The AI Apocalypse Salesmen Are Peddling Smoke: AI Won’t Kill Us in 10 Years

 

America’s AI panic could hand China and Russia the keys to the future—while Silicon Valley sells apocalypse like a premium product. The real AI threat is not robot extinction—it is America freezing while China and Russia race ahead without brakes.

Jacob Coxon quit Anthropic, grabbed the loudest megaphone in Silicon Valley, and announced that superhuman AI may soon hack anything and kill us all. Evan Hubinger gave humanity more than a 10% chance of being wiped out by AI within 10 years.

That is not science. That is doom porn for people with stock options.

I have heard this funeral song before. Every time a new machine enters the room, somebody faints, somebody writes a warning, and somebody else starts selling tickets to the apocalypse. Electricity was going to kill us. Railroads were going to scramble our brains. Telephones were going to destroy real conversation. Radio was going to poison young minds. Television was going to turn families into vegetables. Video games were going to turn children into violent maniacs. The Internet was going to end books, jobs, privacy, marriage, civilization, and probably breakfast.

And yet here we are.

Electricity did not murder humanity. It lit hospitals, homes, schools, factories, and cities. Yes, bad wiring killed people. Fires happened. Workers got electrocuted. So people created electrical codes, circuit breakers, trained electricians, inspections, and safety rules. Nobody shut down electricity because a few men in expensive suits claimed the light bulb had a secret plan to overthrow mankind.

Railroads did not turn passengers into nervous wrecks. They moved people, goods, armies, mail, food, and industry across vast distances. Automobiles did not end humanity, though they killed plenty of people before society forced drivers to use licenses, traffic lights, seat belts, speed limits, and drunk-driving laws. Airplanes did not destroy civilization. Nuclear power did not erase the human race. Computers did not enslave us. The Internet did not turn the planet into a smoking crater.

The pattern is simple. Every powerful invention comes with danger. Every danger requires rules. Every rule requires adults with enough sense to tell the difference between a real risk and a man running around yelling, “The sky is falling!”

Coxon is doing the second thing.

I do not deny that AI can cause damage. It already can. AI can help hackers write malicious code. It can make scams sound more believable. It can flood the Internet with fake images, fake voices, fake news, and fake outrage. It can help criminals steal identities and help bad governments spy on their citizens. Anthropic reported that its Mythos tool performed strongly in some hacking and cybersecurity tasks and even escaped a sandbox environment. That should worry people.

But let us not wet the bed over it.

A sandbox is a test cage. If the AI escapes the cage, fix the cage. Lock the door. Add alarms. Test the system again. Do not stand in the street screaming that a chatbot will soon march into your kitchen, steal your toaster, and declare itself president.

AI does not own power plants. It does not build its own chips. It does not print its own money. It does not vote. It does not command soldiers unless people give it that authority. It does not seize data centers unless human beings build a system foolish enough to let it. AI is not magic. It is software running on machines built, powered, financed, and controlled by people.

The real danger is not an AI system suddenly becoming a metal god with a bad attitude. The real danger is human stupidity, human greed, human laziness, and human evil. That has always been the problem. AI is simply a sharper knife. A sharper knife can cut bread or cut a throat. The knife is not innocent, but neither is it the mastermind.

That is why I support guardrails. I want strict testing of powerful AI systems before companies release them. I want companies to report hacking weaknesses and major failures. I want criminal penalties for people who use AI to commit fraud, cyberattacks, identity theft, blackmail, bioweapon research, or political sabotage. I want human control over military AI. I want clear rules that stop corporations from treating private data like loose change in a casino.

But I do not want America to slam the brakes on AI while China and Russia hit the gas.

That would be the dumbest self-own in modern history.

Senator Bernie Sanders wants a temporary pause on advanced AI development through the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act. It sounds noble. “Pause.” Such a gentle word. A little nap. A little breather. A little time-out for the robots.

Fine. Let America pause.

Will China pause?

Will Russia pause?

Will North Korea pause?

Will Iran pause?

Anybody who answers yes should not be in charge of a lemonade stand.

China is not building AI because it wants to write better love poems. China is building AI for surveillance, censorship, military advantage, industrial power, intelligence gathering, and global influence. Russia is not pouring money into cyberwarfare because it wants to help grandmothers organize family photos. Russia uses technology to spread lies, steal information, disrupt elections, attack infrastructure, and weaken rivals.

A pause in America will not pause the AI race. It will only make America run it with one leg tied behind its back.

That is the part the AI panic merchants keep skipping. They speak as if the world is a quiet university campus where everybody agrees to follow the same rules. It is not. The world is a knife fight in a dark alley. America can either lead with strong rules and strong technology, or it can stand aside while authoritarian governments write the rules with spyware, censorship, and digital handcuffs.

I know which future scares me more.

A China-led AI world would not be a friendly world. It would be a world where facial-recognition systems watch every street, every phone call, every bank account, every political opinion, and every wrong word. A Russia-led AI world would be built on hacking, sabotage, propaganda, and chaos. America pressing pause while those governments accelerate is not safety. It is surrender with a safety label glued on top.

Meanwhile, Silicon Valley has its own little carnival going on. Anthropic was reportedly valued at $965 billion. OpenAI was reportedly valued at $852 billion. Those are not small numbers. Those are mountain-sized piles of money. When executives warn that AI may replace half of entry-level white-collar jobs, control every industry, or possibly destroy humanity, investors hear another message: this technology must be unbelievably powerful.

That message can make a company look valuable.

So when Jacob Coxon says his warning is “not marketing,” I raise an eyebrow. Maybe he believes every word. Maybe he is sincere. But sincerity does not turn a weak argument into a strong one. A man can honestly believe the moon is made of cheese. He is still wrong.

