Being Nigerian

Certain features that come with being Nigerian sometimes depend on the weather, it is in some cases, leaving your home expecting to walk into something much larger than a puddle, more like a flood, because your government refuses to fix your drainages but that’s okay because you’ll get a couple of rain boots.

Being Nigerian sometimes is getting stuck in traffic and watching child beggars smile with their rotting teeth , sticking out their rubber plates for you to put a bit of change in for them. After such occurrence, being Nigerian is going home feeling grateful and privileged that you can at least feed even though you do not know where your next rent will come from. It’s also having blind people beg you through car windows and feeling skeptical to give because they might be faking it or could even be witches and wizards.

Being Nigerian is also waking up , putting on the Tv and receiving news that armed bandits infiltrated a school in northern Nigeria and stole hundreds of children, watching their parents wail and weep while no one in government bats an eye, instead focuses on criminalizing ransom payments with no plans of rescuing the children.

Being Nigerian is using social media and seeing posts captioned “Nigeria failed you…” because someone died as a result of police brutality or lack of access to quality healthcare.

That’s not all, being Nigerian is also finding out that the government has been hoarding feeding palliatives meant for the people and watching people make a trendy dance out of such incompetence. It is also making the most hilarious memes when we see politicians run out of the national assembly with our mace, and when we read that a monkey could have stolen the internally generated revenue of a government institution.

It’s exhilarating really, it’s afrobeat and zanku, it’s amala, and jollof rice at wedding receptions, but it can be even more daunting. Being Nigerian is watching the economy fade out the middle class, sieving them between between the high and low class, more commonly the latter unless you have some groundbreaking idea that gives you millions.

Being Nigerian is scrolling through your twitter feed and seeing pictures of your president boarding his jet for a medical leave and stumbling upon other images of hospitals in various states of the country hanging intravenous fluids for patients on tree branches.

Did I forget to mention being Nigerian is going to a peaceful protest and getting shot by the Army? Subsequently, being Nigerian is watching investigations on the shootings play out with different parties blaming each other, with others acting as though it was a game of Russian roulette. It’s also calling for justice and never being heard. To be Nigerian is to have narcissists and suspected terrorists who have propagated violence severally and publicly, still seated in government. Being Nigerian is also watching your president answer economic related questions with thoughts on how people want to remove him from office.

To be Nigerian is to live in a supposed democracy but never actually experience it.