A Reflection on Our Values
By Professor Peter Olufemi Adeniyi
There is nothing wrong with money. Every family needs money for food, shelter, education, healthcare and the ordinary necessities of life. Every responsible person should aspire to work, earn a decent living, provide for the family and, where possible, create something for the future.
Prosperity itself is not the problem.
The troubling question is what happens to a society when the pursuit of money begins to take precedence over honesty, human dignity, love of neighbour and even human life itself.
This question increasingly troubles me when I reflect on Nigeria today.
There was a time when one entered a shop, bought bread, a bottle of soft drink, packaged water, medicine or some other everyday product without first wondering whether it was genuine. Today, concerns about adulterated, substandard and counterfeit products have become a disturbing part of everyday life.
Fake medicines are particularly frightening because the person buying them may already be sick and vulnerable. A medicine expected to save life can become an additional danger. The same concern extends to food, drinks and many other products.
NAFDAC continues to issue public alerts concerning falsified, counterfeit, substandard and unregistered products. The problem, therefore, is neither imaginary nor one that society can afford to dismiss.
But counterfeit products are only symptoms of something deeper. We must ask ourselves:
What has happened to our values? How did we arrive at a point where another person’s health, livelihood or even life can sometimes be sacrificed for profit?
When Wealth Becomes the Measure of Success
Part of the problem, I believe, is the increasing tendency to measure success almost entirely in monetary terms.
We celebrate the mansion, the expensive car, the lavish party and the conspicuous display of wealth. Too often, we do not ask the more important questions: How was this wealth created? What value did the person add to society? Whose lives were improved in the process?
When a young person sees somebody suddenly become enormously wealthy and watches society honour that individual without questioning the source of the wealth, a dangerous lesson may be learned:
It is not how you make money that matters; it is simply whether you have it.
This attitude can gradually corrupt an entire society.
Money then ceases to be a means of living and becomes a measure of human worth. A person who has little may begin to feel insignificant, regardless of his honesty or contribution to society. A teacher educating generations of children, a farmer producing food, a nurse caring for patients or a craftsman earning an honest living may receive less admiration than somebody displaying unexplained wealth.
That is an inversion of values.
We must also recognise the economic environment in which this is happening. Millions of Nigerians face serious economic hardship. The National Bureau of Statistics’ 2022 Multidimensional Poverty Index found that 133 million Nigerians—about 63 per cent of the population at the time—were multidimensionally poor.
Poverty, unemployment and economic insecurity can create desperation. But poverty cannot become our explanation for everything. Many Nigerians of modest means remain remarkably honest, while some people involved in corruption, fraud and exploitation are already wealthy.
Economic hardship may create temptation; it does not remove personal responsibility.
When Society Becomes Accustomed to Wrongdoing
Perhaps an even greater danger arises when wrongdoing stops shocking us.
When bribery becomes merely “something for the boys”; when cheating becomes cleverness; when examination malpractice becomes assistance; when public money becomes “our national cake”; and when people knowingly sell adulterated food or counterfeit medicine simply because there is money to be made, society gradually loses its moral compass.
The consequences extend far beyond individual offences.
Trust begins to disappear.
The customer no longer trusts the trader. The patient questions the medicine. The citizen distrusts the public official. The employer distrusts the employee, and the employee suspects the employer. Eventually, everyone spends enormous energy protecting himself from everyone else.
No nation can develop sustainably without trust.
Laws, contracts, markets, banking, investment, medicine and even ordinary human relationships depend upon the expectation that people and institutions will generally do what they say they will do.
When trust collapses, the cost is paid by everybody—including the honest.
What Are We Teaching Our Children?
The restoration must therefore begin in the family.
Parents naturally want their children to prosper. But we must be careful about the messages we communicate. Constantly comparing a child with someone who has bought a bigger house or a more expensive car may unintentionally teach that possessions determine personal worth.
Instead, children should repeatedly hear:
Earn honestly. Work hard. Live within your means. Do not take what belongs to another person. Never become rich by destroying somebody else’s life.
Parents must also have the courage to question unexplained prosperity. When a young person without any visible means of legitimate income suddenly arrives with extraordinary wealth, celebration should not be the family’s first response.
Character must come before celebration.
Our Communities Must Change What They Honour
The community also has enormous influence.
Traditional institutions, community associations, professional organisations, alumni groups and social clubs should examine the criteria by which they confer recognition and titles. Wealth alone should never become the qualification for honour.
Why should we not celebrate the teacher who served faithfully for thirty years? The honest civil servant who retired without stealing public money? The successful farmer? The nurse who served a rural community? The entrepreneur who created legitimate employment? The young graduate patiently building an honest business?
A society teaches through what it applauds.
If we consistently applaud wealth without character, we should not be surprised when people pursue wealth without character.
Schools Must Educate Character as Well as the Mind
Our schools must also return character formation to the centre of education.
