Lapo vs Nepo: Online trend or Mirror of Nigeria’s Unequal Society

By Esther Olatimehin

In Nigeria, the greatest currency is not talent, discipline, intelligence or even Naira, it’s access. Who you know, where you were born, and what your last name can buy you, possibly determine how far you’ll go in life. However, lately, the uncomfortable truth has found its way online, even though many have referenced it to be a joke, but can be one of the most honest social commentaries of our time: “Lapo vs Nepo.”

What is Lapo vs Nepo?

It emerged as an online banter. A simple contrast between the “Lapo”, shorthand for low privilege, and the “Nepo”, the nepotistic babies who are born into wealth, connections, and comfort. But behind the humour lies something much in depth like a nation where your background does more to determine your future than your ambition.

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While it might remain funny, it’s also familiar. Because every Nigerian knows what it feels like to struggle through a system that was never designed to be fair. The Lapo vs Nepo trend didn’t come from nowhere. It came from years of watching the same surnames rotate power, or submitting job applications that go unopened while someone else gets the role because “my dad knows someone there.” It is the voice of a generation that’s tired of pretending that all it takes to succeed is “hard work.” and the frustration of living in a society that has been rigged from birth.

A Lapo works twice as hard, learns ten times more, and still waits longer to get half of the recognition required. They have to go through bad schools, poor healthcare, expensive rent, and unreliable transportation just to earn a meagre salary. The Lapo’s hustles are not meant for luxury, but for survival. They’ve only dreamt of “soft life” but each night they pray for steady light and a landlord who doesn’t increase rent overnight.

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Meanwhile, the Nepo class often floats above the chaos. It’s not their fault, they were born into it. But, it’s hard to ignore the smoothness with which they enter rooms others have spent decades knocking on. Their lives are cushioned. Their failures are forgiven. They fall, and someone catches them. A Lapo falls, and the ground becomes home.

The danger is not in the existence of privilege. Privilege is a fact of life. The danger is in denial, pretending the race is fair when the lanes aren’t equal. Gaslighting the Lapos with phrases like “we all have 24 hours” or “just work harder.” As though waking up at 4:30 a.m. to beat traffic so your Nepo boss won’t sack you, isn’t hard enough.

Even worse, the system that rewards Nepo status is not limited to the private sector. It is institutional. Job slots are being sold under the table, and contract deals shared among families of the powerful, the Nigerian system is built on connections, not competence. Merit is just a currency only the poor are forced to spend.

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So when people laugh at Lapo vs Nepo skits online, understand that it’s not just jokes, but inequality at its peak. Young Nigerians only use the banter as a laughing mechanism to cope with the silent, generational injustice that defines their everyday life. It is the act of suffering out loudly, but wrapped up with hash tags and humour because the truth is too heavy to bear.

And yet, even amidst the noise, the real tragedy is that nothing changes. The same structures remain in place. Power circulates among the same names. Children of the poor still study by candlelight, while children of the rich skip NYSC and fly to Canada.

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But maybe this conversation is the beginning. Maybe when young Nigerians start pointing out the imbalance jokingly, they’re also in a way beginning to challenge it. To question it. To say, “this system is not only unfair, it is unsustainable.”

The question now is: Should we keep laughing? Or do we listen to what the laughter is really saying? Because the truth is, in Nigeria, it has never been Lapo vs Nepo. It has always been the country vs inequality.