“Personal success will not insulate you from the failures of your society.” – Author unknown
For many Africans in the diaspora, there is a quiet but enduring dream that our children will not grow up as strangers to the land that shaped us. We long for them to feel a living connection to the motherland, not as tourists, but as heirs to a history, a culture, and a people. In pursuit of this, many families make deliberate sacrifices. Some send their children back home for a few formative years, enrolling them in secondary schools so they can absorb the rhythms of daily life, the discipline of communal living, and the cultural fluency no textbook can confer. At home and abroad, we immerse them in Afrobeats and in cuisines rich with history and meaning. Whenever circumstances permit, we embark on expensive family pilgrimages back home so they may encounter their heritage not as an abstraction, but as a place they can see, touch, and feel, the place their parents still call home.
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Whenever I see Anthony Joshua strolling through the unruly streets of Lagos, unfazed, self possessed, smiling and fully at ease, I am reminded of the quiet triumph of that dream. I imagine the pride his parents must feel watching their son move through that space not as an outsider, but as someone who belongs. In such moments, I am confronted by my own longing that my children, too, might one day walk those same streets with the same confidence and joy, carrying their roots not as a burden, but as a source of strength and pride.
Born in Watford, England, to Yoruba parents, Joshua spent part of his formative years in Nigeria, attending the late Tai Solarin’s Mayflower School in Ikenne as a boarding student, before returning to England at the age of twelve following his parents’ divorce.
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A global heavyweight boxing champion of immense wealth and international acclaim, Joshua could be claimed by almost any nation. Yet he has chosen to openly and unapologetically embrace Nigeria. After his recent victory over Jake Paul, he draped himself in the green white green flag, a gesture that electrified Nigerians at home and abroad. Nigerians, in turn, embraced him with fervent pride, not merely for his exploits in the ring, but for his deliberate identification with home.
That moment of collective pride was recently punctured by a sobering reality during his Christmas visit to Nigeria. Conflicting accounts emerged regarding the cause of the accident on December 29. Reports ranged from a burst tyre on the Lexus SUV in which he was travelling, to loss of control and collision with a stationary truck on a busy highway, to preliminary findings by the Federal Road Safety Corps suggesting excessive speed and an unsafe overtaking attempt. What is clear, however, is that Joshua lost two of his closest friends in the crash and survived with minor injuries by little more than fate.
In a country where kidnappings, ritual killings, and senseless murders have become almost routine, and where schoolchildren are abducted from their beds under cover of darkness, the death of two individuals in a motor vehicle accident would ordinarily attract little attention. It would be filed away as yet another statistic in Nigeria’s daily ledger of tragedy. This incident, however, was different. It involved Anthony Joshua. The nation paused. Social media convulsed with grief and disbelief. An unofficial day of national mourning unfolded.
The contrast is revealing. It exposes not only how celebrity distorts our valuation of human life, but also how perilously cheap life itself has become in a society hollowed out by institutional decay. Video footage from the accident scene was chaotic and deeply unsettling. Onlookers improvised rescue efforts in the absence of trained first responders. Confusion prevailed where coordination should have reigned. There were no sirens cutting through traffic and no paramedics arriving with practiced urgency. What unfolded was not an aberration. It was a faithful representation of everyday reality in Nigeria, rendered shocking only because the figure at its center was extraordinary.
This is the uncomfortable truth Nigerians are reluctant to confront. Personal success does not and cannot insulate anyone from the failures of their society.
Joshua earns tens of millions of dollars from a single fight. He has access to the finest physicians, the most advanced hospitals, and the fastest means of travel on earth. Yet had his injuries been immediately life threatening, all that wealth might have counted for little. Not because he lacked the means to pay, but because he found himself in a country where the most rudimentary emergency response systems are either dysfunctional or nonexistent. In moments of acute trauma, money is not the decisive currency. Time and systems are.
