Emotional abuse is also repeatedly telling someone that something hurts you and watching them continue to do it anyway.

Sometimes it is making someone feel like they are “too emotional” for reacting to things that genuinely hurt them.

Sometimes it is withholding affection, communication, reassurance or basic consideration until the person is so exhausted that they start questioning whether they were asking for too much in the first place.

It is also knowing exactly what makes someone anxious and continuing to do it and then calling them insecure when they react.

Even, it is watching someone cry and being completely comfortable with it.

And I the most damaging part is how much it can make you question every single thing about yourself.

You start thinking, maybe I’m too sensitive. Maybe I’m needy. Maybe I’m asking for too much. Maybe I should communicate better. Maybe I should be less emotional. Maybe I should stop complaining. Maybe I should just accept that this is how they are.

So you keep adjusting yourself. You keep making yourself smaller. You become quieter. You stop bringing certain things up because you already know how the conversation will go. You convince yourself that if you just become easier to love, they’ll finally love you the way you need (lol they won't, audacity will just get bigger)

Then guess what??

One day you realise you’ve spent so much time trying to become someone who can endure their behaviour that you don’t even recognise yourself anymore... You've lost yoursel.

There is something so painful, tragic, heartbreaking about having to repeatedly explain your pain to someone you love. Because eventually, it stops being about whether they understand.

They understand.

They heard you the first time.

They saw you cry.

They saw what it did to you.

They knew.

And they still chose to do it.

I don’t think people talk enough about how unsafe you can feel around someone you love. How you can technically be with someone and still feel completely alone. How someone can tell you they love you and talk about a future with you while simultaneously creating a present that makes you constantly question whether you are wanted there.

And maybe that’s why emotional abuse is so difficult to recognise. Because sometimes the person hurting you isn’t cruel all the time.

Sometimes they are incredibly sweet.

Sometimes they make you laugh.

Sometimes they hold you.

Sometimes they tell you they love you.

Sometimes they talk about marriage and forever and everything you’re going to do together (cold zobo)

And then they do something that completely breaks you. And you’re left trying to reconcile the person who made you feel loved with the person who made you feel worthless. That’s what fucks with your head the most.

You don’t know whether to leave because you keep thinking about the good moments.

You don’t know whether you’re being dramatic because they aren’t horrible every second.

You don’t know whether you’re being unfair because they say they love you.

You don’t know whether your hurt is valid because someone else might look at the relationship and say, “But they seem so nice.”

Meanwhile you’re privately falling apart.

And I don’t think love should make you constantly afraid of being hurt.

I don’t think you should have to beg someone to care that they’re hurting you.

I don’t think you should have to cry hard enough before your feelings become real to them.

I don’t think “I love you” should be something that someone says while behaving in ways that repeatedly make you feel like you are impossible to love. And I don’t think asking for communication, transparency, consistency, reassurance, consideration and emotional safety is asking for too much.

Maybe the saddest part is realising that you can love someone deeply and still have to admit that the way they love you is hurting you.

Alsooo sometimes loving someone doesn’t make the hurt hurt less. Sometimes it makes it worse.

Don't wait till everywhere blur ml😭

Sit with that. Actually sit with it, because I need you uncomfortable before you keep reading.

We have built and I mean built, brick by brick, generation by generation a society where the theft of an object is treated as a more urgent moral emergency than the theft of a person’s body. A boy steals garri because his stomach has been empty for two days and somehow that is the crime that gets the mob, the matchet, the tyre, the petrol, the phone camera recording his last seconds for content.

A man rapes a woman and somehow that is the crime that gets due process. That gets “let’s hear both sides.” That gets a SAN, an adjournment, a bail application, a “the evidence was insufficient,” slowly everyone forgets her name while everyone still remembers his.

I am not saying stealing is good. I want that on record before the “so you’re justifying crime” people arrive in my comments with their whole chest. Desperation doesn’t make theft moral, it makes it explicable. There’s a difference, and if you can’t hold both of those thoughts in your head at once that’s a you problem, not a me problem. What I am saying is that we have decided, as a collective, unspoken, deeply felt thing, that property is sacred and women are optional. That a poor man’s hunger is a bigger threat to social order than a woman’s bodily autonomy. And once you see that, you cannot unsee it.

Even the poorest rapist has more rights than the poorest thief.

Think about what “innocent until proven guilty” actually gets deployed for in this country. It gets deployed for him. The man accused of rape gets the presumption. He gets people saying “we don’t know the full story,” “she probably wanted something from him,” “let’s wait for the facts.” He gets character witnesses testifying about what a good boy he’s always been, how respectful, how well brought up, as though rapists announce themselves in advance, as though evil has a dress code. He gets bail, most of the time. He gets a trial that can be dragged out for years, deposition after deposition, until the survivor is so exhausted, so financially and emotionally drained, that she drops the case herself, and everyone breathes a sigh of relief that feels suspiciously like relief for him, not for her.

Meanwhile, the thief… especially if he is poor, especially if he cannot afford a lawyer, especially if he has no one who will vouch for his character because poverty tends to isolate people from the kind of respectability that gets you vouched for, gets none of that grace. He gets a market crowd. He gets “ole! ole!.” He gets people who were praying five minutes ago now filming him being set on fire, uploading it to WhatsApp status like it’s content, like it’s a public service announcement, like watching a man burn to death over a stolen phone is justice and not just cruelty wearing justice’s clothes.

I need you to remember Andrew Ogbuja. In 2022, a Benue State High Court acquitted him of raping and killing 13 year old Ochanya Ogbanje Elayefa, citing insufficient evidence, MIND YOUUU no DNA test was ever conducted, the autopsy reports contradicted each other, and despite the hashtag, despite the national outrage, despite everyone knowing her name for a season, he walked.

I need you to remember Timothy Omotoso, the Nigerian pastor accused of trafficking and raping multiple girls over years in South Africa, acquitted on all charges this year after an eight year trial that outlasted the attention span of an entire country.

I need you to remember Senator Ishaku Abbo, a man who was filmed, on camera, assaulting a woman in a sex toy shop in Abuja in 2019 and years later, after a separate rape allegation, was cleared by the same police force that somehow always finds “insufficient evidence” when the accused has a title in front of his name.

Now tell me the last time you saw a mob descend on a rapist. Tell me the last time a crowd gathered around a man accused of sexual violence and dragged him into the street. I’ll wait. I have been alive for twenty one years in this country and I cannot name a single instance.

Not one. We have watched innocent people burn for crimes they didn’t commit, the Aluu Four, four university students in Port Harcourt beaten and set alight in 2012 over a theft accusation that turned out to be false, their only crime being in the wrong place

and Amnesty International has documented over 500 cases of mob violence in Nigeria in the last decade, close to a hundred people dead, most of them accused of theft, fraud, or things people simply decided to believe about them in the heat of a market afternoon. Innocent men have died screaming for a phone they never touched. But rape? Rape doesn’t move the crowd the same way. Rape doesn’t get the matchet out. Rape gets a shrug, a “you don’t know if it’s true,” a “why was she wearing that,” a “why did she go to his house,” a whole village’s worth of legal expertise suddenly summoned to defend a man nobody has ever seen practice law a day in his life.

This is not an accident. This is not a coincidence of two unrelated social phenomena. This is what happens when a society values property over women’s bodies with such consistency that it doesn’t even register as a value system anymore, it just registers as “how things are.” Theft threatens what men have. Rape only threatens what women are. And when the thing under threat is a woman, apparently, we can afford to be patient. We can afford due process. We can afford to give a man the benefit of every doubt, we refuse to extend to a hungry teenager who stole bread.

And when a rapist does get convicted, watch how fast the rehabilitation campaign starts.

Baba Ijesha is actually the exception that proves my point, not the one that disproves it. He was convicted, sexual assault and indecent treatment of a minor, sixteen years handed down, reduced to five on appeal. A rare, genuine win. (But he served just over three years and walked out in November 2025. And by June 2026 he was posting maternity photos, thanking God for a "bouncing baby boy" with his new wife, a woman who stood by him through the whole ordeal and gave him the kind of soft, public redemption arc no one ever offers the boy who stole a phone. Isn’t that adorable?)

And within years of his conviction, a fellow Nollywood actor, Yomi Fabiyi, was publicly campaigning to reframe the entire case as a “charade,” misrepresenting the appeal court’s partial ruling as a full exoneration, loudly enough that the Lagos State Ministry of Justice had to issue an official statement correcting the record. Think about the energy required to do that. Think about the audacity of standing on a public platform, using your own celebrity, to launder a child sex offender’s reputation back to respectability the moment the conviction stopped trending. Nobody does that for the boy who stole a generator to sell for transport money. Nobody organises a redemption arc for him. He doesn’t get an industry colleague going on Instagram Live to insist the theft was really a misunderstanding, a script or a moment taken out of context. He just serves his time, if he lives long enough to.

And then there’s Busola Dakolo, who in 2019 accused Pastor Biodun Fatoyinbo of COZA of raping her twice when she was a teenager in his church. She didn’t just lose.

The Federal Capital Territory High Court didn’t simply dismiss her case for insufficient evidence, the way courts do so reliably for men like Ogbuja, the judge called her suit “purely sentimental” and an “abuse of judicial process,” and fined her one million naira, remarking that the fine should have been ten times higher for wasting the court’s time. Read that again. A woman came forward about a rape that happened when she was a teenager, and the system’s final answer to her wasn’t just “we don’t believe you enough to convict him,” it was “and now you owe us money for asking.” Meanwhile Fatoyinbo kept his megachurch, kept his congregation and kept his pulpit. He stepped down briefly, the way powerful men do a small performative bow before stepping right back up and by the time the news cycle moved on, he was, functionally, fine. A boy gets beaten half to death over a stolen goat and nobody is fining the mob for wasting anyone’s time. But a rape survivor asks a court for an apology letter and gets billed for it.

This is the part I need you to actually feel, not just read past: the system doesn’t only fail to punish him. It actively punishes her for trying. It adds a financial and reputational tax onto the act of speaking. So when people ask, “Why didn’t she just report it?” this is why. This is the “why” laid out in a court transcript. Reporting costs money, costs years, costs your name being dragged through timelines by strangers deciding whether your trauma was performed correctly enough to be believed, and at the end of it all, a judge might simply decide you were being “sentimental” and send you home with a bill. Compare that to the transaction cost of reporting a theft, a phone call, sometimes not even that, sometimes just a raised voice in a market and it’s already over, one way or another, usually violently, usually within the hour.

Let’s talk numbers, because numbers don’t perform outrage, they just sit there and indict us.

Nigeria, a country of over 200 million people, recorded just 32 rape convictions between 2019 and 2020, according to data from the country’s own anti trafficking agency. Thirty two. In two years. In a country where, according to UNICEF, one in four girls will be sexually assaulted before she turns eighteen. Layer that against the reporting numbers: a 2013 CLEEN Foundation report found that only 28 percent of rape cases in the country are even reported to the police in the first place

which means the 32 convictions aren’t even 32 out of all the rapes that happened, they’re 32 out of a fraction of a fraction, the tiny percentage that survived disbelief, stigma, family pressure, police indifferencelong enough to reach a courtroom at all. Now put that number next to the Amnesty figure I gave you earlier, over 500 documented cases of mob violence in a decade, close to a hundred people dead, overwhelmingly theft related. We have produced more corpses from theft accusations than we have produced convictions for actual, proven rape. Sit with that math. That is not a coincidence of enforcement capacity. That is a country telling you, in numbers, it didn’t even mean to publish, exactly whose safety it is willing to fight for and whose it isn’t.

And this is before we even get into how the law itself was built. Nigeria’s criminal statutes, largely inherited wholesale from British colonial code, were never actually designed around the idea that a woman’s body belongs to her. For decades, our laws didn’t recognise marital rape as a crime at all. A husband could not, by definition, rape his wife, because consent was treated as something she surrendered permanently on her wedding day, not something owed continuously for the rest of her life. Some of that has shifted on paper with newer legislation like the Violence Against Persons Prohibition Act, but “on paper” and “in the Kaduna High Court in 2026” are two very different addresses and most of the country still runs on the old code, the old assumptions and the old architecture built by men who were writing laws to protect property, inheritance and lineage… never her. You cannot bolt equality onto a foundation that was poured to do the opposite job and expect the building not to lean.

