-first route, eventually someone will ask, “So which one are we actually doing here?”.This is why I do not believe the “Olodo Uprising” should be reduced to a celebration of stupidity. There is certainly content that is deliberately ridiculous, and there is certainly a growing culture of doing the least intellectually demanding thing possible because it gets attention, but there is also something else happening underneath it. Some of these creators understand attention exceptionally well.we have to be careful here, because recognising another form of intelligence should not mean romanticising ignorance. There is a difference between being unconventional and being incompetent, just as there is a difference between rejecting elitism and rejecting knowledge altogether. We cannot reach the point where having a certificate becomes something to mock simply because someone without one has gone viral. We still need doctors who know what they are doing, engineers who understand the structures they build, lawyers who understand the laws they interpret, teachers who understand what they teach and people in positions of authority who possess more than confidence and a microphone. At some point, somebody still has to know what they are doing. The world cannot be run entirely on vibes, viral sounds and the confidence of a man who has never once admitted that he does not know something. But perhaps the deeper problem is not that the olodos are succeeding; perhaps it is that we have created a society where success often appears disconnected from competence. young people notice. They are not foolish for noticing. They are watching the system and adjusting their expectations accordingly. If the country repeatedly demonstrates that anyhow can take you somewhere, then eventually people will stop asking for a map and start looking for the fastest vehicle. That is why I think the “Olodo Uprising” is ultimately less about the olodo and more about Nigeria itself. It is a mirror held up to our society, showing us what we consume, what we celebrate and what we are willing to reward. It shows us the contradiction between the values we claim to uphold and the incentives we actually create. We say we value education, but we do not always create opportunities for educated people to thrive. We say we value competence, but competence does not always appear to be the first requirement for influence. We say we want excellence, but we often give our loudest applause to whatever is most entertaining. Then we look at the resulting culture and wonder where it came from.So, no, I do not think the answer is to throw away our certificates, abandon education and begin deliberately behaving foolishly for the algorithm. There is nothing revolutionary about becoming ignorant simply because ignorance is profitable. If anything, that would be another form of surrender. We should still pursue knowledge, develop expertise and take intellectual growth seriously, because a society cannot build hospitals, businesses, legal systems, technologies and institutions on entertainment alone. But perhaps we should also stop pretending that academic excellence is the only form of brilliance worth recognising, and perhaps we should start building a society where competence, creativity, skill and knowledge are rewarded as visibly as virality. Until then, people will continue to follow the incentives in front of them. The person with the first-class degree will keep looking for opportunities, the content creator will keep studying the algorithm, the entrepreneur will keep studying the market and everyone will keep asking the same question in their own way: what does this society reward? The “Olodo Uprising” may therefore not be Nigeria's sudden decision to choose stupidity over intelligence. It may simply be the most entertaining evidence yet of a lesson we have been learning for years: people eventually become very good at giving society what society pays attention to.It is really no fault of theirs. The olodo did not take over, we platformed them, This is more of a systemic failure. We cannot give the crown to a jester and cry foul when the palace becomes a theatre.

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