Education cannot simply be about passing examinations, obtaining certificates and securing employment. An educated person who uses knowledge to manufacture fake medicine, construct a dangerously substandard building or defraud thousands of people represents a failure of education, however impressive his certificates may be.
Children should encounter practical ethical questions throughout their schooling: Why is examination malpractice wrong? Why is corruption destructive? What happens when somebody adulterates food? What does an engineer owe the people who will occupy the building he constructs? What responsibility does a pharmacist have to an unknown patient? What does a public officer owe citizens whose taxes pay his salary?
We need to produce not merely successful professionals but trustworthy human beings.
Religious Institutions Must Examine Their Message
Our churches, mosques and other religious institutions must also engage in serious self-examination.
Nigeria is an intensely religious country. Yet religiosity must manifest itself in the marketplace, workplace and public square.
Religious institutions understandably need money to function, maintain facilities, support charitable activities and carry out their missions. Giving is an important part of religious life. But we must be careful that worship does not inadvertently create the impression that wealth is the principal evidence of divine favour.
When considerably more attention is devoted to raising money than to teaching honesty, compassion, justice, contentment and responsibility to one’s neighbour, we should ask whether the balance is right.
There is also a difficult question religious institutions cannot avoid:
Should society celebrate a person’s large donation without caring how the money was obtained?
A religious community should help form conscience, not merely raise funds. It should remind the wealthy person that wealth carries responsibility and reassure the person of modest means that human dignity cannot be measured by the size of an offering.
Our religious leaders have tremendous influence. That influence can help restore our values.
Strong Laws Require Strong Institutions and Certain Enforcement
Moral instruction, however, is not enough.
A society cannot depend entirely upon everybody choosing voluntarily to do what is right. Good values must be supported by strong institutions, effective regulation and credible consequences for wrongdoing.
Nigeria already has laws against counterfeit and fake drugs, adulterated and substandard products and unwholesome processed foods. The central challenge, therefore, is not merely to enact more laws. It is to ensure that existing laws are consistently, professionally and impartially enforced.
A law that exists only on paper cannot protect a patient buying medicine in a village pharmacy. A regulation that is rarely enforced cannot protect a family buying food in a market. A severe penalty means little if offenders believe that they are unlikely to be detected, prosecuted or convicted.
The certainty of enforcement may ultimately matter as much as the severity of punishment.
This requires stronger institutions.
Regulatory and law-enforcement agencies must have adequate numbers of properly trained personnel, modern laboratories, reliable technology, intelligence-gathering capacity, transportation, surveillance systems and sufficient funding to perform their responsibilities effectively. Their officers must themselves be protected from improper political, commercial or other interference—and held accountable when they compromise their duties.
Enforcement must also become more preventive and intelligence-driven. Authorities should not always have to wait until dangerous products have reached consumers before acting. Regular inspection of manufacturing facilities, warehouses, markets, pharmacies and distribution networks; effective border controls; product authentication and traceability; laboratory testing; and cooperation among regulatory, customs, police and other relevant agencies can help detect danger earlier.
And when an illegal operation is discovered, enforcement must go beyond the person standing behind the shop counter.
Who manufactured the product? Who supplied the raw materials? Who printed the counterfeit labels and packaging? Who financed the operation? Who transported the goods? Who provided the warehouse? Who distributed them? Who protected the operation, if anyone did? Who ultimately profited?
The entire chain should be investigated.
Otherwise, authorities may arrest the smallest participant while the organisers simply recruit somebody else and continue business.
There must also be consequences that remove the financial attraction of the crime. Where permitted by law and due process, illicit products should be seized, illegal operations closed, proceeds of crime traced and confiscated, licences withdrawn where appropriate, and those responsible prosecuted.
The message must become unmistakable:
You should not be able to endanger the lives of Nigerians, make enormous profits, pay a relatively insignificant penalty and return to business.
Enforcement must also be transparent. Nigerians should periodically be told not only how many raids were conducted or products seized, but how many investigations resulted in prosecution, how many prosecutions resulted in conviction, what penalties were imposed and what happened to confiscated products and assets.
Such information strengthens public confidence and allows citizens to judge whether enforcement is producing results.
Citizens must also be able to report wrongdoing safely.
This is especially important because fear can become an accomplice to corruption. Afrobarometer’s 2024 Nigeria survey found that 80 per cent of respondents believed corruption had increased somewhat or a lot during the preceding year, while only about one in ten believed people could report corruption without fear of retaliation.
A trader who reports a warehouse containing counterfeit medicine, a public servant who exposes corruption or an employee who reveals dangerous practices should not have to choose between doing what is right and protecting his livelihood or personal safety.
Whistle-blowers and responsible citizens who provide credible information therefore need effective protection and trustworthy reporting channels.
Finally, enforcement must be impartial.
The poor offender should not face the full weight of the law while the wealthy or politically connected offender negotiates an escape. Nothing destroys respect for law more quickly than the belief that justice depends upon whom one knows.