Then there’s the part nobody wants to put in writing but everyone from Kano to Calabar has watched happen at least once: the family meeting. The uncle who “settles” things. The elder who suggests, gently, that court will “spoil the girl’s name,” that everyone will “know her business,” that it would be so much simpler if the families just talked, prayed, maybe even arranged for the girl to marry the man who raped her so the “shame” gets absorbed into a wedding instead of aired in a courtroom. Nobody convenes a family meeting for a thief. Nobody sits the boy who stole a generator down with the aggrieved party’s uncles to negotiate a peaceful, dignified resolution before the mob arrives. Theft gets the fastest, loudest, most public process available to Nigerian society. Rape gets whispered into a back room and buried under the word “peace.”

I want to be very clear about what I’m not saying. I am not saying we should be lynching rapists in the street, mob violence is not justice. It’s just a different flavour of the same lawlessness that lets a stolen phone become a death sentence and two wrongs don’t rebuild a broken system, they just prove the system was never the point. What I am saying is that the asymmetry is the indictment. It’s not that thieves deserve fire. It’s that rapists don’t even get smoke. Somewhere between “we should never take the law into our own hands” and “we should actually enforce the law when it comes to sexual violence” there is a whole country’s worth of institutional will just sitting unused and we keep choosing not to spend it on her.

So no, I’m not sad. Sad is too gentle a word for what I feel watching this play out, case after case, hashtag after forgotten hashtag. I’m disgusted. I’m disgusted that we built a system elaborate enough to protect the men who hurt us and lazy enough to let the boys who steal from hunger burn. I’m disgusted that the same energy Nigerians summon to drag a phone thief into the street cannot be summoned, even once, to march on a courthouse that just fined a rape survivor for speaking. That imbalance is the whole essay in one sentence: we have more collective rage available for a stolen Tecno than for a stolen childhood and until someone can explain that to me without shrugging, I will keep saying it loudly, in every draft, on every platform, until it stops being true.

Until that changes, I don’t want to hear another word about how far we’ve come, because we haven’t come anywhere. We’ve just gotten better at pretending the silence around her is peace and better still at sending her the bill for breaking it.

I was that girl.

The one aggressively rolling her eyes every time another pastor bought a private jet while his congregation trekked to church. The one side eyeing politicians who suddenly found God every election season. The one who thought that if Nigerians stopped outsourcing their critical thinking to religious leaders, we’d finally become a more rational, functioning society.

I still think religion has done an unbelievable amount of damage here.

None of that has changed. It has justified abuse, been weaponised against women and brainwashed people into tolerating state sponsored oppression because “God will fight your battles.” It has produced billionaires in cassocks while the people funding them can barely afford to eat. It has given corrupt politicians a stage to perform righteousness.

But what has changed is my opinion on what would happen if religion actually disappeared tomorrow.

Because the older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve stopped looking at religion in isolation and started looking at Nigerians. And I’ve reached a conclusion I genuinely didn’t expect: Religion isn’t Nigeria’s biggest stabiliser because it’s perfect. It’s one of our biggest stabilisers because we haven’t built a single damn thing strong enough to replace it.

I know that’s an uncomfortable sentence.

Stay with me.

Deconstruction is a Luxury

One thing I’ve noticed about my generation is that we’re deconstructing. Some people are leaving Christianity, some are leaving Islam, some are becoming spiritual and some are just done with faith entirely.

None of that bothers me.

People should absolutely be free to question what they were raised to believe. Religious trauma is real. I’ve seen women convinced their bodies were inherently sinful before they even understood how they worked. I’ve seen people manipulated with fear of hell and families destroyed because someone asked too many questions.

Questioning those systems isn’t rebellion. Sometimes, it’s literally survival.

But somewhere along the way, I think many of us… including myself, started assuming that if religion disappeared, Nigerians would naturally become more empathetic and ethical human beings.

I don’t believe that anymore.

Because our biggest problem isn’t that we’re too religious, our biggest problem is that we’ve mistaken religiosity for actual morality. And those two things are not the same thing.

Let’s Talk About “The Average Nigerian”

We love saying Nigeria is broken because of bad leadership. That’s true, obviously. But our leaders didn’t fall from the sky. They came from Nigerian homes, Nigerian schools, Nigerian churches, Nigerian mosques and Nigerian communities. They’re direct, unfiltered products of the same culture we’re all part of.

We also love telling ourselves this sweet, comforting lie: that the average Nigerian is a fundamentally good person trapped in a bad system.

I’m sorry, but I am not convinced.

If we are being completely honest, Nigerians in our purest, unregulated form are barbaric. And I don’t mean that as an insult, I mean it as a terrifying sociological fact. When you strip away the fear of the divine, what you are left with is the people operating on pure, primal survival of the fittest. We are a people capable of an incredible level of casual, everyday savagery.

Look at what we do the moment the thin veneer of order slips.

Look at jungle justice. We will watch a crowd beat a teenager to a bloody pulp and put a petrol soaked tire around his neck over a stolen phone, while the people watching record it on their phones for entertainment. Look at how we behave at accident scenes before anyone thinks to call an ambulance or perform CPR. The immediate instinct of the crowd is to loot the victims, stealing laptops, wallets, and phones from people actively bleeding to death. Look at the absolute stampedes and animalistic behaviour that happens whenever palliatives are shared, or how quickly people turned on each other during the cash scarcity, hoarding naira notes to sell to their own neighbours at a premium.

We treat empathy like a weakness and ruthlessness like a skill. I think many of us are decent to people we know, or the people we need something from. But what happens when there are no eyes on us? What happens when there are no consequences? That’s where things become interesting.

Look around. People inflate prices during fuel scarcity because they can, actively choking their fellow citizens. Someone finds a loophole and immediately asks how to exploit it, not fix it. We’ll bribe a LASTMA official or a policeman, and then turn around to complain on Twitter that corruption is destroying the country. We’ll praise unexplainable wealth before asking how it was made and we’ll underpay our house helps and interns while insisting we’re “helping them” or “doing them a favour.”

We’ll destroy public property because “it’s government property.”

We’ll justify almost anything if it benefits us.

That’s not unique to Nigeria.

Human beings are capable of selfishness everywhere, sure. But in societies that actually work, there are usually consequences. The law functions. Public accountability matters. People trust systems.

Nigeria doesn’t consistently offer any of that. So the question becomes: What keeps people in line when institutions don’t?

The Invisible Police Officer

This is exactly where my opinion changed. I used to think religion was creating bad people. Now I think, for many people, religion is restraining people who were already capable of doing horrible things.

Not because religion has transformed everyone into saints… clearly, it hasn’t. But because it gives people an external authority, they believe they cannot escape.

God is watching.
You’ll answer one day.
You’ll reap what you sow.
Generational curses exist.
There is judgment.

For someone with a deeply internal, secular moral compass, those ideas don’t matter. They’ll still do the right thing because they believe it’s right.

But let’s be honest with ourselves… how many Nigerians actually operate like that?

People love saying morality doesn’t come from religion. Philosophically, I agree. But practically? Look at the reality on the ground. If a random Nigerian genuinely believed there was no God, no judgment, no spiritual accountability, no ancestors watching, and no divine consequences... would they still return that bag of money they found? Would they still refuse the bribe when they're broke? Would they still stay faithful or act right when they know for a fact they will never, ever get caught?

Some would. But I am highly unconvinced that the majority would.

And that’s the point.

Religion doesn’t create morality in Nigeria… it functions as a substitute for the institutions that failed to build it. It becomes an invisible police officer where the actual police force is a joke.

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Removing the Painkiller

When the government fails, the churches and mosques feed people. When people are drowning in loneliness, mosques and churches create community. When life in this country feels unbearable, faith is the only reason people don’t completely snap and instead keep going. When the justice system feels meaningless, many people cope because they believe someone, somewhere, will eventually answer to God.

Is that ideal? Absolutely not. A healthy society shouldn’t depend on the fear of hellfire to encourage basic decency. It should depend on empathy, education, functioning systems, and accountability.

But that is not where Nigeria is right now.

People love to quote Karl Marx, saying religion is “the opium of the people.” In Nigeria, religion is something closer to a painkiller. Not because it cures the disease, obviously, it doesn’t. But because it numbs us to it… it is the only thing helping millions of people cope with pain that our country has completely failed to treat.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t side effects…

There are.

Manipulation.

Anti intellectualism.

Misogyny.

Prosperity theology.

Political exploitation.

Those deserve criticism.

But removing the painkiller before treating the disease isn’t a solution. It’s negligence.

None of this means we should stop deconstructing. Question your beliefs. Leave your religion if it suffocates you. Stay if it genuinely makes you a kinder, more thoughtful person.

My point is simpler than that. We’ve spent so much time asking what religion has done to Nigeria that we’ve barely stopped to ask what Nigeria would actually look like without religion. And trust me, the answer isn’t a nation full of progressive, rational, secular humanists.

If we tore religion away tomorrow, we’d discover something much more uncomfortable. We’d realise that religion was never the thing creating most of our moral behaviour, religion was never the thing stopping us from progressing, one of the few things restraining some of our worst instincts while our schools, families, justice systems, and civic institutions failed to teach us how to be human.

Maybe that’s the harder conversation we need to have. Religion isn’t the disease. It’s a flawed, dirty bandage that has sometimes infected the wound itself. But until we build institutions and a culture that produce empathy, accountability and self restraint without relying on fear of divine consequences, I’m no longer convinced that ripping the bandage off is the first thing or smartest thing we should do.

Explaining the Metaphors

• The Disease: Our absolute institutional collapse. It’s our failed public schools, our predatory police force, our compromised judiciary, and a socio economic structure that forces human beings into a perpetual state of feral, desperate survival.

• The Painkiller: Religiosity. It doesn’t fix the broken economy or cure the corruption, but it numbs the unbearable reality of living through it. It gives a starving person hope, and it tells an angry, cheated person not to take matters into their own hands because “vengeance belongs to God.”

• The Side Effects: Just like the abuse of any heavy medication, this painkiller has toxic side effects. It breeds manipulation, anti-intellectualism, misogyny, prosperity theology, and political exploitation. It makes people dangerously complacent when they should be furious.

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A theory, actually. I don’t think most Nigerians want a better country. Not deep down. I think most Nigerians want to be the beneficiaries of a bad Nigeria. What they actually want is to be the ones winning at a broken system.

I know, I know… sounds wild, right? Probably even a bit insulting. Some of you are probably itching to drag me cause of that, preparing their rebuttals. “But colonialism!” “But corruption!” “But bad leaders!” “Military rule messed us up!” “Foreign interference!” And yes, all of those things matter. The scars run deep, no cap. But at some point, we have to ask the harder question. If Nigeria is a house that’s been burning for decades, why are we pretending the people holding the matches aren’t standing in the same room as the ones carrying the firewood?

Just bear with me for a minute. Relax.

Let’s play along. If Nigerians had a national superpower, what would it be? Resilience? That “never say die” attitude? Oil? Afrobeats? Turning a disaster into something just slightly less disastrous?

No. Our real talent is pointing out everything wrong with Nigeria. Ask anyone and they’ll tell you: the politicians steal, the roads are death traps, the police harass, the economy’s a mess, the schools and hospitals are crumbling, everything’s falling apart. If complaining about Nigeria won medals, we’d clear out the Olympics. Nigerians can spot what’s wrong faster than anyone…China and the United States combined.

We love talking about the villains. But hardly anyone is ready to admit they might be part of the problem, too.

Everyone swears that if they had the power, they’d fix everything overnight. They say they’re better, smarter, more honest, more loyal, more capable than whoever’s in charge.

Maybe some really are. But here’s the question nobody likes to answer: what if I handed the average Nigerian real power tomorrow, life changing power? What would actually change? How many would refuse to give jobs to their family? How many would refuse to use connections? How many would refuse to use connections? Who would say no to a kickback or turn down a shortcut? Who would stand in line with everyone else and not call a friend to jump ahead? Who would say no when their cousin phones for “just a small favour”?