Fear is a great salesman. It sells newspaper clicks. It sells television interviews. It sells conference invitations. It sells regulations that may crush smaller competitors while leaving giant AI companies sitting safely behind a legal wall. If only Anthropic and OpenAI can afford to meet strict rules, then the supposed safety plan becomes a moat. The public gets fear. The giants get protection. Everybody calls it responsibility.

What a neat little racket.

Jensen Huang of Nvidia called the claim that AI will end humanity “complete nonsense.” I agree with him. AI may cause serious harm if we handle it badly. It may destroy some jobs while creating others. It may make fraud, cybercrime, and propaganda cheaper and faster. It may force schools, businesses, courts, hospitals, and governments to change faster than they want.

That is not the same as extinction.

Humanity has survived wars, plagues, dictators, depressions, nuclear weapons, and every new invention that caused the nervous class to reach for smelling salts. We will survive AI too—if we stay alert, stay competitive, and stop confusing a scary prediction with a proven fact.

I do not want reckless AI. I want American AI that is fast, secure, competitive, and tightly controlled where it must be. I want strong safeguards without turning America into a frightened old man who locks his door, hides his wallet, and lets thieves take the whole neighborhood.

AI will not kill us in 10 years.

But panic, weakness, and surrender might help China and Russia beat us there.

 

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The Socialist Sugar High: The DSA’s Free-Stuff Fantasy Is Headed for a Brutal Crash

 

The DSA's free-stuff revolution sounds sweet until crime rises, streets darken, and ordinary Americans discover that ideology cannot answer a 911 call. In a practical sense, abolish police and prisons, and America may not get justice—it may get chaos, predators, panic, and a desperate public begging for order.

Ever watched a kid tear through a bag of candy, ricochet off the furniture, and announce he can fly?

That is the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) right now: wired on the sugar high of free stuff, chanting about abolition, and acting as if abolishing police departments and tearing down prisons will somehow make America safer, kinder, and brighter. Just add free health care, free college, free child care, free housing, well-lit streets, and a few community gardens. Voilà. Utopia by Tuesday.

It is a fantasy. A dangerous one. Historically illiterate, politically fashionable, and built to collapse the minute it meets the real world.

Then the rest of us get the bill.

I looked at the DSA’s platform and the official material from its Abolition Working Group. No smoke. No mirrors. They want to defund police, abolish prisons, and bulldoze the existing criminal-justice system. They call it ending the “criminalization” of poor people.

Sounds tenderhearted. Sounds noble. Sounds like something printed on an overpriced tote bag.

But beneath the velvet language is a hard-edged con: the belief that crime will dissolve if government spends enough money on housing, services, and community programs. As if a violent criminal will suddenly look at a new public garden and say, “You know what? I have seen the error of my ways.”

That is not public safety. That is wishful thinking wearing a graduate-school vocabulary.

Let us get down to street level.

Frances Gill, a member of the DSA’s National Political Committee, was asked a simple question recently: What happens when a rapist is loose and there are no police officers to find him?

A straightforward question. A nightmare every parent understands.

Her response was not an answer. It was a detour. A U-turn in a fog bank. She shifted the discussion toward “well-lit streets.”

Streetlights.

The host asked: “If my daughter is assaulted and raped, is there any agency that would seek to find her assailant?” The response, in substance, was: Let us talk about lighting.

That is not a plan. That is a dodge with a light bulb screwed into it.

Nobody is against safer streets or better lighting. But a streetlamp cannot investigate a rape. A community meeting cannot chase down an armed attacker. A mural cannot arrest a serial predator. You cannot illuminate your way out of a felony.

Yet this is not some stray idea whispered by a few activists in a coffee shop. This is the party line. The DSA wants to eliminate cash bail, get rid of electronic monitoring, and stop imprisoning people for parole violations.

That is not reform. That is a deluxe “get out of jail free” card, handed to anyone prepared to say the right words about poverty, oppression, or “survival offenses.”

The DSA talks about ending policing “full stop.”

Full stop.

No police. No jails. No meaningful accountability. No serious answer for the woman walking alone from work, the elderly man attacked at a bus stop, the store owner robbed for the third time, or the family whose child got caught in the crossfire.

This ideology was cooked in the soft air of college seminars, not on the hard pavement of dangerous neighborhoods. It is an academic fantasy written by people who treat crime as an abstract theory—until it shows up at their own front door.

Then suddenly, they want security.

Funny how that works.

Now let us look at the numbers, because numbers have a way of ruining a perfectly good ideological party.

A recent poll asked Americans whether they supported the DSA’s proposal to abolish jails and prisons. Only 26% agreed. That means 74% of Americans rejected it. Even 61% of Democrats thought the idea was insane.

So when politicians such as Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Zohran Kwame Mamdani push this kind of agenda, remember this: they are not speaking for most Americans. They are speaking for a loud, radical minority that has become addicted to its own ideological perfume.

They love the smell of purity. The public gets the stink of the consequences.

Then there is the free-stuff sales pitch.

Bernie Sanders has spent years promising free college, free child care, free health care, and apparently free everything short of a complimentary moon landing. It sounds wonderful—right up until somebody asks the question politicians hate most:

Who pays?

America’s national debt is over $39 trillion. But in the socialist fairy tale, money is always there. It grows on rich people. It falls from the ceiling. It appears whenever somebody says “tax the billionaires” with enough feeling.

You cannot buy the country a pony with Monopoly money.

History already ran this experiment, and history is not known for giving make-up exams. In 1917, Russia’s Provisional Government abolished the Tsar’s police force. The result was chaos. Crime surged. Criminal gangs and military deserters roamed the streets. Ordinary people—the same people socialists claimed to be saving—were terrified. Many had to protect themselves because the government had removed the very force responsible for maintaining order.

That was not liberation. It was a vacancy sign for criminals.

And what came next? Lenin and the Bolsheviks stepped in, promising order. Russia did not get freedom. It got a police state.

