I have watched with interest, the conversations that have swept the internet space in the last few weeks following the Grammy Awards. Kanye West and his wife’s “pseudo birthday suit”, have no doubt, occupied many priority slots in many a social media post. Netizens as we now call the global citizens who reside on the World Wide Web, have postulated different points of views on why so far, this is 2025’s greatest act of bravery or the reason why it is a sad show of shame. That a woman attended the Grammy Award naked, with her fully clothed husband, has generated more discuss in some quarters than the fact that millions of people are already homeless this year from wars and natural disasters. 

I took the pain to do a random sampling of those most vocal about “the Empress’s New Clothes” and was a tad taken aback to see my African friends and more so, my Nigerian people, topping the chats. I began to reflect in my mind “say, who do us this kind thing nia to chop Panadol for matter when no concern us” as Nigerians would say or to put it in British parlance, “why give tuppence, two hoots or even two dozen hoots” to overfed adults seeking attention? I can empathise when discussants from resource rich continents and countries that have enough to eat and regurgitate are having conversations revolving around the Empress’s new clothes. However, my empathies cannot flow for discussants in a continent where from 2024 up till these first nearly two months of the aging New Year 2025, has seen a resurgence of fighting in Congo. It has metamorphosed into brotherly Rwanda being at war with them for over what exactly? – pray I cannot quite see the reason for this war that has caused mass casualties and seen the displacement of an estimated nearly one million people save the quest for resource control, which is almost always the lowest common denominator in international conflicts.

The same way my empathies will not flow for people in Nigeria for instance, who are partaking in the conversation of the Empress and her new clothes when many people in our home country are looking at a future marred by our current reality. Our schools are dilapidated. Our lecture theatres are empty. Only God knows what our Professors are professing – certainly not much to do with getting grants or doing standardised optimal research. Our hospitals neither reflect the fact that “the Nigerian patients are worth it” nor provide the healthcare workforce with a reason to go on working. To till our soil is not attractive to any of us because insecurity on our farms and flooding on our farmlands have further depreciated our already insufficient subsistence farming which our over 200 million population depends on. To industrialise our Agricultural pathway, incorporating a processing and manufacturing value chain from farm to consumer and I dare say export is looking like a dream.

In a similar thread, our society is rife with a competition as to whose car is newer and whose house is bigger. We are busy on ego trips and self-aggrandisement journeys to nowhere while our people whom our concerted team efforts could add value to their lives wallow in poverty. On the flip side of this coin are our places of worship across all faith divides are increasing in number daily, as the few structures left of our public schools are collapsing at an alarming rate. Even sadder is our family values, which are massively being eroded by the societal flood of our now skewed belief that a fat wallet is better than a good name. This is one key reason amongst others, why I cannot understand how a mother who sent her daughter to prostitute abroad, and a father who impregnated his teenage daughter’s best friend then denied ever knowing the poor child, would be vocal about the new clothes of the Empress from the Grammys. The other group of fathers that believe paying their children’s school fees or providing for them is not their business but rather, is the sole responsibility of their mothers are also commenting on how Kanye West is materialistic and to say the least, exploiting his wife. Suffice it to say, that if these fathers owned up and even took responsibility for their actions, I just may decide to listen to / read their points of view on the trending subject matter- I have yet to conclude on that. 

My dear readers, I hope by now, you get the point. It is that no one, loves us more than we love ourselves. We must each make a conscious effort and take decisive action to “focus on our focus”. From our homes to our communities, to our local, state, national, inter-regional and continental government/leadership levels, we must exercise a paradigm shift in thought pattern and begin to take action. What can we do better in our homes to make things right and breed the leaders of today – not even tomorrow? It may be just something as simple as less internet surfing and phone gazing while increasing our family time and engagement. Our community self-help projects cannot stop – even in “saner climes” as some of my friend calls them, you find chairs donated in gardens or parks, grants given by alumni bodies for research in institutions and the rich will (legacy) their wealth to hospital departments when they die, to care for the living as well as those yet unborn. 

Furthermore, we find the critical masses coalesces in these host countries where a lot of us have left our home countries for and that these pools of coalesced critical masses pull out persons, they adjudge have excellence as a life style and put them forward, or support them when they emerge to be at the tables of governance. Like I always say, we cannot shake the table, if we are not at the table. Our continent burns and our countries starve – yet, what do we do? Those of us, who can amplify the voices of our people, are either massively distracted, actively tunnel visioned or unknowingly self-centred. We point hands at government this and government that. 

While I do not absolve governance and those at the helm of our affairs of any blames, or hold brief for them, my simple question is, who is government? Who governs our families in our homes? Who ran away to the United Kingdom after taking a loan from the hospital workers’ Cooperative funds in Edo State, Nigeria, and is yet to return it for over five years now to the communal purse? Who is the Principal, the Chief Medical Director or the Vice-Chancellor who rather than use the money apportioned to their institution for our collective good, has spent it on sending their own children abroad, marrying their “side chic” or buying a new house? Who is in charge of the refugee camp that puts eighty percent of donor aid received to use for their own personal luxury lifestyle? The answer is simple; it is you, I or persons you and I know. Now tell me, from where do we draw the pool of our political rulers at all levels - including regional and continental levels? Is it from planet Mars, Pluto or from amongst us? Pray, where dwelleth the subset examples of persons elucidated above, starting from the homes. 

Why then must we concern ourselves with the detailed analysis and views about the Empress and her new clothes or anything else for that matter that does not directly add or elevate our people? Well, except we are doing it to earn more views on a monetized social media handle, or we are being paid to do it (in which case, we may consider donating some of the money to charity), we need to take ourselves; our individual and collective development seriously. We can begin to divert the energy and mental work fritted away on the labour of world audiences to satisfy the vanity of celebrities to reflecting on how each of us can become better versions of ourselves and action the changes we seek to see, no matter how little where ever we find ourselves. This is needed more than ever before because we need to wake up from our slumber and take our rightful places in the new world order. 

We do not have the levity to waste time. Our case is urgent. We reside in countries in a continent called Africa, which is home to wealth unlimited – in terms of human, mineral resources and solid precious stone deposits. Surely, God did not give these to us so we can continue slumbering or remain distracted by adults who chose to remain in their birthday suits outside the comfort of their privacy or any other trivia for that matter. Our generation owes it to our future, not to remain ostriches with heads buried in the sands, giraffes with heads floating in the clouds or netizens hammering at keyboards and surfing the net with no compass, while others mine our resources on our behalf or even enslave us to mine them and then, put what they retrieve and the proceeds to use for their own population, oiling the wheels of their age old strategic annexation? The salient truth is that they can, because we let them, either by omission or commission. Again, ladies and gentlemen, I ask, who is government? Where is government? What is government and why government? 

Dr. Loretta Oduware Ogboro-Okor is Author of the book “My Father’s Daughter”, and founder Loretta Health Initiative @www.lorettahealth.com