Yeah…exactly. Because, let’s face it, here, corruption is only a problem when someone else is benefiting from it.

When your cousin gets the contract, it’s “connections.”

When your pastor’s driving a new car, it’s “blessings.”

When your tribe gets the top seat, it’s “representation.”

Your child is getting preferential treatment, it’s “good parenting.”

If your friend bends the rules, he’s just “being smart.”

The language changes, the stories change, but the actions don’t.

We condemn bribery, then call our uncle to skip the queue. We complain about nepotism while helping our relatives jump waiting lists. We attack politicians for stealing public money, but worship wealthy people, when someone gets rich, nobody asks how. We want everyone else to play by the rules, but not us. We demand accountability from everybody except ourselves.

And that’s where this essay begins, that’s really where the conversation needs to start…

Not with Tinubu.

Not with Buhari.

Not with Jonathan.

Not with any goddamn politician.

Because your problem is not Tinubu.

Nigeria was a mess before any of them, and unless we face up to the hard truth, it’ll keep being a mess after they’re gone.

The ugly truth is, Nigeria doesn’t just have a leadership problem. Nigeria has a character problem.

Politicians aren’t some alien race or some species. They didn’t fall out of the sky or sneak out of a lab under Aso Rock. They came up through our homes, our churches, our mosques, our schools, our communities. They are us. They are Nigerians. Raised by Nigerians. Taught by Nigerians. Voted for by Nigerians. Defended, protected and praised by Nigerians.

In many ways, they’re just regular Nigerians, with bigger salaries and bodyguards.

And that’s the part no one wants to talk about, because it’s a lot easier to blame a few evil people at the top and believe that Nigeria is being destroyed by them than to admit that millions of “ordinary” people are playing along with the same system every day and practically sustaining the culture every single day.

The scary part isn’t that our leaders are terrible. It’s that they’re so… normal. They’re a perfect reflection of the society that made them.

And in the end, we’re all experts at blaming the mirror for what stares back at us.

So before we start yelling about politicians ruining Nigeria, maybe we should start talking about the Nigerians who keep building it this way.

Honestly, I’m convinced that the average Nigerian’s survival tactic is equal parts denial and pure vibes. The fact that everyone’s talking about insecurity right now is simply because it’s finally knocking on doors where it wasn’t supposed to be. The mess has spread into spaces with stable Wi-Fi and Twitter warriors.

Let’s stop playing dumb and let’s call it what it is. For over twenty years, since 2002, really… the North has been bleeding out. Terrorism, insurgency, banditry, kidnappings, and mass displacement: all of it. A whole region left to tackle trauma alone, while the rest of us treated actual national emergencies like some gossip. Entire villages were wiped away, farmers driven off their land, and everyone else looked away like, “Well, not my business.”

Now, it’s catching up to us, the math is finally mathing in my article for the first timeeee. Because of this prolonged, ignored devastation, we are looking at a literal food crisis…a real famine, not just some technical term. But sure, keep posting pretty brunch photos and acting like food inflation right now isn’t the opening scene. No farming, less food, sky-high prices. This hunger isn’t picky, lmao, it’s coming for everyone. North, South, East, West, nobody’s special.

Did anyone actually think violence would politely stay within state lines? Like criminals have some fancy map and a respect for borders? Problems ignored in Borno today are trending in Lagos tomorrow. Something brushed aside in Zamfara becomes a national emergency five years later.

Wait, I’m not even done. The hypocrisy is actually nauseating. Let’s look at what happened just recently on May 15.

Armed men marched into schools in Oriire, Oyo State, snatched up students and teachers. Everyone went mad, timelines exploded, think pieces rolled in. But you know what else happened that exact same day? Suspected Boko Haram insurgents invaded a school in Askira-Uba, Borno, and kidnapped 42 kids. 42 children, dragged away deep into the forest while class was going on.

Let me ask: did their names trend? Did anyone hold spaces for those Borno kids? Did people lose sleep or start campaigns? Almost nothing. Silence. Barely a whisper.

We’ve reached a point where a northern child’s life is priced way lower, or maybe just seen as background noise. Twenty years of horror and we barely blink. Forty two children gone? “Oh, Borno again.” Scroll away, next TikTok. But when the monster visits Oyo, everyone’s shocked because suddenly the pain speaks a language they understand.

The sad truth is a lot of Nigerians only care when the problem shows up at their own door. Empathy is divided by zones and boundaries. If the fire hasn’t reached your house, it’s easier to complain about your neighbour’s burning house and complain about the smoke ruining your aesthetic than reach for a bucket.

“If it isn’t my business, why panic? If it’s not my state, why care? If my family’s safe, nothing else matters.”

We’re fooling ourselves, pretending terrorists worry about tribes or regional boundaries. They don’t; they aren’t looking at the map thinking, “Oh, let’s respect the west.” They saw our silence gave them free rein in the North, now they’re expanding everywhere. It’s the same way banditry quietly expanded its territory while we were busy forming “I better pass my neighbour.”

The irony is that Nigerians love quoting "an injury to one is an injury to allScroll" until one is actually injured. Then everybody becomes a spectator.

This stubborn and aggressive individualism is what landed us here. Everyone thinks their wall is high enough and their estate secure, so Nigeria’s mess won’t matter. Reality check: your estate gates won’t keep out a tanking economy. You won’t survive a sinking ship just because water hasn’t reached your luxury cabin yet.

A country can’t survive if its people only care after they get a personal invite to disaster. All this “it can never be me” bravado is killing us. The problems we ignore today always come back, and by the time hunger and terror spread everywhere, we’ll realise it’s too late, no one’s coming to rescue a country full of spectators. The ghetto is about to be everyone’s reality. Selective outrage will be the actual death of us, but hey, keep saying “it can never be me.”

Welcome to the Asylum. Find a spot… if you can find one that isn’t being taxed by the government or claimed by a landlord who thinks a shoebox in Yaba is worth three million Naira a year.

Let’s talk about the current state of the nation. I sometimes stare into space, just asking myself: how did we even land here? Not the usual “Nigeria is hard" complaint, but deep down exhaustion…the kind that makes you wonder if this country is under some ancient curse. Right now, one man sits in Aso Rock, somehow holding a billion failed promises, a handful of diehard fans yelling “Jagaban” like time froze in 2023, and the rest of us… Honestly, we’re mad. Properly mad. The kind of mad that makes you laugh so you don’t break down and cry. Because if we don’t laugh, we will collectively cry, and tears won’t buy fuel. The math is not mathing, logic is fried, leadership just feels like, “let the poor breathe… but also, choke them a bit more.” Nigeria’s real motto should just be “It is what it is.” Try to figure out why it is what it is, and your brain starts to short circuit.

And the wildest part? lmao, the wildest part is that the guy they call president barely needed love. He just needed the system, some clever math, and a crowd mitakining stubbornness for strategy. That’s Nigeria 2026: everyone’s mad, one is president, and his real followers are aggressively loud creatures who are either scraping crumbs or are just suffering from a severe lack of critical thinking skills. You need a special kind of insanity to stare at a 200% inflation rate, check your bank account balance screaming for help, and decide, “Let me just buy matcha and chickwizz, God will provide.” Our shared delusion is astonishing, but let me be clear, this is not hate… nah lmao it’s hate o, but also a record of facts. If you’ve watched your parents’ savings vanish, seen naira bleed and still found people online defending the same hands wrecking the economy, you know the drill. Abeg, just give me space.

Tinubu built his whole brand around “I am Lagos.” The godfather. The builder. The man who made Lagos the Centre of Excellence, actually... “excellent.” Oya, let’s laugh. Because the Lagos that birthed this man and the Lagos we endure now, sit on opposite planets. One is the shiny campaign video…private jets, clean roads, fancy views. The other is actual Lagos: boys hawking pure water at midnight, girls dancing on tiktok beside generator fumes, and everyone feeling the pinch of petrol prices. They removed the fuel subsidy like it was a tough but necessary operation. “Painful, but must do,” they said. That aged worse than bad oha soup. What we really got was plain inflation. Food prices shot up, transport costs exploded. Meanwhile, the “experts” who advised this? Still living large, snapping up SUVs priced higher than three state universities’ annual budgets. The real sufferers? The Oshodi market woman, her tomatoes now cost what used to buy a whole basket, the 21 year old hustling freelance work, praying the national grid won’t collapse yet again.

But the defenders?? They keep coming online and under comment sections with “it’s sabotage,” “last administration” or “you don’t get macroeconomics.” Bro, the economy isn’t Hogwarts. When your policy makes Naira look like tissue paper and you still blame everyone else, that’s not leadership. That just federal level gaslighting.

Let’s not fake it: economic trouble keeps piling up. Since the 2023 subsidy drama, inflation’s sprinted past 34%, food inflation is at 40%. Naira nosedived from 460 to over 1600 per dollar, turning imports into pure luxury. Bread now tastes like making bad decisions, rice for a family costs what once fed an entire compound. They were floating the exchange rate like it was supposed to be freedom, but all it freed was our savings straight into the abyss. Sure, minimum wage went up a few times, but fuel prices tripled and transport costs raise before you saw it in your account. Debt service alone chews up over 90% of revenue in some quarters. We’re borrowing to pay off interest on old borrowing, while people starve. Refineries? Still missing in action. Dangote tries, but the system keeps throwing blocks in the way. This isn’t reform, it’s sabotage. They floated the currency because IMF whispered sweet things in their ear, and Nairaimmediately went on a bungee jumping expedition without a rope. Cybersecurity levy on e-transactions??? Apparently, taxing our breath wasn’t enough. Electricity tariffs up 200% for “Band A,” but the only thing steady is low voltage that can barely charge your phone. Every day, the government finds some new way to raid your pocket, offering absolutely nothing back. It’s practically legal robbery.

Let’s even talk about the big ass elephant. The president isn’t young. We all know it. The whole country knows it. Mention it, and his fans go ballistic, yelling, “He is sharper than all of you” Omo, sharper at what exactly? Reading a teleprompter like it’s punishment? Vanishing to France for “private visits” then popping up like Jesus on Easter Sunday? This is not ageism btw, it is reality. When your president looks like he’s fighting both the opposition and basic mobility at the same time, people should be allowed to ask questions. But nope, the defenders will drag you, call you a wailer, say you’re unserious. Meanwhile, everyone’s surviving on fumes, vibes, and emergency prayers. “Insha’Allah” won’t fix the budget, bestie. I’m open minded asf, but the results don’t lie. All we hear is “we’re working on it” and “the pain won’t last.” Since when? Temporary since 2023? My guy, at this rate, “temporary” might mean “if you survive, see you in 2027.”

As we play “Where in the World is the President,” insecurity keeps getting messier. Bandits in the Northwest still attack villages, kidnapping kids, farmers are giving up their land because bullets are cheaper than seeds now. Boko Haram and ISWAP never left, they just rebranded, grabbing new territories while the military posts motivational quotes online. Southeast Mondays became dead zones, unknown gunmen collecting tithe in blood. Farmer–herder clashes remain, the government’s usual response: “we’re on top of it,” while the death count rises. Schools shut for years in some places; children are missing; parents pay ransom, life savings vanish. This administration inherited chaos and somehow added more layers, security votes flip flop, cronies running key positions, and the military is stretched thin. No real strategy, just press releases and photo ops, citizens running through forests to dodge raids. The “renewed hope” promised? All we got was renewed trauma.

Here’s the real funny part: the psychology of his few diehard supporters. Some eat from the system, contracts, appointments, access. I get it. No shame in getting paid. But the ones shouting on social with empty pockets, defending policies that have their own families eating once a day? That’s a mental health crisis dressed up as loyalty. Political support is their only personality trait because they’ve got nothing else. “Body, soul, spirit,” they scream. Now it’s “even if fuel is water, we dey.” Mind you, most can’t afford a litre for the generator. Purchasing power gone, future looks rough and dejected, and they still type “Tinubu is working” from a broken phone on borrowed data. Working on what, exactly? More taxes? More IMF loans? More “reforms” reforming the poor into ghosts?

