Something happened this week that stopped people mid-scroll.
Arsenal were crowned Premier League champions for the first time in 22 years, and for a few hours, something remarkable followed. Some Nigerians who had never agreed on anything, men and women, young and old, Muslims and Christians, Yoruba and Igbo and Hausa, all erupted in the same joy. Same red jerseys. Same screenshots. Same social media status. Same noise.
Nobody asked what tribe the person celebrating next to them belonged to. Nobody checked their religion before retweeting. The win was the only credential that mattered.
That moment deserves more than a highlight reel. It deserves a question.
If a football club from North London can unite people who cannot agree on sensitive issues, what exactly is our excuse the other 364 days of the year?
The first half gave us a lot. Good, bad, and events so painful I wish they were a dream. But beyond wishing, we need to take practical steps that will make the next quarter different. Buried inside everything that happened, I noticed a pattern that should be unaddressed.
In the middle of the pain, collective judgment happened. Even those who are innocent, those with a better mindset, a cleaner record, a different character, have been swept into the same verdict. It would be dishonest to pretend there is no valid basis for this prejudice but we need to see beyond the pain. It is psychologically natural to judge many by the actions of a few. Designers discovered that the human brain automatically groups similar-looking things together and we do the same with people.
Mention kidnapping, and a particular ethnic group comes to mind. Hear a religion claim peace, and the sarcasm almost writes itself. Watch a certain group voice economic frustration, and someone replies with "Emi lokan." These reactions are understandable. But understanding them is not the same as acting on them. Inside every one of those groups are good, principled people who deserve better than to be defined by the worst among them.
Let's step back for a moment and look at the bigger picture.
What if these ethnic, religious, political, gender-based, tensions are not coincidental?
What if they have been deliberately weaponised?
What if the narratives being amplified on your timeline are engineered to keep us fighting each other, so we never turn our attention toward the people who benefit from our disunity?
Here is what I still believe, and what the noise is designed to make us forget. There are good, kind, principled people in every ethnic group, every religion, every political leaning, every social class, every gender. The more we judge all people by the worst actions of some, the more we hand power to those who need us divided.
Not all men are scum
Not all ______ are scams.
Not all ______ are violent.
Fill in whatever blank your prejudice has been sharpest about lately. The sentence still holds.
The same things being weaponised against us, religion, ethnicity, gender, community, can become our greatest source of collective strength if we choose to use them that way. But that choice starts at the individual level, not the national one.
This is not only about our generation. It is about the one inheriting whatever we build or destroy. The goal is not to erase our differences. It is to stop letting our differences be used as weapons against us. Find the good people and they exist in every group and work with them. There are far more of them than the loudest voices suggest.
The Gunners spent 22 years as runners-up before they became champions. The mindset came before the trophy. Let the few who see clearly begin to shift the many who don't yet. Let the positive change you are desperate to see begin where you actually have power, in yourself.