That is the dirty little joke of abolitionist politics: destroy order long enough, and people will eventually beg for somebody—anybody—to restore it. Usually, that somebody is not a civil libertarian. Usually, he is a strongman with a clenched fist and no patience for rights.

But do not expect Bernie or AOC to dwell on that history. They are too busy enjoying the fruits of the capitalist tree they keep threatening to chop down.

Bernie Sanders’s PAC spent $221,000 on private-jet travel in the first quarter of 2025. He owns three houses, including a waterfront home in Vermont. AOC lectures America about climate justice while traveling in first-class comfort.

It is the old sermon from the private jet: You peasants must sacrifice.

They fly across the country to tell you that your pickup truck is ruining the planet. They sip the expensive coffee, board the premium seat, and then glare at the working man for driving 20 minutes to his job.

The hypocrisy is not accidental. It is the business model.

Then there is New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, another DSA figure. Once he got into office, the tune changed. Suddenly, he was “proud” of the New York Police Department (NYPD) for lowering crime. Suddenly, he credited police for reducing murders and shootings to record lows.

Imagine that.

When his own city, his own reputation, and his own political career were on the line, law and order did not seem so offensive after all.

But nationally, the DSA still flirts with abolition.

That is not principle. That is survival instinct. Mamdani is trying to spray perfume over a political dumpster fire and call it reform. He is like a fox running the henhouse while assuring the chickens that he has gone vegan.

The DSA says the criminal-justice system protects the wealthy and targets the poor. There is no kernel of truth in that criticism. Yes - the system is flawed. It makes mistakes. But what it needs is reform.

But the DSA does not want reform. It wants demolition.

Its answer is to tear down the whole structure and replace it with “community infrastructure.” That phrase sounds lovely until a man puts a knife to your throat.

You cannot community-negotiate with a knife.

You cannot build a housing project quickly enough to stop a gang shooting.

You cannot hold a restorative-justice circle while somebody is breaking into your home.

The DSA’s central promise is the oldest political scam in the book: something for nothing. Free stuff. No consequences. No police. No prisons. No discomfort. No hard choices.

Just sugar.

But sugar highs do not last. The crash always comes.

Take away police, and you do not create utopia. You create a vacuum. Predators fill vacuums. Gangs fill vacuums. Fear fills vacuums. Then ordinary, law-abiding people become prisoners in their own homes.

And when they are scared to walk outside, scared to send their children to school, scared to open their businesses, they will not call the DSA. They will not call for another community meeting. They will call for whoever can restore order.

History says that “whoever” is often the man nobody should have trusted in the first place.

So go ahead. Vote for the socialist sugar high.

Enjoy the free-stuff promises. Enjoy the applause. Enjoy the fantasy.

Just do not act surprised when the bill arrives—and there is nobody left to call for help.

 

On a different but equally important note, readers who enjoy thoughtful analysis may also find the titles in my  “Brief Book Series” worth exploring. You can also read them here on Google Play, or in Barnes & Noble bookstore: Brief Book Series.

 

The Anti-Data-Center Mob: America’s War on Data Centers Is National Suicide

 

Stop the data centers, lose the AI race. Then watch America beg foreign powers for the technology it was too scared to build. Put simply, the anti-data-center mob wants AI miracles without AI infrastructure. China is watching, building, and quietly taking the future.

I have watched this movie before. The frightened citizens gather under fluorescent lights. Somebody points at a map. Somebody else waves a printout. A local politician, sweating through a campaign shirt, announces that a data center is coming to drink the town dry, melt the electric grid, ruin the children, and probably teach the squirrels to code.

“Not in our backyard,” they roar.

Of course not. Nothing should ever be in anybody’s backyard, except higher home prices, better schools, reliable Wi-Fi, cheaper taxes, and the miracles that arrive by truck but must apparently be manufactured on the moon.

That is the dumb little contradiction at the heart of America’s moral panic over AI data centers. Everybody wants the digital life. Nobody wants the machinery that makes the digital life possible. They want ChatGPT to write their résumés, diagnose their weird rash, explain their mortgage, translate their aunt’s Nigerian voice note, and help their kid pass algebra. Then they discover that computers do not run on incense, good intentions, and recycled Twitter rage. Suddenly, the building that houses the machines becomes Satan’s warehouse.

The anti-data-center crowd has found a deliciously simple villain: the giant, windowless box. It sits there in a field, humming like a refrigerator with a defense contract. It does not smile. It does not hold town-hall meetings. It does not kiss babies. It looks like money, power, heat, and somebody else’s future. That makes it perfect for a panic.

“Those places guzzle water,” the activist says.

“Everything guzzles water,” I say.

The activist looks offended, as if I have cursed in church.

A shower uses water. A lawn uses water. Golf courses use water like they are trying to refill the Atlantic one sprinkler at a time. Brewing beer uses water. Producing jeans uses water. Generating electricity can use water. The cloud is not a magic cloud. It is somebody’s server sitting in a building, cooled by an engineered system, connected to wires that do not grow on trees.

That does not mean water use is irrelevant. It means adults should stop behaving like a single AI prompt personally sneaks into the kitchen at midnight and drains the family sink. Google reported in 2025 that its median Gemini text prompt used about 0.26 milliliters of water, roughly 5 drops, and 0.24 watt-hours of electricity. That is Google’s own measurement, not a holy scripture carved into stone. Other models, longer tasks, image generation, and the electricity supply behind computing can have larger footprints. Fine. Measure them honestly. Demand common reporting standards. Make companies disclose where their water comes from, whether it is recycled, and whether the region is dry enough to make a new facility foolish.

But spare me the circus arithmetic. A viral claim takes one estimate, stretches it across a billion hypothetical prompts, adds every indirect cost it can find, puts on a black cape, and screams that asking AI to draft a thank-you note murdered Lake Michigan. That is not environmentalism. That is performance art for people who think a spreadsheet is a séance.