We’ve weaponized sarcasm because if we didn’t, we’d all check into mental hospitals. Nigerian humor? Top notch. Memes everywhere. We’re the only country where disaster hits at 2pm and by 3pm there’s a dance challenge for it. But under every viral joke, every sarcastic post, is real despair. We’re governed by people stuck in 1984, managing a youth population living in 2026. They play checkers while we’re fighting the hunger games. They preach patience, say reforms will bear fruit. Fruit, but only in their offshore accounts. You can’t even hate atp lmao, you just marvel at the raw audacity. People trek to work because transport fares tripled, and government spends billions on jets, SUVs, and revamps offices that were fine last year. Greed isn’t hidden anymore. They’re eating the national cake, spraying crumbs in our faces, telling us it’s rainfall.

Let’s not even talk about the mumu defenders, the ones always popping up in comment sections, full of grammar errors, outdated facts, arguing that suffering builds character. “He’s building for the future,” they shout. What future, please? The one where we’re all old or all japa-ed to the UK? They defend policies choking them, just hoping to feel like winners. It’s truly pathetic. Instead of demanding accountability, they twist starvation into some economic theory. If you’re still defending the indefensible in this day and age, check yourself. Village people have advanced, they’re targeting your cognitive faculties outright.

When Tinubu said “Emi L’okan,” it was so arrogantly honest that it felt refreshing. No pretence of service. Just “it’s my turn to chop, sit on the throne, do whatever I want while you shout online.” And we voted… or, let’s be honest, the system picked him. He got his lifelong wish, now the rest of us pay in blood and tears.

Nigeria’s history keeps rhyming: same game, just new party logo, new naira color, recycled excuses. We’re tired of being the “resilient generation.” “Nigerians are so resilient!” Abeg, save it. Resilience is what the world calls people so beat down they’ve forgotten what it’s like to stand straight. We don’t want resilience anymore. We want boredom. We want government so boring, the news is uninteresting. We want to worry about skincare or a new music album, not whether tonight’s policy will wipe out our savings.

Instead, every week brings a new episode… a new scandal, distraction, or bill taxing our existence. They flash something shiny on the left so you ignore the burning fire on the right. And the worst part? It works. Our attention span is shot. Yesterday’s outrage is buried under today’s circus. You can’t even stay mad at one mess for 24 hours, something even crazier will happen. It’s a loop designed to keep us exhausted, too tired to ask questions that matter.

So, yes, many are mad. People are out here muttering, trying to stretch their budget, asking how a country with so much wealth can feel so cheap. The president sits in his castle, shielded from the actual price of tomatoes, surrounded by people telling him what his ego craves. The rest of us? We keep moving, waiting for a twist, praying that against all odds, we don’t end up collateral damage in someone’s political chess game.

“Many are mad, one is president, and few are his followers” isn’t just shade. It’s the real truth. The “many mad ones” suffer but still defend based on tribe, “he’s our son,” “Atiku/Obi would’ve been worse.” That always cracks me up. Should we thank God for smaller suffering, like picking between malaria and typhoid instead of Ebola? We keep normalising mediocrity, scared to demand what we deserve.

One is president, he carries everything: the weight, the curses, the glory, the blame. History will judge him, but right now, the verdict’s everywhere, in the market, the hospitals with no drugs, the universities where lecturers strike like clockwork. Don’t pretend they care about education or healthcare, when government office renovations get more funds than health centres do, their priorities are clear, they are telling us exactly who they are. They are showing us that our lives are entirely dispensable, as long as the political elite can ride in bulletproof comfort.

And few are his true believers, those who gain, or those who fear losing what little they have.

The rest are just surviving. Scrolling. Sending family voice notes saying “this country sha.” The silent majority know the truth, but are too worn out to fight.

It’s giving controlled demolition… loyalists in every key agency, budget padding scandals that make old scams look innocent, punishing policies hitting youth and the poor hardest. Digital ID mess leaves the vulnerable stranded, education loans trap instead of help. Youth unemployment remains high, brain drain is routine, and every protest faces silence or violence. “Renewed hope” now tastes expired. Disappointing, but we’re still being force fed.

I have no solutions. I’m 21, not a policy expert or CBN chief. But one thing’s clear… blind loyalty got us here. The refusal to demand accountability, the tribal addiction to incompetence. Politics treated like Premier League: my team must win, even if the stadium burns. That madness needs to end. Let’s demand better, not die for mediocrity.

Followers will call this hate, maybe report it if they have enough data to finish reading. The mad ones will read and say, “Finally, someone said it raw.” The president? He’ll never see this. He’s too busy being “president of the world’s largest Black nation,” while the people queue, holding empty jerrycans.

And everyone’s asking, “But at what cost?” This is Nigeria, many are mad, one is president, and few are his followers. The rest of us? We keep living, dodging bad vibes, waiting for “emi l’okan” to mean something for all, not just those in the convoy. Till then, we’ll tweet, suffer, stream music to drown out the generators, and hope. That’s Naija for you

We need to talk about your cervix. Yes, that little doughnut shaped gatekeeper at the end of the tunnel that you’ve been ignoring since 2019. Yeah, you know exactly which part I’m talking about. The one you never think about unless something goes wrong.

Why do we act so on top of things, but neglect basic survival? We’ll spend days researching what “molecular stability” (I don’t even know what this means bruh, but I saw someone talking about it on titktok) of a new Korean snail mucin essence before putting it on our face, chase down a guy’s childhood photos because he liked one of your pics, and check if a wig vendor is a scammer. But when it’s time to book a Pap smear? Crickets. Nothing.

We plaster the internet with self care routines, healing my inner child captions, and waist training, but when it comes to our actual body, the real star of the show… silence. Especially when it comes to the cervix. That quiet champion is busy fighting off HPV, random mistakes, and our talent for denial. Abeg, enough. Go get a Pap smear. Not next month, not after your next period, not when you turn 30 and suddenly remember you’re mortal. Right now. This instant

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Let me say something that might annoy a good number of you(cause why not) Nigerian women are trained to endure everything except basic preventive care. We will endure pain, shame, silence, speculation, church counselling, unsolicited prophecy, and especially that one aunty who thinks every problem is spiritual, but when it comes to screening? Suddenly, we’re shy.

And shy of what, exactly? Your own cervix? Please, let’s be serious nau.

We’re so delusional in Nigeria. “It’s not my portion.” We truly believe that ignoring a problem means it won’t happen to us. Medical checkups? Bad energy, apparently. And the excuses, honestly, they’re creative: “I’m not promiscuous na”. “It’s not my time”. “That’s for married women only”. “My husband wouldn’t like another man seeing me there”. Skill issue. Madam, Cervical cancer does not care if you’re celibate, spiritual, soft spoken, “not that kind of girl,” or choir mistress. Biology has 0 chill, no moral checklist. The only thing that truly protects your peace is a negative test result and the knowledge that you are not walking around with a ticking time bomb in your uterus.

Most cases of cervical cancer are tied to HPV, a virus so common it’s boring. That’s what nobody says loud enough. Not rare, not glamorous. Just basic everyday risk, so it’s not some distant tragedy for “other people.” It’s real and right here. It’s uncomfortably close to normal life

But we never talk about it.

Instead, we’re pros at selective silence. We can gossip for a week about a wedding outfit, but mention reproductive health and suddenly everyone’s a monk. Eyes down, voices low, topic changed. Would’ve been funny if it wasn’t actually dangerous.

Because a Pap smear isn’t glamorous. It won’t trend. It’s a mildly awkward procedure where a doctor checks for abnormal cells before they turn into something ugly. That’s all… just prevention. The most basic form of self respect, and that’s exactly why people avoid it.

We love health crises loud and dramatic. Something that grabs prayers, donations, and Instagram tributes. Preventive care gives you no storyline, no sympathy. You have to act before there’s any drama. Before you can say “I didn’t know.”

But you do know. Or if you didn’t, you know now.

I’m not here to sugarcoat anything. Cervical cancer is killing our sisters in this country while we act like it’s village people. In Nigeria, it’s the second most common cancer in women. Over 12,000 new cases every year. Almost 8,000 deaths. Think about that. While we’re fighting over Lagos Island versus Mainland status, women are dying from something that’s almost 100% preventable.

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Let’s address the quiet excuses, because they are aloootttt

“I’m not sexually active.” Okay, so? HPV can sneak in even if your “activity” is limited. Are you planning to stay untouched forever, or are we just avoiding responsibility until a man shows up?

The virus does not care about your body count. HPV is everywhere, skin to skin contact, one partner, your husband who “travels for business”, maybe even from contaminated things. Loads of women who get it had only one partner. Many are married. Many are “good girls” by every standard. The virus isn’t checking your sexual history before turning your cells rogue. It just shows up, does its thing, and you might not notice for years. Until one day you’re bleeding after sex or feeling pain that Panadol can’t touch. By then? Game over for many.

We grew up hearing, “sex is fire, but don’t enjoy it too much or you’ll get punished.” Cervical cancer got folded into that script, like it’s proof you’ve been reckless. So women hide symptoms. Pray it away. Visit pastors before gynaecologists. Die in silence because needing a vaginal exam feels like confessing to some moral crime.

Then there’s the “my body is only for my husband” narrative. Lovely sentiment. But your husband isn’t taking the cancer bullets for you. And, honestly, some husbands are the reason these risks exist. Yet the conversation is “will he allow me?” Allow ke? Your cervix isn’t joint property. Marriage is not a negotiation for basic healthcare. If a man can’t handle you getting screened so you don’t die, that’s his issue, not yours.

“I’m scared.” Of discomfort Or maybe you’re worried, “what if they find something?” Babe, what if they find it early and you live to drag your enemies for another 40 years? Early detection means you go from “death sentence” to “we caught it, fixed it, see you in six months.” But we’d rather manifest good health on our vision boards than do the actual, unsexy work.

And I get it, the healthcare system is not making it easy. Long lines, judgmental nurses side eyeing you, expensive bills, and male doctors making it awkward. In rural areas, it’s worse. Access is a problem. Awareness is low. HPV vaccine? Not nearly standard for most girls.

But five minutes of discomfort is nothing compared to the pain these women go through when it’s too late. I’ve read the stories. Women in their 30s and 40s, wasting away, leaving kids behind, regret written all over. The pain, the bleeding, treatments that aren’t cute or “God’s time”. It’s just neglect.

“I don’t like hospitals.” Nobody does. This is not a spa day, it is a routine maintenance. Like getting your car serviced.

“I’ll do it later.” Later is the most dangerous time zone in Nigeria. Later is where things quietly escalate.

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And this is bigger than just Pap smears. It’s how women’s health in Nigeria gets treated as an afterthought. Breast checks? “I don’t have a lump na”. Family planning? “My husband said...” Maternal mortality? We normalise it. We’re “body positive” until action is required. Then we hide behind “I’m spiritual, not superstitious,” while ignoring real medicine.

Young women in your 20s, please, please and pleaseeeee, stop waiting to “settle down.” Start now, especially if you’re sexually active. Guidelines say from 21, every few years, depending on your situation. Virgins? Hi, respect. But HPV can still find ways, so knowledge is power. Married women protecting “home” by avoiding doctors? Your kids need you alive more than they need a picture perfect marriage. Trauma survivors, I see you. The bad experiences are real. Find a female doctor if it helps. Go to a private clinic. Bring a friend. Laugh about it after over shawarma. Make it a girls’ day out. Normalise it.

And to the men reading this, If you’re out here demanding “tightness” and “freshness” but blocking your woman from screening, congratulations, you’re part of the problem. Support her. Pay for the test if you can. Drive her there. Sit in the waiting room like a big boy. Just like you’d rush her to the hospital when something goes wrong, rush to prevent it. Don’t control her health, support it.

Look, I’m not a doctor. I’m just a regular babe, tired of losing brilliant, vibrant, gorgeous women to something so preventable. Tired of hearing “it can’t be me” while the numbers say otherwise. Tired of the silence that kills. Fed up with the GoFundMe culture as primary healthcare. We shouldn’t be waiting for disaster before acting. Prevention is not an Instagram buzzword, it’s survival. It’s the most unapologetic thing you can do for yourself.