Strong institutions are not institutions that merely possess power. They are institutions that exercise power consistently, professionally, transparently and without favour.
Government Cannot Do It Alone
Yet even the strongest enforcement system cannot place an inspector in every shop, pharmacy, office, school, factory and home.
That brings responsibility back to society.
Manufacturers and professional bodies must police standards within their industries. Pharmacists and healthcare professionals must obtain medicines through legitimate supply chains. Market associations should not protect members known to be selling dangerous products. Transporters and warehouse operators should recognise that knowingly facilitating illegal trade makes them part of the problem. Consumers should use available verification and reporting mechanisms and resist counterfeit products even when they appear cheaper.
Institutions work best when citizens cooperate with them—and citizens cooperate when institutions earn their trust.
And Finally, What About Me?
It is easy to finish an article like this by saying, “Government must do something.”
But that would be incomplete.
The final responsibility comes back to you and me.
What do I buy? What do I sell? What do I praise? What do I condemn? What do I teach my children and grandchildren? Do I give or accept bribes? Do I knowingly patronise counterfeit products because they are cheaper? Do I honour people merely because they are wealthy? When I discover wrongdoing, do I remain silent because the person involved is my friend, relation, tribesman, religious associate or political ally?
National values are ultimately the accumulated values of individuals—but individual virtue flourishes more easily when institutions support what is right and punish what is wrong.
Every trader who refuses to sell a fake product contributes to rebuilding Nigeria. Every pharmacist who rejects counterfeit medicine protects human life. Every public officer who refuses a bribe strengthens an institution. Every regulator who enforces the law without fear or favour protects citizens he may never meet. Every parent who teaches integrity raises a better citizen. Every religious leader who places character above wealth strengthens the nation’s conscience. Every community that honours service rather than ostentation changes what the next generation understands by success.
Nigeria does not need to reject prosperity.
We need prosperity desperately.
We need successful entrepreneurs, profitable companies, productive industries, investment, innovation, employment and wealth creation.
But prosperity without conscience can become exploitation. Law without enforcement becomes little more than words. Enforcement without integrity becomes another avenue for corruption. And morality without personal example becomes an empty sermon.
We therefore need prosperity accompanied by conscience, laws supported by credible institutions, and citizenship grounded in personal responsibility.
Money must remain a servant and never become our master. Wealth must never become more valuable than human life. Success must mean more than what we accumulate; it must include what we contribute and the manner in which we acquire what we possess.
Perhaps, therefore, the national conversation we urgently need is not simply:
“How can Nigerians make more money?”
It is also:
“What kind of people do we want to become while making it?”
Government has a responsibility. Regulatory and law-enforcement institutions have a responsibility. Our schools have a responsibility. Religious institutions have a responsibility. Communities and families have responsibilities.
And each one of us has a responsibility.
If we begin again to honour honesty, reward legitimate hard work, protect human life, strengthen our institutions, enforce our laws, demand accountability and teach our children that a good name is still more valuable than unexplained riches, we can begin to rebuild the trust that every healthy society requires.
Nigeria’s problem is serious, but it is not beyond correction.
The change begins when enough of us are prepared to say:
I want to prosper, but not at another person’s expense.
I want to succeed, but not by destroying another person’s life.
I want laws that protect everyone, and institutions strong enough to enforce them.
I want to leave my children not merely wealth, but a society in which they can trust one another.
That, perhaps, is where our journey back to love, integrity and shared humanity must begin.
Source Note
The statistical and institutional references used in this article are drawn from the following primary or original sources. They are included to support the factual references without interrupting the reflective character of the article.
National Bureau of Statistics (Nigeria). Nigeria Multidimensional Poverty Index (2022). The survey reported that 62.9 per cent of Nigerians—approximately 133 million people—were multidimensionally poor.
https://www.nigerianstat.gov.ng/pdfuploads/NIGERIA%20MULTIDIMENSIONAL%20POVERTY%20INDEX%20SURVEY%20RESULTS%202022.pdf
National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC). NAFDAC Strategic Plan 2024–2027. The plan identifies reduction of substandard and falsified/counterfeit medical products and unwholesome foods, stronger post-market surveillance, regulatory systems and laboratory capacity among its strategic priorities.
https://nafdac.gov.ng/wp-content/uploads/Files/Resources/2024-2027-NAFDAC-Strategic-Plan-Signed_12_11_2024.pdf
Afrobarometer. Nigeria Round 10 survey findings. Eight in ten respondents (80 per cent) said corruption had increased somewhat or a lot over the preceding year, while 10 per cent said people could report corruption without fear of retaliation.
https://www.afrobarometer.org/articles/nigerians-say-corruption-is-worsening-and-citizens-risk-retaliation-if-they-speak-up-afrobarometer-survey-finds/
Prepared as a publication master copy • September 2026