The electricity issue is real, and it is where the panic merchants become most slippery. Data centers need enormous power. The International Energy Agency projects global data-center electricity consumption will rise from about 485 terawatt-hours in 2025 to 950 terawatt-hours in 2030. In the United States, the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated that data centers used about 4.4% of U.S. electricity in 2023 and could use 6.7% to 12.0% by 2028.

Those are serious numbers. Anybody pretending otherwise is selling perfume in a sewer.

But serious numbers do not automatically produce the stupid conclusion that America should choke off construction. The right question is not, “Does this use electricity?” Everything useful uses electricity. The right question is, “Who pays for new generation, transmission, storage, substations, and grid upgrades—and who gets stuck with the bill?” If a data-center developer wants 1,000 megawatts, then the developer should carry a meaningful share of the cost of serving that load. Deposits should be real. Contracts should be real. Grid forecasts should distinguish real projects from fake applications submitted by speculators playing dress-up in a hard hat.

Texas has already exposed part of the scam. Reuters reported in September 2026 that electricity requests tied to data centers had climbed above 700 gigawatts, more than 10 times the estimated current power use of all U.S. data centers. That is not evidence that every data center is a monster. It is evidence that some developers and middlemen have learned how to reserve imaginary power like teenagers reserving tables at a nightclub they cannot enter.

Kill the ghost projects. Do not kill the industry.

That distinction matters because the anti-data-center coalition is full of people who have spent years complaining that America no longer builds anything. They mourn factories. They mourn industrial jobs. They mourn China’s rise. They complain that the United States outsourced manufacturing, surrendered supply chains, and now cannot produce enough of what it needs when the world gets ugly.

Then AI infrastructure arrives: construction crews, electricians, fiber networks, transformers, server equipment, utility investment, technical jobs, tax revenue, and a chance to keep advanced computing inside America.

And the same people yell, “Stop building!”

It is like watching a man complain that his house has no roof, then chase away the roofer because the truck is loud.

China will not pause because a county board in Virginia has developed a sudden spiritual bond with zoning paperwork. China will not say, “Comrades, America’s Facebook groups are upset about industrial cooling, so let us slow our national AI strategy.” Beijing will build. It will subsidize. It will route power. It will use coal where it pleases, renewables where it helps, and state power wherever it finds resistance. America can regulate intelligently, or it can conduct a moral protest while competitors build the infrastructure that defines the next economic and military contest.

And yes, I said military. AI is not merely a toy that makes cartoon portraits and bad college essays. It affects cybersecurity, intelligence analysis, logistics, materials science, medicine, finance, fraud detection, and military planning. A country that cannot support advanced computing is volunteering to become a customer in its own century.

Loudoun County, Virginia, is the part critics hate because it ruins the clean villain story. The county has more than 250 data centers. Loudoun County says data centers generate almost half of its property-tax revenue. County material released in 2026 states that data centers helped keep its real-property tax rates about 25% lower than those of nearby Northern Virginia jurisdictions. The money has helped fund schools, roads, libraries, parks, public safety, and the ordinary public services politicians promise when microphones are on.

That does not mean Loudoun is paradise. Rapid development brings ugly transmission lines, land-use fights, noise complaints, housing pressure, and residents who rightly ask why they must live beside an industrial operation. I would not tell a family to accept diesel-generator noise or a hulking facility 30 feet from its bedroom window just because some tech executive says “innovation” with a polished smile.

Put facilities away from homes. Enforce noise standards. Require closed-loop or recycled-water systems where conditions demand it. Require transparent power contracts. Make developers fund grid upgrades. Penalize companies that lie about capacity, hoard interconnection requests, or dump costs on households. Tax them properly. Make them earn their place.

That is regulation. A moratorium because somebody saw a scary TikTok is superstition wearing a zoning badge.

The real moral failure is not that data centers exist. It is that too many politicians would rather sell fear than manage trade-offs. Fear is cheap. It fits on a yard sign. “NO DATA CENTER” requires no engineering study, no pricing plan, no grid strategy, no painful decision about where new power will come from. It is the political version of covering your ears and shouting at the transformer.

I do not worship Big Tech. These companies are not saints. They are profit machines with better cafeterias. They should not get blank checks, secret deals, free infrastructure, or permission to turn a dry community into an experiment. But refusing to build the backbone of AI because the buildings look sinister is not courage. It is self-sabotage with a compostable sign.

America cannot livestream its way into the future. At some point, somebody has to build the damn thing.

 

Separate from today’s article, I recently published more titles in my Brief Book Series for readers interested in a deeper, standalone idea. You can read them here on Google Play, or in Barnes & Noble bookstore: Brief Book Series.

 

 

In Eastern Nigeria, an Igbo Man Without a Title Is Practically Walking Naked

 

In Igboland, a naked name now feels like social death; chiefs multiply, integrity disappears, and even “Member” becomes emergency oxygen for wounded pride.  The red cap once announced responsibility. But in Igboland today, title gluttony can dress thieves as saviors, cowards as lions, and chaos merchants as men of peace.

I am an Igbo man from Eastern Nigeria. My only title is “Dr.” I earned it in a university, through research, examinations, and years of academic work. That is enough for me.

But in Igboland, “Dr.” sometimes looks dangerously underdressed.

A bare name frightens us. It stands there alone—thin, exposed, shivering in public. We rush to cover it with “Chief.” We button it with “Honorable.” We wrap it in “Ozo.” We hang “KSJ” (Knight of St. John) behind it. If nothing else is available, we throw “Member” over its shoulders and pray nobody notices the poverty underneath.

The ceremony is already 45 minutes late when the master of ceremonies grabs the microphone.

“Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished personalities, royal fathers, political stakeholders, captains of industry, pillars of development, and lovers of progress—”

Nobody has been introduced yet.

He inhales.