In medicine, the tyranny of minutes is absolute. Severe haemorrhage must be identified and controlled without delay. Compromised airways must be secured instantly. Trauma patients must be stabilised before definitive care can even be contemplated. These are not luxuries reserved for affluent societies. They are the bare minimum of civilised existence. Where such systems are absent, catastrophe is indiscriminate. In those critical moments, a billionaire and a roadside POS vendor are rendered equal by institutional failure.
This reality exposes the illusion underpinning Nigeria’s culture of medical tourism. The political elite and economic upper class understand, often viscerally, that the domestic healthcare system is unfit for purpose. Their contingency plan is simple. Fly abroad. But emergencies are indifferent to privilege. One cannot board a private jet while bleeding internally or unconscious. Before international evacuation becomes an option, a patient must first be stabilised. That stabilisation can only occur locally. When local capacity is nonexistent, wealth becomes ornamental rather than protective.
History offers sobering confirmation. Years ago, a former governor in South Eastern Nigeria initiated the construction of what was heralded as a world class diagnostic medical centre. By many accounts, the project was inspired by a deeply personal reckoning. He had been diagnosed abroad with an advanced malignancy that had gone undetected for years, not because it was clinically obscure, but because Nigeria lacked the diagnostic infrastructure to identify it earlier. A potentially manageable condition was allowed to progress unchecked. The facility he sought to build was a tacit admission that even power could not shield him from systemic inadequacy.
The COVID-19 pandemic delivered an even harsher lesson. With borders sealed and flights grounded, the traditional escape routes of the elite were abruptly closed. Many prominent Nigerians, including politicians, captains of industry, and social heavyweights, perished during that period. Their deaths were not solely a function of viral virulence, but of a healthcare system incapable of managing severe disease at scale. For a brief and brutal moment, status and wealth lost their usual potency.
Yet the lesson remains largely unlearned. Many Nigerians persist in the fantasy that individual prosperity can substitute for collective development. Public funds meant for hospitals, power plants, roads, and water systems are looted with impunity. Resources allocated for the public good are siphoned into private extravagance. We construct opulent mansions without access roads, surround ourselves with diesel generators and water tankers, and congratulate ourselves on success while the foundations of society rot beneath us.
The absurdity of this model becomes glaring when one looks beyond Africa. During my recent visits to Brazil, Colombia, and Costa Rica, I was struck by how material modesty coexists with functional modernity. Homes are unpretentious. Cars are economical. Yet electricity is reliable, potable water flows from taps, emergency services respond promptly, and roads are navigable. Society works, even if individual displays of wealth are restrained.
Nigeria, by contrast, has perfected the art of inverse development. We fetishize private affluence amid public squalor. We drive oversized luxury vehicles over roads that resemble battlefields. We inhabit palaces plunged into darkness by perennial power failure. We mistake personal accumulation for national progress and, in doing so, entrench our collective vulnerability.
Anthony Joshua’s accident should not be consumed as mere celebrity news. It should be understood as a parable. It reminds us that no matter how celebrated, affluent, or globally connected an individual may be, they remain bound to the systems, or lack thereof, within their society. The same roads, hospitals, and emergency services serve everyone, regardless of status.
Personal success may purchase comfort, convenience, and distance from everyday hardship, but it cannot purchase a functioning society. Until Nigerians internalise this truth and recognise that our fates are structurally intertwined, we will continue to live one crisis away from the same consequences we complacently assume are reserved for others.
In the end, the message is inescapable. When a society fails, it fails collectively. And when it collapses, it eventually consumes everyone. Not even champions are spared. Our hearts ache for Joshua and the families of his lost friends. May they find the strength to carry on.
May the new year bring forth good tidings.
Osmund Agbo is a medical doctor and author. His works include Black Grit, White Knuckles: The Philosophy of Black Renaissance and a fiction work titled The Velvet Court: Courtesan Chronicles. His latest works, Pray, Let the Shaman Die and Ma’am, I Do Not Come to You for Love, have just been released. He can be reached through: [email protected]
