28/06/2026
On point 💯
Olodo Uprising. Ycee is very right ❤️📌
But Peller is a product of the crack.
Olodo, for those who need the definition, is a Yoruba street word for a dullard. Someone considered academically weak. Someone society once looked down on. But today? That same olodo is being handed ambassador deals. That same olodo is filling arenas. That same olodo has more followers than your professor, more connections than your lawyer, and more money than your engineer.
That is the uprising Ycee is talking about.
It is not just about uneducated people gaining fame. It goes deeper than that. It is about a society that has reorganized its entire reward system and quietly removed education from the list of things worth rewarding.
When a pharmaceutical company, a company selling medicine, something that requires years of study, clinical knowledge, and human lives depending on accuracy, when that company walks past the pharmacist, past the doctor, past the medical researcher, and hands its ambassadorship to someone with a ring light and 3 million followers, it has made a public declaration. It has told every young Nigerian watching, your certificate means nothing. Your following means everything.
But for Peller, he came from the trenches. Not metaphorically. Literally. He grew up in a world where education was not the first priority because survival was. Where the school could not promise you tomorrow, but hustle just might.
He found a crack in the wall. He squeezed through it. And now he is a millionaire.
Peller is not the architect of the Olodo Uprising. He is a product of it. A very successful product, but a product nonetheless. He did not create the system that rewards viral content over verified knowledge. He simply mastered it better than most.
And the brands that flock to him? They are not celebrating ignorance. They are chasing eyeballs. They are following the numbers. And in that cold, commercial logic, they are not wrong, they are just deeply irresponsible in what that choice communicates to a generation still deciding what to become.
So Peller should not carry this shame. But he should also understand, when Ycee says what he says, there is truth in it, and even Peller in his quiet moments probably feels that weight.
Here is the part that should make every Nigerian angry. We live in a country where a tout, a genuine, unqualified, school-never-finish tout, can wake up tomorrow, shake the right hand, and become a Presidential Special Adviser. A Senior Special Assistant. A government contractor handling billions.
We live in a country where connection beats competence every single time. Where who you know will always, always defeat what you know.
Meanwhile, the young man who studied Engineering for five years, who survived ASUU strikes that stole months of his life, who read by candlelight, who graduated with a first class, is on a dispatch bike. Delivering food to the tout who just got a government appointment.
Tell me. In that environment. In that reality. How dare anyone be surprised that young people have concluded that, education is a skam?
They did not arrive at that conclusion by accident. The system taught them. Every appointment letter given to an unqualified loyalist taught them. Every ambassadorship given to a clout chaser over a professional taught them. Every time a government official stood before cameras and mangled the English language while holding a position meant for someone educated, it taught them. The Nigerian government produced the Olodo Uprising long before TikTok existed.
Ycee's diagnosis is correct. The cultural decay is real. The devaluation of intellectual depth is real. The frightening confidence of people who know nothing but speak on everything, that is real, and it is dangerous.
But Peller did not cause this. A boy from the trenches who found a way to feed himself and his family using the only tools the system made available to him is not the villain of this story. The villain is a government that made education irrelevant by rewarding loyalty over merit.
A government that tells its educated youth to sell akara and roast corn, then turns around and hands cars and millions to touts with no qualifications. A government that has chosen its beneficiaries. And the youth are not on that list.
The villain is a society that claps for connections while mocking certificates.
The villain is every institution that chose fame over competence when it mattered.
The Olodo Uprising is real. But it did not rise from the bottom. It was, dropped from the top, and it fell on all of us.
YCee , you said your truth. Nigeria heard it. Now let us make sure we direct that energy at the right people. Because the real olodos in this conversation are not the ones without degrees.
They are the ones who have the power to fix this, and every four years, we hand them that power again.
Oba 📌.