So, this is your digital push. Close TikTok, drop the “soft life” aesthetic for two seconds, and call the hospital. Book the appointment. Be the “intelligent, empowered woman” your bio claims you are.

Get the Pap smear. Now.

Don’t wait for tomorrow. Don’t put it off till you’re “less busy.” Don’t wait for stars to align or until you feel spiritually ready. Go now. Because the only thing more uncomfortable than a speculum is the conversation your family will have if you don’t go.

Don’t let “it’s not my portion” rob you of your future. Go check your actual portion. Right now. Seriously, why are you still reading? Move!

Stop playing with your life. Book the appointment. Drag your sister, your bestie, your mum, your squad. Make it a group chat topic: “Babe, done your Pap this year? No? Let’s go before delay causes problems.”

Because dying from embarrassment is not the flex. Living loud, healthy, and unapologetic? That’s the soft life.

Go get the damn Pap smear. Now.

Your future self, the one posting bikini pics at 45, still shading haters is already grateful.

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Look, I’m not just screaming at you and leaving you lost. Sometimes, “where” and “how much” are the biggest obstacles. And let’s be real, in this economy, “free” is a love language and “paid” needs to be worth every naira.

If you’re in Nigeria, here’s a breakdown of where you can get your cervix checked. No more excuses.

The "I’m on a Budget" Options (Public & NGOs)

If you want to save your 2k for data and snacks? These are the spots. Public hospitals are usually cheaper and some NGOs do it for free because they actually care.

Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), Ikeja: Their gynecology clinic is solid. It might take a bit of waiting…or a lot(public hospital life), but the cost is very pocket friendly.

Sebeccly Cancer Care (Lagos): They are amazing. They often run free or highly subsidised screening camps. Check their socials before you go though. They are very active on Instagram.

National Hospital, Abuja: If you’re in Abuja, this is the big boss. It’s a bit confusing (the hallways), but their oncology and screening departments are top tier and their services are legit.

Federal Medical Centres (FMCs): Whether you’re in Abeokuta, Asaba, or Owerri, your local FMC will have a screening centre. Usually I think 5k–10k max.

OncoBridge Foundation: These guys have been doing a lot of work in the South South (like Akwa Ibom) lately. They run Screen360 Nigeria which offers free screenings periodically.

The “I Want Soft Life” Options (Private)

If you want AC in the waiting room and a doctor calling you “dear” (not “next!”). These are your choices.

Lakeshore Cancer Center (Lagos & Port Harcourt): This is arguably the most specialized place for this. It feels like a spa, ech is futuristic and they are very professional.

St. Nicholas Hospital (Lagos Island/Victoria Island): Old school prestige. You’re paying for the name and the quick service.

Nizamiye Hospital (Abuja): If you want that international standard, this is it. It’s private, it’s clean, and they are very thorough.

Synlab (Nationwide): You can actually go to Synlab (formerly PathCare) in almost any major city: Lagos, Abuja, PH, Ibadan and just pay for the test. They collect the sample and send you the results via email. Low stress.

Kano Cancer Treatment Centre (KCTC): For my Northern ladies, this place is top notch. They offer good screenings and have some of the newest tech in the country.

Go book it. Now. Oya.

Now you’ve got everything, information, options, and locations.

What you don’t have anymore is a clever excuse.

Go ahead and book the appointment.

And if you’re still dragging your feet, just admit it:

“I’d rather deal with discomfort later than deal with it now.”

That’s honest, at least.

We feed our sons the choice cuts of meat and the softest pillows of praise, thinking we are building kings. But we forget that a king without a sense of service is merely a bird with clipped wings, convinced he is flying because we are the ones holding him afloat.

In our homes and cultures, under the umbrella of domesticity, we are conducting a grand, catastrophic experiment. We call it “love”. We call it “providing the life we never had.” But in the unbiased, sterile eyes of the social critic, it looks less like nurturing and more like a slow-motion dismantling of the male soul. We are witnessing the “Pamperisation” of the male child…a process that begins with an extra spoonful of rice and ends with a societal body count.

In traditional households, the gender divide is not just about the distribution of chores or the foundation of gender roles; it is a distribution of humanity, how people are valued. From the moment of birth, the male child is often seen as the Golden Son; he is more than just a kid; he is a trophy, raised like a precious artefact…handled carefully, praised excessively, shielded aggressively…he is a biological insurance policy, a lineage bearer whose mere existence is greater than any other achievement.

Next to him, there’s the Shadow Daughter. The girl who learns early how to carry weight, she serves, she adapts, she is trained in virtue, labour and emotional literacy before she even has the words for them. Lol, her life is a living verb, her world runs on doing, always moving, always helping. She’s the one picking up skills, learning the domestic work of the house, carrying more than she probably should. People measure her worth by what she can handle, what she gets done. She grows tougher because everyone expects her to keep things running.

Meanwhile, her brother doesn’t get asked much at all, basically handicapped. No real challenges, no heavy lifting. Honestly, he just lives untested, while she ends up doing it all.

We call the boy a king, yet we take away the king’s real job, which includes caring for his people. When we excuse him from the so-called menial stuff like doing the dishes, looking after elders, running errands for his elders, handling emotional work, we are not doing him any favours. We are actually just amputating his ability to sense what others need.

We have somehow told ourselves that this is natural, it’s culture, it’s harmless.

It is not.

We are systemically, obsessively raising boys who are never asked to do anything, then act surprised when they cannot love without domination, cannot exist without entitlement, cannot be told NO without imploding. We are raising boys to see the world less like a place they belong to and more like a vending machine that spits out whatever they want.

What has the world turned into??? We are raising a generation of men who can chase big careers but become paralysed by a laundry basket or stacks of plates in the kitchen sink. Lmaoo, seriously, everyone, welcome to the age of Weaponised Incompetence.

The pampered son is taught that his time is too valuable, too precious for everyday stuff. He is pushed to build a killer CV (foreshadowing???), get good grades, play sports, and land solid internships, while his mom or househelp takes care of everything in the background. It’s like he gets to skip the real-life part. Do you know the result?? These boys grow up with impressive CVs but can’t even boil an egg. Like, let’s be honest with ourselves, if a grown ass man cannot enter his kitchen to feed himself or clean up after himself, he’s not laser focused on any stupid career. He’s just looking for a stand-in parent every time he starts dating. There’s this subtle embarrassment in modern masculinity that, for some reason, no one wants to talk about or name, but it’s men acting like they are in charge when they are barely managing the basics.

But this isn’t just about knowing how to cook or do laundry. It’s a whole mindset built around dodging responsibilities. Boys get a free pass from care work, emotional labour, and the simple discipline of keeping things running at home, in relationships, and even in their own lives. One evening, the sister, exhausted from a day of juggling chores and homework, asks her brother, ‘Can you help me finish the dishes?’ He glances up, shrugs, and says, ‘Not my problem.‘ They grow into adults who don’t know the basics because, honestly, someone else, usually a woman, is always there to pick up the slack.

And there, my loves, is how incompetence turns into a weapon.

Men help out instead of just doing what needs to be done. They need step-by-step instructions for tasks they’ve seen a thousand times. They act helplessly on purpose, using it as one nonsense bargaining chip. They hand off responsibility while still claiming to be in charge. It’s what they are taught. A kid who is never expected to pitch in learns that helping is optional. A boy who is always rescued starts to believe that hard work is beneath him.

But adulthood doesn’t care about how things were at home. Bosses expect you to know your stuff. Partners want you to pull your weight. Children need real care. Suddenly, the gap between what these men think they deserve and what they can actually do is huge and impossible to ignore

And there, my loves is when the resentment creeps in.

The real architect of modern male loneliness is the way some boys grow up pampered. People like to think loneliness happens because there is nobody around, but for a pampered man, it’s different. He just never learned how to build real, mutual relationships. Friendship isn’t just for hanging out…it’s give and take. You need to listen, give ground sometimes, and actually help out. Those aren’t instincts. You learn them at home, when everyone works together. But if a boy grows up as the family’s Sun with everyone revolving around him, he is just going to walk into adulthood expecting the same treatment.

The world doesn’t play by those rules. His peers don’t revolve around him, so he withdraws. he feels bitter, like he has been cheated out of the recognition he deserves. For him, relationships turn into transactions…he shows up only when his needs are being met and disappears when it’s time to give something back.

People decide to start leaving him. not with big fights or anything, just quietly, without drama. They are tired of the onesided friendships and relationships, and then he’s alone, wondering what happened, he feels left out, misunderstood, maybe even wronged. But he never sees that it wasn’t the world shutting him out but instead his own refusal to be an equal, to actually connect.

This is what happens when a pampered boy grows up. He never figures out how to be a friend, because no one ever taught him that friendship means giving as much as you get. You don’t just get to have friends…you have to be one.

There’s a kind of masculinity out there that looks tough on the outside, but it falls apart as soon as it’s tested. It’s loud, it gets defensive fast, and it takes disagreement as an insult; it sees simple boundaries as betrayal. That’s Glass Masculinity. It’s fragile, not because of any real strength, but because someone always cushioned the blows for him.

The worst part of all this pampering is how weak it leaves you. When a child never hears No, when every demand turns into a Yes just to have peace, his entire sense of self turns flimsy, like a house made of glass. He never builds up the mental toughness you get from facing rejection. He never learns how to handle bumps in the road. Instead, he starts believing the world should always give way for him, and if it doesn’t, he sees it as a personal attack. Telling a child no doesn’t break his spirit. It actually builds his strength. But somewhere along the line, especially with boys, we decided that discomfort is something to avoid at all costs. We forget that a little friction isn’t cruelty, and setting limits isn’t neglect.

And what does society end up with?? We end up with men who fall apart the second things don’t go their way. They lash out when told NO, and they collapse when someone holds them to account. The smallest setback at work or a breakup doesn’t just sting, it completely knocks them down, and when a man believes he deserves a yes every time, he can become someone dangerous when the world finally tells him no.

He relies on everyone else going along with him to feel okay about himself. That’s not strength, it’s just dependence in disguise.

Yes, we can blame it on how he was raised and his family, but this isn’t just about families messing up behind closed doors. The pampering of boys is ingrained right into the system, and we love pretending it’s all on the mothers. That’s a story people tell to conveniently avoid looking at the bigger problem; it’s so much easier to complain about the person tidying up than to question the design of the whole house. But this thinking isn’t just wrong, it is inaccurate, lazy and dangerous because it ignores the foundations of the home. We like to act like we don’t know that the biggest lesson a boy gets isn’t from the chores his mom lets him skip, but from the way his father fills the room without saying a word.

People love to talk about spoiling by the mothers, but the real architect here is the father, who does nothing but hand off parenting. He’s always there, sort of ruling the place by just existing, a ghost in the machine of the family. He sits in the chair like a statue, and everyone else rushes around him. Nobody questions it. His comfort is treated like some sacred thing, while the rest of the family scrambles. And the boy watches. He learns from his father’s presence, and he learns fast that being a man is about being served, not serving. Just being there is enough. When his father waits at the head of the table for his meal, he’s showing his son exactly what power looks like, authority without effort, respect without work. If father never helps out, the son grows up thinking that doing things around the house is beneath him, something for women to handle, a mark of feminine submission. In this house, the father’s silence is loud, and it endorses the son’s unearned privilege. It tells the boy every day that his time matters more, his body is more important, and he never has to earn it.

But this isn’t just about parents. The whole community joins in. Aunts, grandmothers, neighbours, they all help build this pedestal. It’s not just a safety net; to be honest, it’s a cocoon. In these families, having a boy is a win, while having a girl is some kind of duty and obligation. The boy gets treated like a guest of honour at a party he didn’t help plan. He gets praised for the smallest and barest performance of humanity, like getting a good grade, picking up his plate and washing it, while his sisters get picked apart and are scrutinised under a microscope for every tiny mistake.

Even the words people use are loaded. We call boys precious and girls strong. It sounds harmless, but it’s a trick. Boys get labelled fragile, girls get told to toughen up, and then everyone acts like that’s just the way things are. We protect boys from every little bump, making sure they never have to face real consequences. They grow up wrapped in family excuses, while girls learn to handle everything. Over time, the girl turns into someone who can carry the world, and the boy becomes someone who can barely stand on his own.

