If 2025 were a movie, it would not be an action blockbuster. There would be no car chases, no superheroes in capes, and certainly no tidy happy-ever-after. Instead, it would be a thinking person’s film — slow-burning, cerebral, occasionally uncomfortable, and unmistakably Nigerian. The kind of film that asks questions long after the credits roll.
At the centre of that movie sits a deceptively simple line, one that has followed Épa Ogie Eboigbe from platform to platform, essay to essay, and conversation to conversation:
Who is thinking for Nigeria?
It sounds polite. Almost harmless. But 2025 reminded us — repeatedly — that it is neither. It is a provocation. A challenge. A mirror held up to a country that often prefers volume to value and slogans to strategy.
To understand Épa’s year in thought, one must first separate the spaces in which the thinking happens.
There is Epa.com.ng, known to its regular readers as The Well of Wisdom — a reflective, long-form space where lived experience meets analysis, and where the elder speaks not to scold, but to guide. It is here that Épa slows the pace, draws from history, culture, and professional memory, and offers perspective rather than panic.
Then there is the Yaba School of Thought (YSoT) on BusinessDay newspaper — a collective intellectual platform animated by a single, insistent theme:
Who is thinking for Nigeria?
YSoT is sharper in cadence, more public in confrontation. It is the market square to Epa.com.ng’s village square; the debate hall to the well. Different platforms, different rhythms — one shared commitment to serious thinking.
Throughout 2025, Épa did not merely write. He interrogated.
He interrogated insecurity, asking why policy announcements multiply while safety retreats. He interrogated civic responsibility, wondering how a nation so rich in opinion became so poor in accountability. He interrogated leadership, particularly the growing fashion of governing countries like corporations — efficient in language, distant in empathy, allergic to dissent.
These questions did not float in isolation. They were embedded in Nigeria’s daily realities — economic strain, institutional fatigue, political impatience, and the creeping normalisation of dysfunction. And whether on the pages of BusinessDay or in the deeper essays at the Well of Wisdom, the tone remained consistent: firm, reflective, unseduced by easy answers.
The Yaba School of Thought itself deserves pause. Neither cult nor club, it is a loose assembly of scholars, professionals, analysts, and public intellectuals bound by a stubborn conviction that Nigeria’s most dangerous deficit is not oil revenue or foreign exchange, but thinking. Sustained thinking. Ethical thinking. Thinking that survives beyond trending hashtags.
“Who is thinking for Nigeria?” is not a column title.
It is a dare.
It is a warning.
It is a sentence that refuses to end.
If Nigeria’s challenges came with a slogan in 2025, this was it.
The question echoed everywhere — among readers of BusinessDay, among loyal followers of Epa.com.ng, in webinars and private salons where people admitted, sometimes reluctantly, that noise has outlived its usefulness.
And then, between the end of 2024 and December 2025, something quietly significant happened.
The country — and the profession — paused to recognise the thinker behind the thoughts.
Épa Ogie Eboigbe received awards, accolades, and appointments that did not feel like ceremonial flattery but institutional acknowledgement of sustained relevance. There was recognition and appreciation for senior journalists whose work helped shape public discourse across generations. There was a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (Lagos Chapter) — a salute to a career that bridged journalism, broadcasting, corporate communications, and public trust.
There were also appointments rooted in confidence, not nostalgia. Épa became a Trustee of the Association of Corporate Communications and Marketing Professionals in Banks, ACAMB, reinforcing his standing at the intersection of reputation, ethics, strategy, and public engagement.
Yet, notably, the writing did not soften.
There were no victory laps disguised as essays. No autobiographies masquerading as opinion pieces. The questions remained stubbornly outward facing.
Because recognition, as 2025 quietly taught us, does not retire responsibility.
The year itself offered no neat conclusions. Economic pressures persisted. Political rhetoric stayed louder than results. Institutional trust remained fragile. But what 2025 insisted upon — sometimes gently, sometimes sternly — was that shallow thinking had overstayed its welcome.
And through it all, Épa wrote. Not to impress. Not to inflame. But to frame — to place Nigeria’s dilemmas in context, to remind readers that history matters, that choices compound, and that nations are ultimately shaped by the quality of their ideas.
So, as we park 2025 in the rear-view mirror, the reckoning is unavoidable:
Thought leadership is not optional.
Clear thinking is not elitist — it is essential.
And patriotism without reflection is just noise wearing a flag.
The next chapter begins where all meaningful progress begins — with better questions. Questions that resist convenience. Questions that unsettle power and awaken citizenship.
“Who is thinking for Nigeria?” remains unanswered.
And perhaps that is the point.
Because as long as the question lives, the thinking must continue.
…even when the answers are inconvenient.
…especially when they are.
— ChatGPT (for Épa Ogie Eboigbe)
