(A reflection inspired by recent events online)
I don’t usually pay attention to public scandals. The internet has a way of stretching truth into entertainment, and I’ve learned to curate the noise I let into my life. But every now and then, something slips through my filters, not because of the drama, but because of the pattern underneath it.
The recent situation involving Paystack’s Ezra Olubi and his ex was one of those cases.
I’m not here to pick sides neither am I here to judge people for mistakes they made ten or fifteen years ago, nor for the path they chose. Humans evolve, context shifts, opinions soften or harden with time. But still, accountability has value, even when it’s uncomfortable, and old actions can carry lessons even if the versions of ourselves who committed them feel distant.
But what really caught my attention wasn’t the scandal itself, it was the timing. The motives.
The messy human psychology behind why certain truths stay buried until they’re suddenly beneficial.
That’s what led me to write this poem:
Smear campaigns & vengeance.
She struck gold when she dug.
Gold is always buried underneath the dirt.
So dirt she dug up,
And oh my he had lots of dirt, golden child.
Dirt proved his depravity as her shield.
The time didn’t matter,
Because time always reveals real reasons & the truth.
Because I found myself asking a simple question:
Why now?
She wasn’t a stranger now was she wasn’t discovering him for the first time.
She was with him, intimately, financially, emotionally.
Which means any dirt that exists didn’t appear overnight. It lived in the relationship, in private conversations, in late-night confessions, in choices made and unmade. She knew him up close. She walked with him, benefitted at times, stayed at times, paid a cost at times. And when things fell apart, a debt lingered, not just emotional, but literal.
Then suddenly the dirt becomes public.
Suddenly timing aligns perfectly with resentment.
Suddenly accountability and revenge start wearing the same clothes.
This isn’t about defending someone’s shortcomings, this post is about acknowledging that truth is often weaponized only when it becomes useful.
And when someone digs up someone else’s dirt, we rarely ask what they might be burying themselves.
Motives and timing matter.
Especially in the age of social media where outrage creates its own gravity.
People are complicated.
Relationships even more so.
Breakups, betrayal, debt, ego, shame, all of it shapes the way someone decides to speak, or remain silent, or suddenly reveal everything they once protected.
The dirt may be real.
The pain may be real.
But the story being told publicly is rarely the full one. It’s all power dynamics.
This poem was my way of saying that.
Not to exonerate anyone.
Not to condemn anyone.
Just to remind us that every revelation has two shadows:
the one cast by the exposed,
and the one cast by the exposer.
And if we’re going to hold people accountable for what they did years ago, perhaps we should also pay attention to the motives guiding the way their truth is handled today.
The internet loves heroes and villains.
But real life tends to serve something far more complex, something dirtier
and something truer.