And here’s the really weird and annoying part: some parents don’t pamper out of love, but out of a need to stay needed. The Parental Ego, it’s not always about caring; sometimes it’s about control. When you keep a son dependent, he can’t leave, can’t function, and the parent still feels important. They trade his future for their comfort now. If he can’t cook, can’t deal with his feelings, or can’t handle life alone, the parent gets to stay centre stage. It’s not that these parents are villains. They’re just trying to survive in a world that tells them their worth depends on how much they do for their sons. But the result is ugly, a hostage situation dressed in Sunday clothes, where a son’s ability to be a functional, empathetic man is traded away so a parent never has to face an empty nest or a quiet room; it just robs boys of the chance to become real, capable men.

But guess what? Sooner or later, the Sunday clothes come off. The boy leaves behind the safe little world of his home and steps outside, straight into a world he has been taught is his for the taking. We like to laugh about pampering boys, even now, some people reading this won’t take it seriously, they’d think I’m referring to stories about sons who can’t find their own socks or men who need their mums to organise their lives. It sounds innocent, almost cute. But honestly, there’s something much, much darker hiding underneath all this. When we raise a boy to believe his needs always come first and he never really has to answer for anything, we are not just spoiling him. We are teaching him to be dangerous. Sometimes the consequences aren’t just hurt feelings or broken relationships. Sometimes, it is much, much, much worse when that unchecked entitlement collides with curiosity, boredom, or raw impulse in children who haven’t yet learned the word NO applies to them, too. The proof is in the headlines.

Think about the horrific case going on in Delhi: January 18, 2026, Bhajanpura, northeast Delhi, a SIX year old girl was LURED with the promise of chowmein (or fake Rs 10 note), to her desecration by a group of boys, MINORS themselves, not much older than her, aged 10, 13 and 14, some say 9-16. For fucks sakes, they used food to bait her, because that’s what they knew worked, a familiar temptation used as a tool of the hunt. This wasn’t a mistake, a misunderstanding or a moment of confusion. It was the end result of what happens when a boy grows up believing only his wants matter. The ultimate manifestation of a pampered mind. To them, she wasn’t a person with a right to her own body and life. She was just something to use, a way to satisfy whatever stupid urge or curiosity popped into their demented brains. The reason didn’t matter to be fucking honest, hunger, boredom, a need to feel powerful. The story was always the same: my desires and wants are the only realities that matter and nothing else counts.

But this crime didn’t just start in that empty building. It started in the homes where these boys never had to think about anyone else. It began where their hunger and craving, both literal and metaphorical, were met right away. Where no never meant NO, and someone else always dealt with the consequences. Even the way they lured her with food, it almost feels symbolic. When a boy grows up always getting what he wants, when he’s raised to expect instant gratification, he never learns to pause or think twice. He doesn’t know how to wait, or talk things through, or imagine what someone else might feel. He just takes. And when his curiosity turns cruel, there’s nothing inside him to hold him back. That part of him, the one that’s supposed to stop him, never got a chance to grow.

The worst part, the most triggering part of such cases, is the silence that follows. After the crime, the family of one of the boys even helped their son run away; it’s not some weird exception, it’s just a confirmation of the system. This is the literal proof of pamperisation. It starts with a mom finding a sock and ends with a whole family hiding a predator. When the community rushes to protect the boy just because he’s one of ours, they’re only repeating what he’s always believed: the rules don’t apply to you, you’re a king. They’ll risk everything. even the life of someone else’s daughter, to protect his future...In the end, all that gentle coddling turns out to be the cruellest thing of all, because the system that shields the boy today will shield the man tomorrow.

The rot doesn’t magically stop when kids hit their teens, because the system that shields the boy today will shield the man tomorrow. If no one checks that pampered mind early on, it hardens into the kind of evil that’s downright dangerous. Look at what happened in the 2011 Abia State University gang-rape case. It wasn’t just another headline; it stripped away the mask and showed us what unchecked male entitlement really looks like. These weren’t little boys anymore. They were university students, young men, supposedly the prides of their families.

But do you know the worst part of this ABSU case? It wasn’t just the violence. It was how they turned it into a show. They pulled out a phone, filmed themselves, laughed, and made jokes, like they were recording some twisted memory to brag about later. That’s not just cruelty, it’s a King complex, plain and simple. They honestly believed they were the main characters in life, and everyone else was just background. When a guy grows up thinking his happiness is the only thing that matters, shame doesn’t stand a chance. He’ll record himself committing a crime and still feel like he’s just claiming what the world promised him.

And then, when it was time to face the aftermath, the pampering really showed its power. It’s not just parents covering up for their sons. The whole system jumps in, police, university officials, everyone. Police tried to claim there was consent, even though you could hear the victim begging for death on that video. The university cared more about its reputation than about justice. There were even reports that people tried to force the victim to take back her story.

This is how those soft pillows we give our sons turn into iron shields when they grow up. Overindulge a boy, and you don’t just spoil him, you recruit a whole society to back him up when he does something terrible. In the ABSU case, nobody was really held accountable. The story faded, no real convictions, just more proof that when a boy is treated like gold, the world will destroy a girl’s life to keep his future safe. It starts with an extra piece of meat at six years old and ends with a crime filmed for the world to see at twenty-one. That’s the legacy we’re dealing with, a direct line from the pedestal at home to the courtroom (or the cover-up) later.

But it doesn’t have to end this way, we need to stop calling this love. It’s not caring. It’s sabotage, plain and simple. When we don’t give our sons the tools to stand on their own and connect with others, we’re not helping them. We’re sending them out into the world as grown men who act like children. And then what happens? Women end up having to be superheroes just to deal with men who crumble at the slightest challenge. Men who explode when told NO. Men who think being held accountable is an attack, and who see women as things to use, not people to respect. We keep making life too easy for boys, and they grow up with walls around their hearts.

Fixing this mess won’t come from hashtags or shouting online. We need serious commitment to change, and we have to start with three big steps.

First, get rid of the pedestal. Boys aren’t trophies. They’re people, not royalty. They need to work at home, just like everyone else, chores aren’t helping. That’s just called being part of a family. No more special treatment, no excuses, no skipping out because of homework.

Second, hold them accountable. Stop coming in to clean up their messes. Let them deal with the consequences, whether it’s a broken window or a broken heart. It’s how they learn. Third, teach them that NO isn’t up for debate. It’s a boundary, not an insult. Consent starts at home, teaching boys they aren’t owed anyone’s time, not their mom’s energy, not a friend’s attention, not anyone’s body.

We’ve confused serving our sons with loving them. But real love? It’s raising a son who’s strong enough for the world, and kind enough to deserve his place in it. If we don’t step up and set limits, our sons will set them for us and not in a good way. All this coddling just hardens them in the end.

Author’s Note

This essay is not an argument against love for male children or loving them any less. It is about calling out entitlement disguised as care. The problem and harm it brings runs deep, it is systemic, not individual, and the responsibility lies with families, cultures, and institutions, not with mothers alone.

Holding boys accountable is not being cruel. or harsh. It is preparation for the real world, and to name and point out this reality is not hostility toward men. It’s just refusing to keep paying the price when they get a free pass.

Links to mentioned cases:

Delhi Horror

Bhajanpura gangrape: 6-yr-old victim called them ‘bhaiya’, minors lured her with a ‘fake Rs 10 note’

Abia State University Rape Case

Abia Rape Saga: ABSU Students protest over accusation

Gang-rape Video ........ ABSU Students React (ABIA STATE UNIVERSITY)

HELPLINES.

If you or someone you know needs immediate support for child sexual abuse, sexual violence, or related trauma, reach out confidentially:

1. Cece Yara Foundation 24-Hour Child Helpline”: Free, confidential support for child sexual abuse, reporting, referrals, and counselling.

Call: 0800 800 8001 (toll-free)

Website: CECE YARA

2. Rivers State Ministry of Social Welfare / Gender-Based Violence Hotlines: Report sexual abuse, domestic violence, child abuse; links to counselling, medical, legal aid, and partners like MSF.

   Call: 0704 041 0523 or 0704 041 0081

   MSF lines: 0903 355 5455 / 0705 889 0060 for Port Harcourt sexual violence clinic support

3. MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières) Sexual Violence Support in Port Harcourt: Free, confidential medical, psychological, and social care for survivors. 24/7

   Call: 0903 355 5455 or 0705 889 0060

   Clinic Location: Orogbum Health Center, Port Harcourt (for in-person help)

4. Mirabel Centre Helpline (sexual assault support, counselling):

Website: Mirabel Centre

Call: 0815577000, 08187243468, 07013491769

Honestly, it’s quite funny. Stay with me. If you’re a civil servant, the system says at 60 years or 35 years of service, please pack your bags, take your gratuity (if they ever pay it) and go home and play with your grandkids. If you’re a professor, you get until 70 to finish giving us headaches. Even the Judiciary and Health workers have a cap. There’s a literal expiration date on when the state thinks your brain and body can handle “work.”

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Except, apparently, if that “work” involves steering a whole nation of 200 million people through a literal storm. Then, suddenly, the rules of biology don’t apply. At that level…age is just a number. It’s “wisdom.” It’s “experience.” It’s “grace.”

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Let’s look at the lineup, shall we? Buhari wrapped up his second term at 80. EIGHTY. Most people that age are struggling with a TV remote, but we had him handling the complex geopolitical landscape of West Africa. Na bad guy, sadly, he's 'retired' now (or whatever the street says about him). RIP to his time in office…a legend in the gaslighting game, but the precedent he set? Iconic. Na them sabi sha.

Bubu-Buhari

Currently, PBAT(President Bola Ahmed Tinubu) is 74. When he took office at 71, he was already past the retirement age of every single profession listed in the Constitution.

PBAT

I don’t think bro is actually looking at anything… I’m convinced his soul is trying to leave his body, but the ancestors are holding him back like, “No, wait, there’s one more subsidy to remove.”

Meanwhile, we have GEJ (Goodluck Ebele Jonathan). Don’t let his name fool you my dear…he wasn’t an amazing president, but better than the ones above. Anyway he was 52.

GEJ

And Yar’Adua, who was 55, which, in hindsight, feels like they were practically toddlers in the eyes of the Nigerian political elite.

Even Obasanjo started his civilian run at 62.

Obasanjo

It’s like once you cross 60, instead of getting a pension and a rocking chair, you get a “Request for Expression of Interest” form for the Villa. And do you know what makes this funnier? There was a whole bill discussed in the House in 2025, trying to cap the age for President and Governor at 60. You already know how that’s going. It’s probably sitting in a file somewhere gathering dust.

Which brings me to the biggest scam of 2018: The Not Too Young To Run Act.

Buhari signed it and even had the audacity to make a joke about us waiting until after the 2019 elections to start our campaigns, until after he was done in 2019. The audacity?…anyway can’t drag him…he dead

They lowered the age for the President to 35. House of Reps and State Assembly to 25.

Wait, pause. I’m 20. In five years, the law says I am “mature” enough to handle the national budget, command the armed forces. But if I walked into a political caucus meeting right now, they’d ask me whose “pikin” I am and if I’ve brought the malt and bottled water for the real stakeholders.

Poor man 0-200 Stakeholders

We are “allowed” to run, but are we allowed to run?

If a 35-year-old actually tried to contest for President, the mockery would be legendary. The memes would be brutal. We’d be told to “go and start from the local government level” or “learn the ropes” meanwhile, the people “holding the ropes” have been holding them since Late Queen Elizabeth was 34…erm, btw she has been dead for what? 5 years now?

I feel like we’re all just vibrating at a frequency of suppressed frustration. Yeaahh that tiktok sound just popped into my head “I am not angry, I am in pain.”