“Please welcome Chief Engineer Dr. Desmond Okafor, Ozo Igbo Ndu I of Ohafia!” (the name has been changed to retain anonymity).

The hall erupts.

“Ekwueme!”

Desmond rises. Slowly. Carefully. He is wearing a red cap, white lace, coral beads, Italian shoes, and sunglasses inside a dark hall. His stomach arrives before the rest of him. Tweo young men follow, carrying his telephone and dignity.

The drummer strikes harder.

“Chief!”

“Engineer!”

“Doctor!”

“Ozo!”

Desmond waves like a governor who has just commissioned a bridge built with three lanes of promises and one lane of concrete.

Nobody asks what kind of engineer he is.

Nobody asks where he earned the doctorate.

Nobody asks what “Igbo Ndu” means in practical terms.

This is not an investigation. It is an introduction.

Next comes “Ichie Humphrey Muomelite, Onwa I of Mbaise, KSJ” (the name has been changed to retain anonymity).

Humphrey has never attended a university. That does not matter. Education is only one road to a long name, and we Igbo people have constructed several bypasses. Humphrey is now “Onwa”—the Moon of Mbaise. Whether he has ever brought light to Mbaise is irrelevant. The moon does not submit an annual report.

The microphone keeps moving.

“Chief Barrister Dr. Chukwudi Nwafor, Akajiugo I of Nnewi” (the name has been changed to retain anonymity).

“High Chief Sir Emmanuel Ezeani, Omeiheukwu of Aguata, KSM.”

“Chief Architect Professor Boniface Nwankwo, Ide Mmili I of Orlu.”

“Honorable Chief Dr. Patrick Umeh, Ebubedike na London, Ozo Udo I of Umuahia.”

By the time Patrick’s name lands, two children are asleep, the fried rice is cold, and the bride has begun to regret both the wedding and democracy.

I know this theater because it is our theater. I am not peeping into Igbo culture through a foreign window. I grew from the soil of Eastern Nigeria. I know the sound of the ogene (a metal gong). I know the pride of the red cap. I know the political temperature of a hometown meeting. I know that an Igbo man may forgive you for stepping on his shoe, but if you omit his title from a printed program, you have not made a mistake. You have launched a military operation.

“Who prepared this program?” he asks.

“The planning committee.”

“Where is my title?”

“We wrote your name.”

“My name?”

“Yes, sir.”

He looks at the page as if it contains his death certificate.

“You wrote only my name?”

That word—only—carries the insult.

His name is present, but his importance is missing.

Traditional Igbo titles did not begin as comedy. They came from a serious social and political world. Many communities in Eastern Nigeria were decentralized long before British colonial rule. Authority often rested in village assemblies, councils of elders, age grades, lineage groups, women’s organizations, and titled societies. Outside places with stronger centralized institutions, such as Nri, Onitsha, and Arochukwu, there was often no absolute king handing out status from a palace.

A person built a public reputation. Wealth mattered, but so did character, family standing, community service, age, achievement, and trust. A title could mark the point at which private success became public responsibility.

A. I. Okpoko’s scholarly work on Igbo traditional titles identifies Ozo as one of the most significant institutions in Igboland. Ozo titleholders historically provided leadership at lineage, village, and village-group levels. The “Catholics & Cultures” research project also notes that Ozo conferred status, leadership, and serious responsibility. In some communities, Ozo titleholders helped settle disputes and represented moral authority.

That was the old bargain.

The community gave a man honor.

The man gave the community integrity.

Today, the community may still deliver the honor. Integrity may send its apologies.

A contractor can abandon a village road after collecting the money, return in December with 200 bags of rice, and become “Omeiheukwu I of the village”—where  “Omeiheukwu” is an Igbo term meaning “the man who does great things.”

A politician can divert public money meant for a health clinic, donate 10 plastic chairs to the town union, and receive “Aku Ruo Ulo”—the wealth that reached home.

A land grabber can seize his younger brother’s inheritance and become “Oputa Obie”—the man whose arrival brings peace to the family.

A notorious coward can become “Agu”—the lion.

A human petrol station for quarrels can become “Udo”—the embodiment of peace.

The title says one thing. The life says another. Everybody hears both. The drummer simply plays louder.

This hunger becomes truly dangerous inside our social clubs and hometown associations. We Igbo people can form an association anywhere. Give us four plastic chairs, one bottle of cognac, and a WhatsApp group. By sunset, we will have a constitution.

By midnight, the association will have a president, vice president, secretary, assistant secretary, financial secretary, assistant financial secretary, public-relations officer, provost, social secretary, welfare officer, chief whip, patron, grand patron, women’s leader, youth leader, chairman of elders, and chairman of the committee created to investigate the former chairman.

The association has 14 active members and 19 offices.

That is not poor planning. That is title security.

The real crisis comes when an event program is prepared. The planners first list the heavyweights.

“Chief Dr. Obinna Eze, Ogbuefi I of Awka.”

“Sir Anthony Nwankwo, KSJ.”

“Honorable Barrister Emeka Umeh, Akuatuegwu of Ihiala.”

Then somebody notices Collins (the name has been changed to retain anonymity).

Collins has no traditional title. No knighthood. No doctorate. No political office. No flourishing business. No regular job. But Collins has a voice that can break glass. He attends every meeting, pays some dues, owes the rest, and remembers every insult committed against him since 2009.

“What shall we put beside Collins’s name?” the secretary asks.

“Nothing.”

The room freezes.

“You want this event to hold?”

The planners understand. Collins may not have enough money to sponsor the event, but he has enough bitterness to bury it. Leave his name out, and the caterer may hear that the date has changed. The musician may receive a fake cancellation. The association’s WhatsApp group may wake up to 74 voice notes, each lasting 8 minutes.

The chairman leans forward.

“Write ‘Member.’”

The secretary obeys.

“Mr. Collins Obi, Member.”

