Being Nigerian is having a personal and longstanding relationship with disappointment. The power is always epileptic, so even when they give 20 hours of uninterrupted power, you learn to expect to be without power for the rest of the week. When the government does the people a favor, they wait for the proverbial left hand that takes more than the right hand can ever give. But disappointment is just one of the many lessons you learn in my country. Just like its people, Nigeria comprises a rich assortment of realities dedicated to tensioning, frustrating, and even killing you.

Police is (Not) Your Friend

Whether it is from mothers muttering, “God forbid” when a child proclaims they want to be a police officer when they grow up, the deceptive “bail is free” posters or the way ₦50 notes quickly exchange hands when a police officer is in the vicinity, the fact that police doesn’t give a hoot about you is something every Nigerian learns very early. There is this imperceptible fear and palpable discomfort that settles on the average young Nigerian when they encounter a policeman. You can’t help thinking, “What will the problem be now?” With the Nigerian Police, anything could be a problem.

• If you are a young man with tattoos, dreadlocks, or longer hair, in distressed jeans, or generally sporting a more progressive or artsy look, they label you a criminal, a cultist, or a yahoo boy.
• If you have an iPhone, you are a yahoo boy (or a girlfriend to a yahoo boy if you are female).
• If you have a remote job or a job that keeps you on your computer a lot, you are a yahoo boy/girl.
• If you have all your papers, you could still be in trouble for being so smug about it.
• The worst I have heard was the police calling a girl a prostitute after finding a g-string or what they called, “ashawo pant” (literally prostitute panties) in her box.

With the Nigerian police, you learn that justice can either come by snail mail or speed mail. It all depends on who you are, how rich you are, or who you know. Fairness is just a complexion; it doesn’t extend to our justice system. If you check on the right boxes, you can get justice for yourself or prevent it when you are the one at fault. If you are part of the hoi-polloi, then your battles are best left to God and his heavenly hosts.

J for Jungle, J for Justice

Nigeria is called a zoo for so many reasons.

• We live in a kakistocracy, where the worst of us rule the best of us
• Things don’t function normally here
• Government is so incompetent it most times makes us the most puerile and laughable lies to cover its tracks

However, one reason I believe the Z word suits so well is our penchant for jungle justice. In matters of commercial theft, the average Nigerian sees himself as judge and jury. Issues of petty theft are rarely ever left to the law or its long arms. We handle it locally, quickly, and firmly.

No police interference.

In the eyes of the prosecutors, the petty thief is a synecdoche for all thieves especially those in places of power. As they punish the criminal, they nurse the subconscious hope that one day, the more privileged thieves will be within their reach

Hook the sinner with a tire

Wash away sins with fuel

Send him to God in fire

Justice is only served when the offender is burnt offering. Every day is for the thief. Today, the owner smiled as charred remains were left behind.

Advance Fee Fraud: A Tall Tale of Colonizing the Colonizer

Just like a story about Italy wouldn’t be complete with pasta, pizza, and the mafia, no Nigerian story is complete without 419, yahoo boys, and the popular Nigerian Princes. While some Nigerians putting Nigeria on the map and doing exploits both home or abroad, there is yet another segment of the population that thrives on creating more problems for well-meaning Nigerians.

Yahoo boys.

They defraud people (usually foreigners) of money and worsen the negative perception of Nigerians. Many people make excuses for them and try to give reasons why they resorted to fraud.

They blame the government and pervasive unemployment

They blame poverty and favoritism in Nigeria’s employment sector.

However, the most laughable of all the excuses has to be declaring the advance fee fraud (yahoo) is revenge for colonization. In a textbook case of introspection illusion, they explain why it is right to defraud a group of people because of sins of faceless ancestors or people they are probably not even related to. They see themselves as misunderstood Robin Hoods armed with keyboards, CashApps, and honeyed voices, collecting reparations for crimes against humanity by disrespecting and degrading humanity in the most fundamental of ways. If on the off-chance it was done as payment for colonialism (and this is a very big if), it is safe to say they became the same evil they are fighting against. They stared at the abyss and the abyss stared back.

Of Stereotypes and Mimeomia

The fear of fitting into a stereotype.

Most Nigerians experience this whenever they have to work with a foreigner.

“So where are you from?” they ask

You consider lying. Ghana sounds like a good option. We practically fight like siblings over which country has the best Jollof. But your mind stops you. If they find out you lied, it will go down in the long list of negatives ascribed to Nigerians.

So you answer hesitantly, “Nigeria.”

“Oh.”

The silence hangs over you two and clings to your skin like saran wrap. You’ve been through this many times. Like pictures, this silence was worth a thousand words. You learn to constantly be on your best behavior, to always put on your good shoes. Others can make little mistakes, tell white lies and get away with it. With you, it becomes one of the many bad things Nigerians do. Others can “woo-hoo” and celebrate in public. With you, it becomes, Nigerians are always noisy.

