Have Money or You Go Suffer: Celebrity, Allegiance and Wealth as a Shield 

Siraheem and Teni’s new track, Trust Fund, does not attempt subtlety. From its opening seconds, it declares its thesis. The intro pulls from Davido’s viral meme — “omo in this life have money o, or you go suffer” — and that line sets the tone for the rest of the three-minute record. Across the track, Siraheem and Teni channel generational wealth and, more pointedly, the ability of wealth to place a person above laws and social norms.

“Networking, nepo baby no dey play with lapo baby, I go call daddy if police stop me, don’t touch me, Land Cruiser for December with my bouncer/they go bounce you.”

Despite the colorful selection of words, there are no metaphors doing heavy lifting on this track.

The posture they adopt is not theatrical — it reflects the social positions they already occupy. When Siraheem says “nepo baby,” he is not invoking Hollywood-style industry favouritism; in the Nigerian context, the term has evolved alongside “trust fund kid” to mean children of extreme wealth whose inheritance functions as armour and safety net in a country where economic precarity is the norm.

Trust Fund does not just observe this hierarchy; it revels in it. It takes pride in the particularly brazen exclusivity that money affords in Nigeria. The message is sharpened by the fact that Siraheem Okoya is the son of the Nigerian billionaire industrialist and founder of Eleganza Group, Chief Razaq Akanni Okoya. The public first encountered him through his 2025 single, Bad Bitch Syndrome, an unironic and widely mocked release that nonetheless generated massive attention. Beyond music, he serves as an executive director at his father’s company. In other words, he is not role-playing affluence. Aided by Teni, he is delighting in his inheritance.

The track’s logic is straightforward: if you have money, you can do anything. More precisely, if your parents have money, you can do so without consequence. Wealth functions simultaneously as launchpad, safety net, and shield. 

And it is here that Trust Fund becomes more than braggadocio. It becomes documentation.

In Nigeria, money buys protection and proximity to power because the system is structurally unequal and deeply corrupt. The wealth gap has produced a society in which the rich are often revered regardless of how their wealth was acquired. Lax law enforcement and shifting moral standards allow the wealthy to operate above the rules — skipping queues, evading consequences, moving with impunity. Wealth functions as an insulator. It confers dignity, access, and power that frequently operates without restraint. The hierarchy is visible, normalised, and, in many spaces, openly glorified.

We even project this insulation outward. In 2023, former Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu was sentenced in the United Kingdom to nine years and eight months under the Modern Slavery Act for organ trafficking — the first conviction of its kind. In 2025, President Tinubu dispatched a delegation to London seeking his transfer back to Nigeria. The request was promptly denied. The episode was brief but instructive: it revealed both the expectation that influence should secure protection and the shock when it does not.

Yet money purchases more than institutional cover. It also buys public affection.

Consider the viral video of Teni reacting to Davido’s Grammy loss, wailing that the Grammys had failed to award “her helper.” It may have been intended as comedy, but it illuminated something deeper. The language of “helper” positions wealth as benevolence, and proximity to wealth as potential salvation.

Another viral clip showed “20 strangers” gathered around Siraheem Okoya, posing questions about wealth as though consulting an oracle. Someone asked him for a giveaway. The reverential posture underscored that Nigerians bow — sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally — in the presence of wealth.

The comment sections of influencers like Nikos Living (Adenike Adeleke), daughter of Osun State Governor Ademola Adeleke and cousin to Davido, the adulation surrounding Temi Otedola’s lavish wedding content, the enthusiastic longing directed at the lifestyles of politicians’ children such as Joaquin Wike and the Adeleke siblings — all follow a similar pattern. Wealth does not merely attract attention; it commands allegiance.

And allegiance, in Nigeria, often curdles into unwavering public absolution for almost any offence. The most recent illustration is Davido’s child custody saga. Following a court hearing between Davido and Sophia Momodu over custody of their daughter Imade, Davido took to X and Instagram to berate the opposing lawyer publicly, tagging her and writing: “I disgraced you in the courtroom … I was teaching you your work … you couldn’t even take it, then you went on to mention my son… you’re a wicked human being, you’re the worst lawyer ever.” Punuka Attorneys condemned what it described as inflammatory commentary and intimidation, calling on the Nigerian Bar Association to intervene.

This incident joins a longer list of controversies; from his 2015 clash with Sophia and her uncle, Dele Momodu to Tiwa Savage’s 2024 police petition alleging bullying and threats. Yet his fan base remains largely intact, ever ready to defend him in the face of his “haters”. 

The same pattern shadows Burna Boy. His ‘No Sign of Weakness’ tour in North America faced cancellations officially attributed to low ticket sales but unfolding amid backlash from a Denver concert where he halted his performance to eject a woman for sleeping. There was no visible remorse. He has a record of publicly mistreating fans — kicking one who attempted to hug him, ejecting another for not dancing — alongside more serious allegations involving gun violence. Still, Nigerian audiences consistently forgive. It took the intervention of the foreign market before even modest repercussions materialized.

This is the cultural climate into which Trust Fund arrives.

When Siraheem and Teni boast about calling daddy if the police stop them, it does not register as satire. If anything, it is reportage. The song celebrates a hierarchy Nigerians already recognise: money as shield, money as access, money as exemption.

In that sense, Trust Fund is a blunt reflection. It captures a country where wealth protects, where fans confuse admiration with allegiance, and where forgiveness flows freely, provided the offender remains rich enough. The song does not invent this reality. It simply says it plainly: in this life, have money — or you go suffer.