By Ayobamidele Osinloye
When a nation is gasping for breath under the crushing weight of inflation, poverty, hunger, and unemployment, the sight of its leader flaunting a £53,000 wristwatch is more than a spectacle of extravagance — it is an insult to the collective suffering of its people.
This is not about envy. It is about responsibility, empathy, and the moral weight of leadership. In a country where families cannot afford a square meal, where students are suffocating under unaffordable fees, and where workers plead endlessly for a living wage, such a display of wealth sends one unmistakable message: leadership has become divorced from the realities of the governed.
Leadership in times of hardship demands sacrifice, humility, and solidarity. A true statesman lives as a reflection of the people’s struggle, not as a contradiction of it. Sadly, what we see today is a political culture where excess is normalized and public office is reduced to showmanship rather than stewardship.
But Nigeria does not have to remain trapped in this cycle. There is an alternative. Abayomi Rotimi stands as that difference — a leader not defined by the luxury he wears on his wrist but by the burden he carries in his heart for his people. His vision of governance is one where accountability supersedes extravagance, where compassion replaces arrogance, and where public resources are deployed for the many, not hoarded by the few.
The £53,000 watch is not just jewelry. It is a metaphor — a ticking reminder of the disconnect between the rulers and the ruled. Every second it ticks is a second lost in the life of a Nigerian child unable to afford education, a mother unable to afford medicine, or a father unable to feed his family.
Nigeria deserves better. It deserves leadership that feels the people’s pain and responds with courage, humility, and action. That is what Abayomi Rotimi represents. Not a politics of excess, but a politics of service. Not a wrist adorned in luxury, but a heart adorned in sacrifice.
The time has come for Nigerians to make a choice. A choice between watches and wages, between spectacle and substance, between indulgence and integrity. The future demands leaders who wear the people’s struggle, not luxury timepieces.