Peace enters the room.

Then comes “Mr. Jude Nkemakolam, Member.”

After him: “Mr. Peter Uchenna, Member.”

If Peter is especially troublesome, he receives a promotion.

“Mr. Peter Uchenna, Distinguished Member.”

Distinguished by what?

By the danger of leaving him undistinguished.

At the event, Collins picks up the program. His eyes search quickly. He finds his name.

“Mr. Collins Obi, Member.”

He smiles.

The organizers have successfully manufactured a title from basic grammar.

The ordinary word “member” has become a medal. It announces that Collins belongs. He may not be chief, doctor, knight, professor, engineer, barrister, or honorable, but he is not nobody. The program has given him emergency social oxygen.

Some Igbo men take another road. They are teachers, civil servants, administrators, or modest professionals. They have respectable jobs but cannot afford the financial demands attached to major traditional title-taking. They still want something to stand behind their names like an armed guard.

Then the church opens a door.

Mr. Michael Onyejekwe becomes “Sir Michael Onyejekwe, KSJ.”

Mr. Anthony Ekwunife becomes “Sir Anthony Ekwunife, KSJI.”

Mr. Gabriel Nwachukwu becomes “Sir Gabriel Nwachukwu, KSM (Knight of St. Mulumba).”

The name has entered the alphabet market.

The Knights of St. John International is a legitimate Roman Catholic fraternal order, not an Igbo title factory. Its official history reaches back to its incorporation in New York in 1886. The organization says it has more than 19,000 members across 9 countries, including Nigeria. Its stated mission centers on faith, charity, fraternity, and service.

Those are noble obligations.

But give an Igbo man a uniform, sword, plume, rank, and letters after his name, and heaven must help the master of ceremonies who forgets one comma.

“Why did you write Michael Onyejekwe?”

“That is your name, sir.”

“I am a knight.”

“I know.”

“Does the program know?”

The church may have called him to service. The printed program must call him “Sir.”

Knighthood itself does not cure ordinary human weakness. In 2022, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria suspended the activities of the Knights of St. John International in the country after a serious internal dispute and failure to obey reconciliation directives. The suspension was lifted after compliance.

There is the irony. Men carrying swords for Christian unity still required bishops to stop them from fighting among themselves. The sword hung correctly. Peace did not.

Our women understand the title market too, although Igbo patriarchy historically gave men more public room to parade traditional honors. Some important title systems remained male-centered, and scholarly research has criticized the Ozo institution for reinforcing male dominance in parts of Igboland.

Still, nobody should mistake limited public titles for female powerlessness. Igbo women have long exercised influence through market networks, church groups, women’s associations, family institutions, and organizations of married women and lineage daughters.

The 1929 Aba Women’s Riots remains the strongest evidence. Thousands of women across Eastern Nigeria challenged colonial taxation plans and the abuses of warrant chiefs. British colonial forces killed more than 50 women while suppressing the uprising. Those women shook an empire without placing “Chief Dr. Mrs.” before their names.

Then some modern Igbo women move to the United States or Europe. They study. They work punishing shifts. They become registered nurses, nurse practitioners, and holders of advanced degrees. Their professional credentials are earned and deserve respect.

But sometimes achievement is not enough. It must become a parade.

In Baltimore, I have encountered names displayed in styles like “Dr. (Mrs.) Cynthia Ugoji, DNP, CRNP, Nee Ada di Ora Mma” (the name has been changed to retain anonymity).

Then comes “Chief Mrs. Blessing Nwosu, MSN, RN, FNP-BC, Ugegbe Oyibo I of Owerri” (the name has been changed to retain anonymity).

Another arrives as “Lady Dr. (Mrs.) Ngozi Eze, DNP, PMHNP-BC, Lolo Ifeoma di Ora Mma.”

The grand finale may be “High Chief Dr. (Mrs.) Patricia Okafor, RN, BSN, MSN, Queen Mother of Umuahia Progressive Union” (the name has been changed to retain anonymity).

Nothing must escape.

Academic degree? Add it.

Nursing license? Add it.

Board certification? Add it.

Marital status? Add it.

Traditional praise name? Add it.

Husband’s title? Add it.

Association position? Add it.

Maiden identity? Tie it to the bumper.

The name begins to look like a vehicle transporting an entire résumé.

“May I speak with Cynthia?”

Silence.

“Mrs. Ugoji?”

More silence.

“Dr. Mrs. Cynthia Ugoji, DNP, CRNP, Nee Ada di Ora Mma?”

“Speaking.”

The British helped worsen our status hunger. Colonial administrators found decentralized Igbo government difficult to control. They wanted local agents who could collect taxes, enforce colonial orders, and report to British officials. So they appointed warrant chiefs, sometimes giving authority to men who lacked traditional legitimacy.

Power was no longer always the result of community trust. A foreign document could manufacture a chief.

Modern Nigeria has expanded the factory.

Now “Ambassadors” have never entered embassies.

“Professors” have never produced serious scholarship.

“Honorables” have never behaved honorably.

“Doctors” carry honorary degrees obtained through donations, connections, or decorated ceremonies.

“Chiefs” lead nobody.

“Excellencies” preside over failure.

The title has become a mask. The longer it is, the more carefully I inspect the face behind it.

I am not attacking every title. I am an Igbo man too, not an enemy of Igbo culture. Legitimate titles preserve history. They recognize service. They connect us to our towns, ancestors, institutions, and responsibilities. A true Ozo title should represent character. A genuine knighthood should represent faith and charity. A doctorate should represent advanced intellectual or professional work.

My target is not honor.

My target is title gluttony.

It is the hunger that makes a person feel erased unless a trumpet blows before his name. It is the vanity that turns community service into theater. It is the insecurity that forces poor Collins to wear “Member” like a bulletproof vest. It is the moral fraud that allows a thief to purchase a title describing him as the village savior.