Heck, even my phone keyboard suggests “Prince” as the next word when I type in “Nigerian”.

I have had language exchange friends block me without so much as a hasta luego after learning I was Nigerian. It was discouraging but I never blamed them. I met a lot of Nigerians on the app, masquerading as foreigners and looking for unsuspecting victims. You’d pair with a friend from say, Spain and after minutes of them sending contextually wrong, Google Translate-translated phrases, they go, “Babe abeg how far? I don tire.”

Some time ago I was talking to a good friend of mine who lives abroad. The friend in question is the son of an Eze (a king), ergo, a prince. We were talking about some issues he was having with his school. I told him to tell them he was a Nigerian Prince and we laughed, the kind of laughter that leaves a bitter aftertaste. That kind of joke was too expensive.

A family friend told my brothers and me how his friend in the UK started getting cold shoulders at the gym when people learned he was Nigerian.

“Na him fuck up,” he said, “he for just tell them say he be Ghanaian or African. Person no go bother am.” It made me realize sometimes being Nigerian means shrinking away from all things Nigerian and holding your Nigerianness close to your chest

Choose Your Poison: Female or Nigerian?

If you are both, then darling, you got the shortest end of the stick. (Sometimes) being female and Nigerian is to die a thousand deaths while still living.

At the eyes and hands of random, grasping randy men, at the hands of in-laws, and at the mocking keypads of random netizens.

No country is 100% safe for women (or anyone else for that matter). Nevertheless, Nigeria presents some realities that make it a harsher habitat.

Men that try to grab and grope all in a bid to get (and hold) your attention as they market their wares.

Whenever a young girl runs mad, people are unforgiving in their judgment. She is probably one of these girls with an affinity for yahoo boys and has met her expected end. Another day’s worth of justice served.

You get raped and speak out, cue the victim-blaming and debates on why you were out late or dressed a certain way.

Girls in other parts of the world can go out, get “white girl wasted” and come back unscathed. Here, going partying and TGIF-ing is enough to get you labeled a prostitute and raped with a pure water sachet as protection.

Children are little stars that light up their parent’s skies. Children are formed through the coital dance of man and woman. When the dance is performed often enough and a child is not formed, the problem lies with either the man or the woman, right?

Wrong, baby. Wrong.

The way (some) in-laws see it, it is the woman’s fault.

You know all these young girls and all the inter-house sports they do in the university. She probably contracted something that sterilized her.

Or maybe she ruptured something while trying to send back God’s gift.

Ok fine, maybe the couple has children but they are all female. It is still (seen as) the woman’s fault. They conveniently forget that in finding X, the man has been withholding the chromosomal Y.

In my part of the country, women have beautiful (pet) names like Obidiya (her husband’s heart). It takes your husband dying to realize a heart is not much use without a body. In-laws sweep in and scatter everywhere like fowls digging for food.

Village people…well, they just do what village people do.

People expect you to throw a lavish funeral party and feed them heartily even as you navigate your grief. People rarely stop to think about the fatherless children or the widow.

Her head is shaved

People test her patience at the funeral

She is forbidden from going to the market for three months

If she is a suspect in her husband’s death, they may force her to drink the water used in washing her husband’s corpse to prove her innocence

She wears all-white (or black or sometimes mauve) for six months as she mourns

She is not allowed to spend a night away from home (knowingly or unknowingly) within the six-month mourning period.

After her husband is laid to rest, she is expected to spend her days in contrite widowhood, never really talking, smiling, or succeeding as much lest she be tagged her husband’s killer or the woman that grew wings as soon as her husband died.

Losing a husband is often a litmus test for loyalty.

People that were civil before now become abrasive.

Some friends pull away, frenemies reveal themselves and enemies act more overtly

Some women avoid you for fear of losing their husband (to you)

Patient debtors metamorphose and bang down your doors calling for their money. After all, it is not their fault your husband died.

The perfect widow is a black origami folding inward at all times, moving only when pulled, sitting pretty at other times. Her (protection, defense) is gone. She has to sit calmly in the rain and bear it all with a smile.

Brain Drain/Fuite de Cerveaux/Fuego de Cerebro

All the times I have come across the word “brain drain” be it in Spanish lessons or while preparing for my French exams, I can’t help but think about Nigeria and her long-distance relationship with most of her citizens. Today, the Nigerian dream is to leave the country and love Nigeria from afar.

And why not?

Why stay in a country where meritocracy is sacrificed at the altar of tribalism?

Why stay in a country where nothing is assured, be it security, employment, or your sanity?

Why stay in a country that continuously strives to put its citizens at a global disadvantage? A country intent on winning the retrogression Olympics.