No, actually, we’re livid. But in true Naija style, we turn the trauma into Twitter threads and dark humour because what else can we do? It’s exhausting. We’re educated, we’re intellectually sound (well, some of us cause the things I see on this app), we’re global citizens and yet, we’re being led by a generation that thinks “the cloud” is where rain comes from and nothing else. We have the laws. We have the “Not Too Young To Run” paperwork. We have the numbers. But we’re stuck in this cycle where the grandfathers are deciding the future of the grandchildren they won’t even be here to see.

Can’t we just, like... bomb Aso Rock or something? (Relax o, DSS, it’s a literary device, don’t come for me).

But seriously, can we just Alt+F4 the whole Villa? Just Ctrl+A and Delete? Because the way this system is set up, bruh…I’m tired. Are we even angry enough yet? Or are we just going to keep making funny TikToks until we’re 60 and it’s our turn to tell the next generation of 20 year olds to “calm down and wait”?

Anyway, let me go and look for “daily 2k” before I start planning a revolution I’m too tired to finish.

Character consistency check:

• Still 20.

• Still broke.

• Still Nigerian.

• Still waiting for the plot twist.

You are a woman. You have WIFI. You have a phone. You have opinions. You have rights…well barely. If you’re reading this, you’ve already committed the ultimate sin: existing online while female

But don’t worry. This is a safe space. A guide. A survival manual for the trenches. Because clearly, the problem is not the men who spend their data harassing, threatening, and degrading women online. No. The problem is that you, unfortunately, chose to be a person…publicly.

Sooo, since the world refuses to change, let’s fix you.

So, you want to exist digitally without being called a “3/10 mid”, receiving a “hey dear/ I want to marry you” from a 54 year old man named Festus whose profile picture is a blurry photo of him at a funeral orrr getting a death threat because you said you prefer a man with abs and good skincare?

I’ve got ya, grab your snacks and chilled drink (whichever one fits your vibe today) and let’s dive into it.

Phase 1: Be Invisible

The easiest way to not get insulted online is to simply not be there. But since we all have a pathological need for validation and a scrolling addiction to feed, we have to be strategic.

If you have a profile picture? Damn girl, you’ve already failed. Having a face? in 2026?? In this econonmy??? With these inflation rates???? That’s brave asf, but alsoan invitation for comment like “who gave this kitchen utensil a phone?”

Soo replace your gorgeous glass skin selfie with a picture of an avatar or better still a well cooked dish, or preferably a well seasoned cast iron skillet. Men respect iron. They might even ask you for fried rice recipe instead of your body count.

Then your username…if your username is @(your name), mamas, you’re asking for it, you’re begging for it. You need to sound like a 16 year old boy living in Ikorodu who peaked during a Call of Duty match. Try @noobslayer2009 or @backtolobby or @cryptoalpha_77. Use “He/Him” pronouns in your bio. And I promiiiiseeeee you omg cpmments would shift from”Why are you so loud and extreme?” to “Wagwan King, let’s build”.

Speaking of being too loud and extreme…your content. Yes, stop posting your thoughts. Immediately no. Ew. Thoughts are feminine. Feminine is “emotional”. Emotional is “irrational”. Instead, only post blury photos of windows or a girl in a doggy position and caption it with “tapping that soon”. If you must speak, only quote Elon Musk or post “W” under videos of men doing mundane things.

I know, I know… it’s a bit radical. But think about it. No tweets, no instagram stories, no Tiktoks, no hot takes, no selfies, no harmless jokes. Just silence. Peace. Digital celibacy. Because the moment you post, you have opened a door. And Nigerian men… actually, men globally, but let’s be honest, we are focusing on our immediate environment, do not knock. They burst in with 0 home training and entitlement.

Phase 2: Be Completely Unremarkable

If the skillet or avatar PFP didn’t work and they’ve realised there’s a woman behind the screen, we must escalate to the “ugly” defence/

If you’re pretty, you’re a distraction. That attracts “Who is this fine girl?” followed by unsolicited comments about your body, your lips, your shape and eventually your morals. But don’t be too plain. Because then it’ll shift to, “You’re ugly, that’s why you’re talking like this. Go and do surgery.”

You have to find a very thin middle. Become visual background noise. A face that says “I exist, but not enough to provoke a feeling”. Like that terms and conditions page that pops up after you download an app…everyone sees it, but nobody cares.

Phase 3: NEVER, Under Any Circumstance, Have An Opinion

Especially not a strong one. Especially not about men. Especially not about gender.

If you tweet, “I think women deserve basic respect”, oohhh girl you’re now in shark infested waterrssss. You’ll be met with:

“Who hurt you?” (as if the world isn’ttrying to do that daily)

“You people always generalise”

“Not all men”

“Go and marry first”

“You’re bitter”

“You’re ugly anyway”

“Drop your location”

If you’re nau unlucky omo it’s over, my baby, it’s over. Someone will take a screenshot of your profile, zoom into your pores, edit it to look like bobrisky’s throwback and post it with: “And it’s this kind of girl that’s talking”. Now your face is trending. Not your point o. Just your face.

Phase 4: If you must exist, exist apologetically.

Shrink yourself before they do it for you. Start every post with a disclaimer.

“I might be wrong, and I’m sorry, but…”

“No offence to the kings who run the world, but…”

“I’m not trying to start anything but…”

A man can come online to day the most ridiculous, logically bankrupt thing you’ve ever heard and people will debate with him respectfully. But a woman will say “Good morning” and somehow someone will find a way to sexualise it. “Good morning” becomes “Morning what? Show us your body first.” Because lol obviously, your existence is incomplete without male consumption.

Phase 5: Desexualise Yourself. Overcorrect. Become Aggressively Modest.

No clevage. No fitted clothes. No makeup that looks like you tried to look extra good. No angles that suggests you have a body…especially a “banging” body. Because if you look “too good”, then you’re asking for attention duh…

But if you dress modestly…ugh

“Oh, so you think you’re better than us? Holier than thou! Pick me! Red flag!”

Phase 6: Be Likable

If harassment happens, you must handle it with grace.
Do not get angry. That will make you “emotional”…ew.
Do not fight back… at least not too hard. That will make you “disrespectful” (what if your future husband is watching??? hoorrr, no husband for you again.)
Do not ignore it. That will make you “proud”.

Ideally, you should respond with a light joke. Something self deprecating. Something that says, “I am still likeable despite being treated like trash.” Because likability is your currency. Not dignity. Not safety. Just how much you can make them smile while they step on you.

Phase 7: Disappearance

If you miss a step or act out of script, my love, you gats delete your account. Go private. And people will say:

“You’re too sensitive”
“Learn to take a joke”
“It’s just the internet”

“Just the internet” As if the internet isn’t where reputations are built and destroyed. As if threats are not real because they are typed. As if harassment, reduced and dehumanised daily, doesn’t affect you.

THE TRUTH

Because all of this advice? It’s rubbish. It doesn’t work.

You can be quiet, loud, pretty, plain, modest, expressive, funny, serious… there is no version of womanhood online that is safe. That is the joke. The absurdity is not that women are “doing it wrong”. The absurdity is that we are expected to strategise our existence to avoid being mistreated.

We have built a digital culture where the burden of safety is placed on the person being targeted, not the hunters. It’s not random… It is structural. Digital misogyny is not just men being “rude” online. It is an extension of the real world. Of how women are treated offline, just faster, louder, and with an audience.

And Nigerian online spaces have their own brand of audacity. You will see a man who cannot spell “responsibility” telling a woman with two degrees that she is talking too much. You will see men who contribute nothing but demanding submission from women they would not qualify to stand beside in real life.

They call it cruise… cruise. As if humiliation is entertainment. As if degradation is a personality trait.

And when we react? When we push back? We are “aggressive”, “We can’t take a joke”.

If the cost of being a woman online is being called an ashawo (prostitute) by a man whose profile picture looks like a bored ape, then fine. Put it on my tab. I’ll pay in sarcasm, I’ll pay it. I’ll pay in my unfiltered takes. I’ll pay by being as loud and as intelligent and as “too much” as I want to be .

Stay online. Be provocative as much as you want.

The reason they are so loud is that your existence is a constant reminder of everything they aren’t. You are educated, you are travelling, you are eating food that isn’t inside black nylon and you are doing it all without asking for their permission.

That ‘Wife Material’ they keep screaming about? It’s just code for ‘Someone I can control because I can’t control my own life.’

So, when they come for you, don’t be ‘ladylike.’ Ladylike is for people who have something to lose. You have a voice, a brain with good intellectual capacity and a very sharp tongue. Use it.

No, cause it’s actually not funny o, lmao. Honestly, what is even happening?

We have entered this TikTok-ified, Pinterest board version of African identity, where everything has to be “elevated”. Like, gone are the days of just a good tailor who somehow knows your measurement by heart and calls you omo mummy. Now we have “Textile Architects” and “Creative Directors” who act like they discovered cotton.

And don’t even get me started on the naming conventions. Nna ehn, you’ll be scrolling through their website and see the “Adaugo Set” which is literally just a long skirt and a croptop for $550 USD

Excuse me??? $550 for what exactly??? For the same ankara that we use as wrapper to carry babies?? Does the Adaugo Set come with a deed to a land in the village? Does it come with a husband who cooks everything I want?? Because for that price, Adaugo better be walking me to my destination herself.

And then there’s the “Zainab Kaftan” for $400. A Kaftan!! Something our aunties wear to go and buy bread, but suddenly, because it is photographed in front of a baobab tree with 4k editing, it’s now “luxury resort wear”. Please nauuu.

Forget Ankara, that plain old ankara, cause apparently, that’s too “local”. Now what we have is “ethically sourced, hand dyed heritage wax”. Every time a brand adds a new adjective to their bio, the price jumps to another fifty dollars. Just adding words like game add-ons for clothes we used to buy in bundles at Tejuosho or Lagos market.

I see the girlies on my FYP doing these elaborate GRWM videos in these $600 co-ord sets, talking about “investing in African pieces.” And I’m sitting there…utterly confused, thinking…where exactly is this investment? Is there a dividend?? Is the outfit going to appreciate like land?? Cause lmao unless that fabric is magic… like maybe it’s got 24 karat gold threads… I really don’t see the return on investment.

We’re being fed this weird idea that if you want to be a “high value” African woman, you have to buy African stuff, but at Western prices. It’s honestly a tax on our own culture. Cause, bruhhh…imagine paying a premium just to look like yourself??? The irony is screaming.

Then I go to Instagram…because where else does soft capitalism thrive so beautifully??… Then I see it… the ads. Their visuals are always on point, cl…peak content. It’s always a brown skinned lady with cheekbones that could cut glass, standing in front of a clay wall or some “village core” background. The caption is always poetic, word porn(is that even a thing??), talking about heritage, identity, roots. “For the African woman reclaiming her power”.

I’m nodding cause I’m feeling the vibe… I’m feeling seen cause I’m a fan of Afrocentrism… my inner pan Africanist is risingggg.

Then I swipe.

$120

For Ankara.

For an identity bralette??? Nna ehn, the way that ancestral pride just evaporates from my body, viam!! Because lol, why is my ancestry, my culture and my very soul being converted to USD right in front of me?

And that’s when the spirit of confusion enters my body. Because, seriously, who is this actually for?? The label and ad is screaming “African woman,” but those prices? Oh, honey…That screams “someone with a remote tech job and a blue passport.” The stories feel like home, but when I try to check out, it’s obvious they have someone else in mind. It’s like reading a love letter that clearly wasn’t meant for you. You’re just the delivery guy.

So now I’m just there thinking, “Wow, I’m only here for the optics.”

Because if I’m being dead honest…and I’m always dead honest… I could take that same “African print” design from your feed, show it to my tailor in Yaba (shoutout to Mrs Tolu), hand her 15k naira, and not only would I get the outfit, but I’d get change for chickwhizz and coke, plus a compliment about how the outfit looks good for me and my weight distribution is nice.

So, what am I actually paying for? The “story”? The “branding”? Or the fact that you need to maintain a lifestyle in Dubai or an apartment in Shoreditch while pretending to be “one with the people”?

Yeah, I know I’m being sarcastic. My internal monologue is a biittt chaotic today. But really, it comes from a place of deep frustration. We want to support. We want to see African brands go global. We want our prints on the Met Gala red carpet, Vogue. But do we have to go bankrupt to celebrate our own heritage?