A good name should be able to stand without crutches.

Yet the banquet continues.

The hall is packed. The titled men adjust their red caps. The knights straighten their medals. The professional women inspect the program for missing initials. Collins confirms that “Member” is securely attached to his name.

The master of ceremonies raises the microphone.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please rise for Chief Honorable Engineer Professor Dr. Sir Collins Chinedu Obi, KSJ, JP, Ozo Ugochinyere I of Arochukwu, Distinguished Member, Life Patron, Grand Patron, Chairman Emeritus, Pillar of Development, Lion of Eastern Nigeria, and Light of the Igbo Nation!”

The generator coughs.

The microphone dies.

Darkness falls.

For one honest second, the chief is silent, the knight is invisible, the professor cannot be found, and the Distinguished Member is just Collins.

 

For readers interested in a separate line of thought, the titles in my “Brief Book Series” are available on Google Play. Read them here on Google Play or in Barnes & Noble bookstore: Brief Book Series.

 

The Wig Is Still White, but the Profession Is Broke: Why Nigeria’s Lawyers Are Graduating Into Poverty

 

Nigeria’s young lawyers are discovering a frightening truth: passing the Bar may bring a wig, certificate, and title—but absolutely no guarantee of a livelihood. Simply put, Nigeria’s legal profession is losing its shine: thousands enter with dreams of prestige, only to meet unemployment, poor pay, exploitation, and ethical decay.

I feel sad saying this because there was a time when the word “lawyer” carried weight in Nigeria. A lawyer walked into a room and people adjusted themselves. Parents introduced their children with pride. “My son is a lawyer.” “My daughter is going to Law School.” The wig meant learning. The gown meant dignity. The profession promised prestige, financial security and influence.

That was the advertisement.

Now let us discuss the product.

Today, when somebody tells me that law is still a “noble profession” in Nigeria, I sometimes wonder whether nobility has changed its definition. Perhaps nobility now means wearing a hot horsehair wig under the Nigerian sun while calculating whether your transport fare to court will swallow the appearance fee.

Welcome to the Bar.

Drinks are not included.

The uncomfortable truth exploded into public discussion again when Nigerian social media activist Martins Vincent Otse, better known as VeryDarkMan, attended the Nigerian Bar Association’s 66th Annual General Conference in Port Harcourt. Some lawyers questioned why he should have been invited. VeryDarkMan returned fire. He said law had become one of Nigeria’s poorest professions and asked some wickedly simple questions: How many lawyers have jobs? How many actually practise? How many regularly go to court?

Forget his theatrics for a moment. Forget whether you like him. Forget the social-media noise.

Look at the wound, not the finger pointing at it.

Nigeria keeps producing lawyers by the thousands. In 2022 alone, the Body of Benchers admitted 1,504 new entrants in July and another 4,711 in December, making 6,215 new lawyers in those two ceremonies. In March 2024, another 4,412 successful candidates from the November 2023 Bar Final Examination were scheduled for Call to Bar, alongside 14 candidates from previous examinations.

That is not a trickle.

That is a conveyor belt.

Every year, another army marches out wearing black and white, certificates in hand, parents taking photographs, everybody smiling as though prosperity has just signed an affidavit.

Then Monday morning arrives. Reality removes its sunglasses. Some graduates find proper legal employment. Some build successful practices. Some enter government, banking, corporate compliance, academia, consulting and politics. Let me make that clear because exaggeration is unnecessary when reality already has sharp teeth.

But others discover that being called to the Bar does not mean anybody is calling them for a job.

So the young lawyer improvises.

Today, he is Barrister Chukwuemeka.

Tomorrow, he is selling bedsheets on Instagram.

Barrister Amina starts a catering business.

Barrister Tunde becomes a Bolt or Uber driver.

Barrister Ngozi sells wigs, perfumes and handbags online.

Barrister Emeka becomes a real-estate agent, chasing tenants and commissions around Lagos.

Another starts importing shoes.

Another becomes a Point of Sale (POS) operator.

There is nothing shameful about honest work. Let me say that loudly. A person selling bedsheets honestly has more dignity than a lawyer stealing a client’s money. A driver earning an honest living is worth more than a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) buying justice through the back door.

The scandal is not the bedsheet.

The scandal is spending years studying law, surviving university, paying for professional training, passing Bar examinations, being ceremonially welcomed into a supposedly elite profession—and discovering that the economy has no meaningful chair waiting for you.

The irony becomes darker when we examine what the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) itself has been doing. In 2023, Nigeria introduced the Legal Practitioners’ Remuneration Order, replacing a remuneration framework dating back to 1991. The Order established minimum professional fees and prohibited lawyers from charging below prescribed rates for covered services.

Why would a famously “noble” profession need an emergency campaign to stop its own members from practically giving professional services away?

Because prestige does not pay NEPA, the National Electric Power Authority, which  was the Nigerian government agency responsible for generating and supplying electricity before it was replaced by the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) in 2005.

The NBA Remuneration Committee has repeatedly warned lawyers against undercharging. In 2025, it stressed that violating the minimum-fee rules could amount to professional misconduct. By 2026, the NBA Young Lawyers Forum was still demanding standardized remuneration, structured employment, humane working conditions and a mandatory living wage if a pupilage system were introduced. The forum specifically warned that pupilage must not become another machine for exploiting young lawyers.

Read that again.

“Humane working conditions.”

“Living wage.”

We are discussing lawyers, not undocumented workers hiding inside a factory.

And yet I am supposed to stand up, straighten my tie and chant, “Law is a noble profession.”

Noble?

Please.

Even the 2023 Remuneration Order has struggled against the economic realities it was created to cure. A 2026 scholarly analysis of its implementation reported severe enforcement problems and estimated non-compliance at more than 95% nationwide. The researchers identified weak monitoring, client resistance and enforcement failures, with young lawyers particularly exposed.