Why stay in a country that does not understand that the citizens are the customers of the government and deserve to be treated as such?

Why stay in a country whose education system is filled with sociopaths, the sadistic, and the incompetent? A country where students have to work with expired reagents and “just fill in the expected color change from their textbook.”

Why stay in a country where lecturers perceive intelligent students as threats and frustrate them accordingly? A country where a lecturer tells you “A is for God, B is for me, C is for whoever works hard and D and F is for all of you.”

Why stay in a country where most people are tyrants in their own little office, space, and corner, owing salaries, exploiting people, and plotting evil but in the same oppressive breath blaming the government for being unfeeling?

Why stay in a country where you can be lumped up as “one of the wicked rich”, be kidnapped and killed for it even when you made your money through honest work?

Why stay in a country where mental health issues are primarily seen as manifestations of demonic possession, effects of hard drugs, or generally seen as you “joining bad gang”?

Why stay in a country where you are killed for boldly asking for your fundamental human rights?

Why stay in a country where they pay medical doctors peanuts and cowries as salary and hazard allowance while politicians fatten themselves and collect ridiculous allowances?

Why stay in a country where the leaders of ancient years displace the leaders of today and hurriedly devour tomorrow’s yam?

Why stay in a country when every bill passed by the government makes it obvious that to feed home, you have to leave home?

The Pressure Trinity

“Apply pressure” is not just a way to stop bleeding. In Nigeria, it is a way of life. The cycle is this:

Success is not complete if pressure is not applied, man. If you no loud your money well, you never start.

It is what it is.

For a lot of people, this phenomenon is mostly seen on social media. With Nigerians, every day is social media. The effects of the “apply pressure phenomenon” are so far-reaching they creep into the microcosm of the family. Parents dropping tidbits about “people your own age” building houses in the village and marrying before thirty and slyly asking how your 9–5 is going.

Pressure is not only applied by your peers, your family do it too. People are pushed into crime or desperate situationships because of the pressure to succeed, feel “among” and like they have come of age. After one too many Christmases spent avoiding questions like O nwelu onye na a ju ka i kpobalu akpoba, ma i na-ele ele? (Is anyone asking you out/ asking for your hand in marriage), you throw caution to the wind and get with anyone. After one too many Saturdays spent indoors, shaming your mother at the village meeting, making her the laughing stock of her CWO meeting, and depriving her of the joy of being a grandmother, you go on a manhunt and gun down any wildebeest on the horizon. As the desirable no dey available, make we kuku desirable the available.

After one too many Christmases spent opening malt, serving food at your agemates’ parties, calling him and his entourage “Oga/Sir” and asking if there is “anything for the boys” for good measure, you learn to make plans. You vow to blow big time no matter the consequences. If them no cut soap for you, you buy am in bulk, cut give yourself.

The next December must be one to remember.

Onwa nke gi ga etiwariri (your own star must shine).

You must land like Land Rover.

Impact must be felt.

Pressure must surely be applied.

Money Maketh Man

In Nigeria, you can do things in one of two ways:

Nigeria is a machine that needs to be oiled time and time again with money for it to function properly. Money (and bribery) is the lifeblood of this country’s operations. You or your morals have no say in the matter.

• To drive through some roundabouts, you pay.
• Bus and Keke drivers have to “greet” policemen when they drive through specific spots.
• To get your NIN, you have to grease some palms.
• Sometimes to pass some courses (even with all your studying and intellectual abilities), you have to see some lecturers

If you insist on clinging to your morals a.k.a doing things the hard way then:

• They impound your car. You end up wasting time and paying more
• They impound your bus/Keke. You end up going to the station where you waste time and pay more.
• People start queueing for their NIN from as early as 2 a.m. NIMC officials start work at 9 a.m., insist on working only till noon, and giving out 25 NINs daily. Correct for multiple incidences of network failure and you end up getting your NIN in the year Two Thousand and Twenty Never.
• You fail the course religiously until a) you change schools b) the lecturer dies or retires c) the school replaces the lecturer

So pick your poison, bribery, or hours (and even days) spent pleading with a disgruntled civil servant to do her job while she files her nails and pointedly ignores you.

Humor, the Opium of the Masses

But cheer up, it’s not all bad news.

The Nigerian reality is land marked by frustration, kidnappings, bribery, and corruption, but there is a silver lining. There is something that keeps us going.

Laughter.

Humor is a Nigerian citizen. That’s why we have a lot of comedians and comedy skit actors. To the average Nigerian, comedy is like cocaine numbing the pain and disillusionment (s)he feels at the sorry state of affairs in the country. So it is not surprising that the comedy industry is highly lucrative. Whatever a Nigerian can laugh about, he can overcome. We see humor even in the most dismal and abysmal of situations. Nigeria is a running joke, so instead of feeling sorry for yourself, you might as well see the humor in every valley. With introspection and serious thinking, comes depth. With depth, comes pain, anger, and other low-vibrational emotions. Humor is superficial.

