Rapper and singer Oludemilade Martin Alejo, popularly known as Ycee, says Nigeria’s education sector is decaying because the government keeps prioritizing the wrong things.
He spoke on a recent episode of the Afropolitan Podcast, calling out a trend where young artists churn out “meaningless content” just to go viral.
Ycee described the moment as an “Olodo uprising”, a time when shallow entertainment, anti-intellectualism, and virality get rewarded while thoughtful, brain-stimulating work struggles for attention.
“The society is not celebrating academic excellence. We are trying so much to accommodate unintelligent and ignorant people because we don’t want them to feel bad. They are now behaving like the majority,” he said.
“It’s not just Yahoo culture anymore, we now have ‘Peller culture’. There is a massive attack on the educational system in Nigeria. Leadership is prioritizing the things that are not important.”
Ycee also got personal about his mental health. He revealed that he was diagnosed with a mental health condition in 2020 during lockdown, and it forced him to pause his music career.
“In 2020 I got diagnosed with a mental health condition during the lockdown. I spent six months in London, in and out of hospital for about three months,” he explained.
“I had to come back to Nigeria because of my visa. Re-entering the mental health system here in Lagos was a very, very long six years. I was on medication, hospitalized several times, and I’m still in therapy.”
Ycee’s comments come as debates around content quality, education funding, and mental health support continue to dominate conversations in Nigeria’s creative space.
