Singer Timaya has warned Nigerians that a careless vote could lock the country into another four years of pain, then went further. Any politician who makes citizens cry again, he said, should answer to God.
The Dem Mama star spoke on Wazobia FM in comments circulated on Saturday, September 19, 2026. He told listeners not to sell the next term for today’s plate of rice.
“Nobody is advising anybody. If what you want to eat today is what you are looking for to put in your pocket, that is your business. It is not just one day; it is another four years of hardship. If you know what is good, you have to vote right.”
He reserved his sharpest cut for office holders who, in his view, treat Nigeria as a workplace and somewhere else as home.
“When I travel abroad, I see what is going on there. Do you understand? And these people themselves, they don’t even stay in Nigeria. They live abroad. They just work in Nigeria, these politicians, but they are based abroad because that’s where their families are. So how do you expect them to think right? They are selfish, all of them. Very selfish.”
Incoming hopefuls and sitting officials, he said, keep promising to do better, leaving ordinary people guessing. For now, he added, the country is leaning on faith.
“You see the way God is trying to make everything possible now? We depend on God. If there is anybody who will make this country cry again, God should just take that person.”
Then he doubled down.
“Because the cry of the country right now is bigger than just one person. May God kill that person. Your selfish interest cannot be bigger than, or your family’s selfish interest cannot be bigger than millions of people in the country. No, man. At this point, it is bad.”
The language is raw, and it fits a singer who built his name on protest. Inetimi Alfred Odom, titled Egberi Papa 1 of Bayelsa, first shook the charts with Dem Mama, a song about the 1999 Odi killings in his home region. He has spent years arguing that government failure is not abstract when families bury their dead and lose their shops. This latest outburst is less a party endorsement than a public curse aimed at anyone, incoming or already seated, who treats millions as smaller than one household.