By Wadzani Dauda Palnam, PhD
Habeeb Hamzat (born 10 May 2005), known professionally as Peller. This is not written to condemn you, but to clarify what your viral moment truly revealed.
You offered a ₦500,000 camera job and said applicants must have a Master’s degree.
They showed up.
You filmed them.
Then you edited the footage and turned their presence into performance.
The internet laughed. You trended.
But the joke did not expose the scholars.
It exposed a cultural sickness and perhaps a quiet insecurity masked as confidence.
You didn’t need scholars for a job.
You needed them for content.
You used the dignity of their degrees to lift the illusion of your own relevance.
But success that depends on someone else’s shame is not success.
It is insecurity with a spotlight.
You filmed scholars who wanted work, using tools invented by people who once sat through lectures, took exams, earned degrees, and chose to build.
The platform that made you trend, TikTok, was founded by Zhang Yiming, a Chinese software engineer who graduated from Nankai University in 2005 with a degree in software engineering.
The algorithms that gave you views were built by developers trained in Python, C++, machine learning, and data architecture.
The camera you held was designed by engineers who studied optics and system integration.
The monetisation you enjoy is powered by business models drafted by analysts with deep backgrounds in economics, policy, and communication systems.
You mocked the scholar.
But you owe your visibility to the very minds you mocked.
To the scholars who stood in line that day, you did not lose.
You came with courage. You came to work. You came in faith.
And you left with your honour intact.
You were not props. You were people.
And history will remember who stood with dignity when the crowd was laughing.
To the custodians of education in Nigeria, the silence is becoming permission.
When scholars are mocked and no institution speaks, you give the impression that dignity is negotiable.
Education cannot be a national pillar on paper and a national punchline in practice.
If universities will not defend those they trained, who will?
What you tolerate today is what your students will believe tomorrow.
And to students like Andrew, those studying in dim rooms, those waking early to walk to class, those sitting in crowded lecture halls with flickering lights, let this not discourage you.
You are not wasting your time. You are laying a foundation.
Your effort is not invisible. It is simply not trending yet.
“A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion.” — Proverbs 18:2
Education was never just about getting a job. It was about capacity.
The ability to build systems. To challenge ignorance. To offer solutions.
You don’t need to trend to be relevant. And relevance that requires someone else’s humiliation will never last.
Let this moment remind us. The world’s most powerful tools were built by people who sat in classrooms.
Mocking them will not stop their impact.
#RespectEducation #AcademicDignity #CustodiansMustSpeak #ZhangYiming #ThinkBeforeYouMock #Nigeria