Just what the doctor ordered.

No wonder Naija Twitter is so popular. Everything is just cruise and eternal vibes.

We make jokes about the government and share memes on how the entire animal kingdom is embezzling money in Nigeria (this is not a euphemism).

We poke fun at the embarrassing gaffes our politicians commit on national (and international) TV.

We make fun of each other and the Nigerian reality in general.

It is what we need after a long day of Nigerian-ing and surviving yet another day of awful government policies, bandits, bad roads, bills, frustration, unemployment, village people, and bombings. Who seriousness epp?

.

Nigerian Politics: A Story of Executhieves, Legislooters, and Judisharing

Nigeria is what I like to call an autocratic cum gerontocratic kakistocracy masquerading as a democracy.

We are ruled by the worst of us.

A critical segment of that demographic are senior citizens.

And boy do they rule with iron fists!

On the surface, it is a democracy. In reality, it is government of a few by the select and for the privileged.

A demoncrazy arrangement.

Our politicians are cancers eating up the very core of our beautiful nation. Here, no one goes into politics to make the country better. Everyone goes there with the aim of cutting their own wedge of the ever-diminishing national cake.

We joke and tease each other about it.

We make songs about it.

Heck, sometimes we enable it.

“Make im thief money. Wahala no dey there. The main thing be say make im work”

We are so realistic about the corruptive tendencies of our leaders we hold them to very low standards. We expect them to embezzle funds on the condition they do a little som’n som’n for us. And somehow these guys still find a way to disappoint our subterranean expectations. They steal outrageous sums of money in the most confounding of ways and make up abhorrent lies to cover their tracks.

Nigeria is the only country where rats enter the 001’s office, snakes swallow ₦36 million ($72,000) and dragons cart away $486 million. The country claims to be democratic but most people in critical positions are related to each other. When you speak up about how the country is being looted within an inch of her life, of how we are so mired in debt that the next seven generations will pay dearly for the sins of the father, you are locked up or worse, in a puff of political abracadabra, you disappear.

In God’s Name

Alas, we come to the end! Any story about Nigeria would not be complete without prayer or mentioning God. You cannot divorce religion from the Nigerian experience and identity. The two are inextricably linked. While many Nigerians practice their religions earnestly and faithfully, religion here can be summarized into two broad concepts:

• A barter system where God’s blessings are payment for good behavior
• The commodification of hope where religious leaders (sometimes) rob and mislead the hopeful faithful.

A lot of the goings-on in Nigerian churches make you understand why God says judgment will begin in his house. People have done and endured the unspeakable in the name of God.

Deliverance services that are more or less an episode of Friday Night Raw

Sleeping with the anointed in hopes that the oil wey dey their head will cure barrenness, chronic spinsterhood, and all sorts of afflictions

The rape of young boys, young girls, and women and watching your pastor marry your wife.

The list is endless.

If Christ came back and landed in Nigeria, he’d wear his arms out from whipping. His house is now a literal and figurative marketplace. Services/masses are more or less an ego trip for the rich as spiritual leaders dole out blessings according to the size of your envelope/offerings. They are so quick to call for offerings and tithes, so vocal about sexual immorality and depravity but as blind as Bartimaeus and silent as Zachariah when it comes to the sins of our leaders.

Christ was a leader and not a ruler. He enthroned leadership through service especially when he washed the feet of his apostles. Unfortunately, Nigerians can sometimes cherry-pick God’s words and daisy chain verses that suit them. Religious leaders live highfalutin lives, fatten themselves from church coffers and double back and ask the congregation to intensify their prayers when they (the congregation) fall on hard times.

The average Nigerian brandishes his religiosity, piety, and spirituality like a flag.

In a country where mental health issues are trivialized and your life is cheaper than kulikuli, religion and its repetitive rituals keep you sane. Even if a thousand fall dead around you and accidents claim the lives of all around you, his words assure you you will be fine.

Even though you walk through the valley of the shadow of Nigeria’s labor market, you shall not fear employment. For you, he shall turn the labor market into the favor market and prepare a table for you in front of your haters.

So you cling convulsively to God and his promises. Even if things don’t work out in this life, if you obey his rules, dress a certain way, punctuate each sentence with “beloved” and abstain from certain things, your life in the afterlife will be a bomb staycation. Your life as a Nigerian living in Nigeria may be worth nothing but the knowledge that Jesus loves you and we are all citizens of heaven gives you hope, hope to stay alive for yet another day.

On this note, may we share the grace?

Originally published on Medium.

Like what you read? Check out Devil Spawns and the Fear of the Unknown and Love, the Game of Sore Losers.