There is something my good friend, Philomena, has: a blinding faith that shines through whenever sapa is about to squeeze the life out of us. “We will go to the cinema tomorrow.” “We will eat out next week.” Whenever I ask how the money for these outings will be sorted, she calmly responds, “It will come.” And somehow, it always does.

There is something about having a belief so strong that others have no choice but to believe in you too. If you’re Nigerian, you already know the country is going through it. There is anger, tension, hunger, and depression in the air—despair so thick in the air you can almost taste it. On bus rides, in offices, in markets, everyone has a story, a lament about how the times have not been kind to them.

I often wonder about those who must sell before they can eat. What happens to the cashew nut seller when he goes two days without a single sale? In Ilorin, I have seen the weary faces of children and women hawking. The Baba elerans in the market sitting behind slabs of meat in Oja Oba, looking drained, eager to sell at a loss just so they can take something home. What happens when they don’t sell at all? Children have accosted me begging me to buy a piece of what they are selling with tears in their eyes.

When I moved to Lagos, I couldn’t help but notice the small-chops sellers navigating traffic, their foil packages clutched tightly as they chase after moving vehicles. Sweat glistening on their faces, veins crisscrossing their arms. Once, I saw a man carrying four tubers of yam inside traffic! He trudged after cars the moment any of the passengers or drivers signifies interest. I wonder about them. What happens if they don’t make a sale? Who eats the unsold small chops? Do they have children? Do those children go to school? How do they eat? Where do they sleep?

One time, on the train from Ibadan, I momentarily turned from the movie I was watching to take in the environment. It was mostly greenery, mud huts and expanse of land. Then, as the train chugged through the slums of Agege, I started seeing shanties packed with entire families. A man on the train loudly said to his friend, “You know they have no toilets, ba?”

“So how do they do their business?” his friend asked.

The answer came almost immediately. A grown man, hard black buttocks bared to the train, straining as he pushed out fat clumps of waste. Each flex of his muscles told a story of indignity. I stared. I saw women with threadbare clothes standing outside their shacks. I wondered about them and their babies. Babies in soiled diapers. Naked children holding on to their mums. Naked babies seated in the midst of dirt, disease, death. What do they do when it rains? I thought of malaria. I thought of the insects. I thought of the vulnerabilities they endure living in such conditions.

They remind me of the woman employed to clean the compound in my former apartment. Each time she came, she would go door to door, asking if anyone had dirty clothes for her to wash. She also did in-house cleaning on the side. When I started engaging her, I noticed something: her breathing was heavy, wheezy, laboured.

“Are you okay?” I asked once.

“Yes, yes,” she answered hastily.

Every time I gave her my clothes to wash, guilt gnawed at me. I tried to ease it in other ways. Mostly by engaging her in conversations but I only end up feeling worse. Lately, I’ve been trying to reach her. No response. No returned calls. I hope she is well. I really do hope.

Hope is what has carried Nigerians through decades of suffering, holding them steady to weather through the nonchalance of our leaders. Just like it carried my friend. It used to carry me too. Not anymore. A few days ago, my neighbour asked why my writings always seem to carry the same theme. I told him I don’t do it intentionally—these thoughts creep into my words before I even realize it. Here, in this space, my weekly musings seem to revolve around the gnashing of teeth, the struggles, the stress, the madness of this country.

O ti sumi.

Back in the university, even with the stress of assignments, I could still write humorous pieces. But now? I sincerely hope that lightness will return. This piece was initially titled Kashamadupe Chronicles when I first drafted the first three paragraphs in 2023. But dupe fun kini? Why should I be thankful that I’m not suffering as badly as those I’ve mentioned? Nigeria is like football; anything can happen. Anyone can wake up tomorrow and find that a new law has rendered them homeless.

Just last week, Twitter was on fire with people protesting insane rent hikes. Agents are being extra, charging ridiculous fees, but as someone who nearly blasphemed out of frustration during house hunting, I can tell you this: agents rarely pocket up to 40% of those charges. The bulk of it goes to the landlords.

Nigeria is crazy. Lagos is worse. Lagos is the devil’s bootyhole, and bootyholes are full of shit.

That same week, history got rewritten. A former head of state, responsible for derailing Nigeria’s future, finally admitted to what we’ve all known for over three decades. Some people called him brave. Others spun conspiracy theories. And then, in the same breath, tribalistic fingers pointed, venomous ethnic slurs filled the air.

Why? Because a man confessed to what we already knew?

So, should we simply go about our merry way and ignore how this singular act altered Nigeria’s trajectory? It’s disheartening to see Nigerians not as outraged as they should be. Instead, they are fixated on the petty squabbles between an internet urchin who parades around in underwear, flexing biceps, and a former OAP who has seemingly left his glory days behind. Nigerians.

If Nigeria were a person, it would be a patient with Complex PTSD, Bipolar Disorder, and Dissociative Identity Disorder—constantly fluctuating between moments of hope and deep despair, stuck in cycles of self-sabotage and forgetting past traumas only to relive them again.

We have endured wave after wave of tariff hikes: data, electricity, bank fees, and beyond. And what do we do? Turn them into memes. Nigerians. We get served shit and then ask for extra plates. Nigerians? We allow shenanigans to go unpunished, and the more shenan goes scot-free, the more they return to shenan-again.

I don’t know if I’d call it collective low self-esteem, but if a therapist were to assess Nigeria, they would likely toss their notepad into the air in sheer frustration, completely bewildered by our insistence on reliving and marinating in undignified, toxic situations. That is, of course, if the therapist doesn’t end up needing therapy themselves.

Nigeria, I am tired of you.