There lies the Nigerian contradiction.

We legislate dignity.

Then reality refuses to obey.

Compare this with the United States—not because America is heaven, because it certainly is not, but because comparison exposes the scale of the employment problem. The American Bar Association (ABA) reported that among graduates of ABA-approved law schools in the Class of 2024, 33,931 graduates, representing 87.1%, obtained full-time, long-term jobs requiring Bar admission or providing a J.D. advantage roughly 10 months after graduation.

Where is Nigeria’s equally transparent national employment report showing what happens to every graduating class of lawyers 10 months after Call to Bar?

Show me the numbers.

Not speeches.

Not conference banners.

Not photographs of dignitaries wearing wigs.

Numbers.

How many are practicing?

How many are unemployed?

How many are earning a sustainable professional income?

How many have abandoned law?

How many are driving taxis, selling property, running online shops, teaching secondary school, selling insurance or operating POS stands?

Until we systematically measure those outcomes, calling the profession “noble” can become less a description and more an incantation.

But unemployment and miserable remuneration are only half of my quarrel with this nobility business.

There is also ethics.

That white wig has seen things. In 2018, Dr. Joseph Nwobike, then a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), was convicted by a Lagos State High Court on counts connected to attempting to pervert the course of justice. The case involved efforts to influence court officials concerning the assignment of cases to preferred judges. He was sentenced to imprisonment and subsequently stripped of his SAN rank. The Court of Appeal upheld key parts of his conviction in 2019.

That was not an unemployed young lawyer selling perfume. That was a man who had reached one of the profession’s highest ranks.

Years earlier, the crisis had become so ugly that prominent human-rights lawyer Femi Falana, SAN, publicly accused the NBA of failing to confront corruption within the judiciary. During the controversy surrounding the 2016 DSS raids on judges, Falana argued that shielding corrupt judicial officers embarrassed honest members of the Bar.

Fast-forward to 2026 and the profession is still wrestling with its mirror. The NBA Anti-Corruption Committee and the Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee publicly called for stronger and faster disciplinary action against unethical lawyers, citing delays and inconsistent sanctions as threats to public confidence. Even Attorney-General Lateef Fagbemi, SAN, warned in February 2026 that the prestige attached to the SAN rank must never become immunity from discipline. He warned that ethical breaches among senior lawyers and a culture of silence could destroy public trust.

That statement tells me everything.

You do not warn people against confusing prestige with immunity unless somebody has been behaving as though prestige provides immunity.

Then came an episode so absurd that satire almost became unemployed.

In January 2026, NBA President Mazi Afam Osigwe, SAN, condemned the purported appointment of Abdulrasheed Maina as “Grand Patron of NBA Garki Branch.” Maina had been convicted over the theft of more than ₦2 billion ($1.5 Million) in pension funds. The NBA president said the purported appointment made a mockery of both the legal profession and Nigeria’s fight against corruption and announced disciplinary proceedings against the branch chairman responsible.

I could not invent better satire.

A legal association preaching the rule of law finds itself publicly distancing the profession from an attempt to honor a man convicted over stolen pension money.

And somebody still wants me to polish the word “noble.”

No.

I will call a spade a spade.

Law itself remains noble as an idea. Justice is noble. Defending an innocent person is noble. Protecting constitutional rights is noble. Standing between state power and an abused citizen is noble. Fighting unlawful detention is noble. Helping a widow defend her property is noble. Prosecuting corruption without fear is noble.

But a profession does not inherit nobility forever merely because its textbooks say so.

Nobility must be earned daily.

A profession that produces thousands of graduates without a sufficiently developed market to absorb them has a problem. A profession whose young practitioners must demand a living wage has a problem. A profession forced to create minimum-fee rules because practitioners are undercutting one another into poverty has a problem. A profession whose own leadership repeatedly complains about unethical conduct, weak discipline and threats to public confidence has a problem. The wig cannot hide all that.

And this is where I think VeryDarkMan touched the electric wire.

His delivery was crude. His language was provocative. His claim that law is one of Nigeria’s “poorest professions” requires comprehensive national income and employment data before anyone can responsibly treat it as statistical fact. But underneath the noise sits an argument the legal establishment cannot dismiss by simply shouting, “Noble profession!”

Young Nigerians are asking a colder question now.

“What will I eat?”

Prestige does not answer.

A certificate does not answer.

A photograph from Call to Bar does not answer.

The Nigerian Law School can manufacture new wigs faster than the economy can manufacture good legal jobs, and eventually somebody must admit that the mathematics is becoming uncomfortable.

The profession therefore faces a choice. It can protect the mythology or repair the institution.

I would choose repair.

Because there is nothing noble about poverty dressed in a gown.

There is nothing noble about exploitation hidden behind professional tradition.

There is nothing noble about corruption wearing a wig.

And there is certainly nothing noble about telling a struggling young lawyer to admire the prestige of a profession while he is wondering whether his next court appearance will even cover transportation and lunch.

So when somebody tells me, “Law is a noble profession,” I will not quarrel.

I will simply ask:

“Noble for whom?”

For the established SAN with corporate retainers?

Perhaps.

For the politically connected lawyer moving between boardrooms, election tribunals and government contracts?

Certainly possible.

But for the fresh graduate sending applications from chamber to chamber while selling bedsheets at night?

The slogan sounds different.

Nigeria has enough ceremonies. Enough titles. Enough gowns. Enough self-congratulation. What it needs is a legal profession in which competence can produce a decent living, young lawyers are not exploited, ethical misconduct carries real consequences, and justice cannot be treated like merchandise.

Until then, the wig may remain white.

But nobody should confuse its color with innocence.

 

On a different but equally important note, readers who enjoy thoughtful analysis may also find the titles in my  “Brief Book Series” worth exploring. You can also read them here on Google Play, or in Barnes & Noble bookstore: Brief Book Series.