If your brand says it’s “For the African Woman,” but your prices are geared toward women who think Jollof is a personality trait and spend in USD, then be real about it. Don’t turn our mothers’ struggles and grandmothers’ wrappers into your mood boards and marketing strategy and then expect us to pay premium just to belong to a club we were born into.

This isn’t about just one brand anymore. At this point, it’s the whole damn industry…an entire industry built on “African authenticity,” neatly packaged and sold to whoever has the strongest currency.

The irony is actually hilarious if you think about it. For years, people looked down on Ankara. Called it “local,” “bush,” “old fashioned.” Colonialism messed up how we viewed ourselves. Suddenly, anything too rooted in home needed a makeover or better yet… just pushed aside for whatever was coming out of Paris and NYFW.

But then the “Africa to the World” movement happened. Suddenly, it wasn’t just fabric… it was “heritage textile.” Not just clothes, now it’s “storytelling.” No longer just culture, it became “luxury.” And apparently, the same things people once called ordinary suddenly turned extraordinary the moment they passed through the right hands, got the right lighting and arrived with the price tag meant to feed a household for at least a month. It feels a lot like you needed a Western cosign or a high end price before your own culture was worth anything to you.

Just to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with charging what you want. Get your money. Overcharge even. We love a successful CEO. We’ll still comment “Yassss Queen” under your brand photos. But please, let’s not act surprised when the very people you claim to be centring can’t even afford to look at the sale/black friday section. You can’t claim to be all about the African woman and then price her out of her own cultural experience. That’s not empowerment.

And Nigerians? We notice. We don’t always write essays about it or titktok videos, but we side eye like mad. We get the feeling of, “Yeah, this isn’t for me.” Deep down, we know what’s up… We know when we’re the muse but not the customer.

And that’s where the real issue is.

So who is this “African woman” these brands talk about in their brand biography or wtv? Is she the woman in Lagos checking exchange rates before she decides if she can afford a new dress? Or is she sitting in London, adding three items to her cart without thinking twice? Is it the woman who grew up wearing Ankara to every wedding? Or someone buying it at 24 because it’s suddenly become a statement and an aesthetic?

It feels like brands are talking to two totally different African women… and only one group can actually buy what’s being sold.

Just to be clear…cause some of you have a habit of forming opinions that make no sense. I am not saying Diaspora Africans don’t deserve a connection. They absolutely do. Identity gets tricky when you’ve grown up away from home. But the issue is when “reconnecting” turns into another luxury purchase. When culture morphs into something you have to buy your way back into. That’s when it stops feeling like a celebration and starts feeling like curation. It’s like Africa is being fine tuned for international appeal, with nothing left to chance and no room for the actual Africans living in it.

Nigerians in particular, aren’t dumb, we can spot when it’s all performance. I mean… we invented presentation and packaging before IG, IYKYK. We know when “for us” really means “inspired by us, but sold to them”.

We see it in the little things. All those fancy poetic captions about “honouring ancestors” right next to shipping costs that could cover someone’s rent for a month. The “Made in Africa” label, but the prices are clearly set for a Western pocket. That gradual shift from community to exclusivity. Because as soon as something is labelled “luxury,” it effectively stops being for everyone.

Maybe that’s the aim shaaa. Maybe it was never actually about accessibility. Maybe it’s about proving that Ankara can stand alongside the Guccis and Chanels of the world. That’s a valid business goal. Just to be honest about it. I don’t think it makes sense for it to be wrapped in the language of “sisterhood” and “for the African woman” if you’re actually talking to a select 1%. It’s weird for us to be mentioned in every caption but hardly ever considered in the business model. To be the heart of the story, but left standing outside the experience.

It feels like your own culture being put on display, gorgeous, sleek, but just out of reach. You find yourself staring, thinking, “I know what this is, but somehow, it doesn’t quite know me back.”

Maybe that’s why the price is so high. It’s more than just money. It’s a message… a clear sign of who this is really for.

AGAIN!!! I’m all for growth. I’m all for business. I’m all for getting that bag. But please, let’s stop lying. If you’re pricing in dollars while operating in Africa, you’re not building a local industry lmaooo you’re running an export business. You’re a tourist in your own culture, charging other tourists a premium for a “local experience.”

Anyway, let me go and call my tailor. My ANKARA needs are 100% Naira funded and 0% performative. Mrs Tolu doesn’t care about my “textile architecture”, but she sure knows how to make me look like a million dollars for about forty.

And that? That’s the real heritage.

Okay, so you guys picture this, yeah: it's 1 am or 1:30 am. I'm not sure and I'm just in my room chilling, the AC is on, there's light (thank God) and my phone is fully charged. I'm just enjoying my life right now and naturally, instead of sleeping like a person with goals, I’m on Snapchat.

Anyway, I’m just scrolling, minding my business in my oversized tee and bonnet that has honestly seen better days, when I come across a girl’s story. Yoh, this babe is dropping paragraphs. Essays. Lamentations. She’s talking about how her Ex still has her “soul tied” and she can't move on even after he basically ghosted her after she paid for his flight to Abuja.

I swear I tried not to, but omg I couldn’t help it, but I was cackling.

Because, babes, let’s be so fucking for real. Soul ties? In this economy? In this 2026, when we are all collectively fighting for our lives against inflation, rent, school and just the general stress of being Nigerian.

The delusion is actually peak. We have successfully turned one very human, very messy combination of good dick, daddy/mommy issues and anxious attachment into some deep spiritual bondage that only 21 days prayer and fasting and prayers can break. Meanwhile, the guy is out there living his best life, posting gym pictures and calling the next babe “my peace” while he ignores your 2:00 PM crashout texts of you begging him to communicate.

I had to tell my friend Adaeze the same thing back in 2023. She was losing her mind, becoming “one with the spirit” because a guy who looks like the sole of a muddy boot was giving her sweet, sweet attention. She was on the group chat talking about destiny and carrying his demons. Bruh, I looked her in the eyes as her self appointed therapist because nobody is paying Ikoyi therapy prices for a situationship and I told her: Adaeze, you are not spiritualy bout to this man!!! You are simply dickmatised and your attention style is screaming for help.

We need to stop calling every chemical reaction a spiritual awakening. You’re not “connected to his aura”, mamas, you’re connected to the way he held your waist while telling you a lie you both knew was a lie. That’s not deep calling unto deep. That’s just oxytocin doing the heavy work for a man who doesn’t even know your middle name or your goals.

Soul ties have just become the rebrand and new fancy name for attachment wounds. John Bowlby didn’t die for us to be out here blaming covenants when the real demon is the fact that your father was emotionally unavailable, so now you think every man who texts you consistently feels like a miracle from the throne of grace. We would rather ask Pastor to “break the chain” than admit that we are just scared of being alone.

The Nigerian in me is actually screaming. Because why are we like this? You’ve spent three months “manifesting a shift in his energy” when the only shift you need is a trip to the optometrist. You’re sitting there doing shadow work to understand why he triggers you, but my love…the math is 2+2=4. He is a Yoruba man from Magodo who listens to alpha male podcasts and has a God complex. What is there to investigate?

The audacity sef mehn is what kills me. You’ll see a man who treats you like an optional side dish and you’ll tell your best friends, “I just feel like we knew each other in a different dimension”. Sisteerrrrrr, in this dimension, he hasn’t complimented you in 3 weeks. In this dimension, you’re on of the three girls he’s keeping “private” baby, you the draft.

Mehn, I’ve watched my friends do the most. I’ve watched my friends move states, changed numbers, and start new lives, only to see an ex’s WhatsApp status and claim "the tie is still active." No, babe. What’s active is your refusal to accept that you liked being chosen by him more than you like yourself without him

And omg the universe then decides to laugh in our faces and do you know how??? The men we claim as “soul ties” are always god damn mid, like aggressively mid. It’s never with the man who pays for lunch, respects your time, or has a functional emotional IQ. No, it’s always with an Emmanuel who thinks cheating is a social construct and uses Why is your soul tied to mediocrity? Is your spirit on sale?

I’m tired of us acting or believing that we have to suffer for love. You are too beautiful, your skin is to pretty and your brain is too sharp for a man to be doing you emotional gymnastics. If you have to perform an exorcism or go through prayers for a man that does absolutely nothing and his only contribution to your life is “hyd? wyd? wyll? what is the colour of your pant?”, then the problem isn’t spiritual, boo. The problem is you need to block him and go touch some grass. Touch a different man. touch a book. Just touch something that isn’t your phone.

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We’ve become a generation of intellectual hot babes who read books and quotes that educate us about boundaries, but we still fold like a beach chair the moment a man with a nice perfume with“mysterious” vibes and a nice goatee looks our way. We use big and complicated words/phrases to justify small minded behavior. “He’s my twin flame.” Nooo, babe, he’s a narcissist with a nice perfume. “Our connection is telepathic.” No, you’re just projecting your desires onto his silence. Silence isn’t a sacred space (I used to think that way), it’s just him not talking to you.

I’m saying this with love, but also like a big sister and small sister that has seen and witnessed shege: PLEASE stop giving your power to these labels!!! If he wanted to be tied to you, you wouldn’t be on WikiHow at 4:00 AM looking up “signs he’s your destiny.”

You’re not healing…you’re just hovering and avoiding. You’re just wearing on a fancy leash because you’re scared that if you let go, there won’t be anything else to hold onto.

But newsflaaashhhh: there is. It’s called something to hold on to…actually MULTIPLE things to hold on to, like your sanity, your future, not being the girl people pity when your name comes up in the group chat.

His soul is not tied to yours. The sex was fire, the attention was consistent for ninety days, and your nervous system got addicted to the dopamine. You confused safety with the way he made you feel seen after years of feeling invisible. You mistook good head for good character. You thought “he knows my body” meant “he knows my soul”.

Healing isn’t breaking some dumb soul tie… my love, it is admitting you have issues and doing the ugly, messy shadow work. It’s going to therapy even when your mother calls it oyinbo nonsense (I had to do that and it helped me soo much). It’s deleting the playlist you made for him or with him or he made for you. It’s blocking him and not checking the spam folder to read old messages, or stalking him with a fake account.

So, the next time you feel that tug in your chest when he posts a story, don’t light a candle. Don’t pull a tarot card. Just take a deep breath and be honest (my friend taught me this)
- Was I using him to fill a void in my life?

- Did I ignore the red flags cause the sex was 10/10?

- Am I romanticising the bare minimum cause I’m scared to be alone?

- Do I miss him, or do I miss the version of myself that felt seen and chosen?

Repeat after me: “I am not spiritually bonded. I am just horny and unhealed.”

Then, put your phone on DND and go to sleep. Your soul and your hairline will thank you in the morning. And for the love of everything holy, leave those Yoruba and Igbo men alone until you’ve finished your degree or at least developed some self love.

IJN. Amen.

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But that’s not the main thing making me tired. I’m just exhausted by the sheer, undiluted hypocrisy online and offline. I’ve been thinking about how we scream about how “abortion is the greatest moral failing of our time” and beating our chests about how “every child deserves a chance”. We scream for the unborn like they’re the only innocents worth saving, but the living ones…the ones dodging bullets and being extinguished by 2,000 pound bombs in Gaza, starving in Sudan or right here, sleeping under bridges in Ajegunle because their parents got wiped out by cult boys or bad governance…those ones get the silent treatment. It’s the selective outrage for me. It’s how we can scream at each other and cuss each other out over a cluster of cells because “what if the child is destined for greatness or what if the child has a bright future”, but when the news shows a five year old pulled from rubble in a war zone, suddenly we’re all tired. Suddenly, it’s only thoughts and prayers we can give, “God will help them”, and a repost before we go back to arguing about whose side is more moral.

Abeg, let’s be honest for once. This was never about children. It’s about which version of “child” lets us feel righteous without getting our hands dirty. Like, lmaooo it’s so easy for you people to defend a life that hasn’t shown up yet. An abstract baby, no face, no name, no messy reality, no complicated religion, no “threatening” race or skin tone. A theoretical child doesn’t need you to petition the government to stop sending bombs…it just needs you to post a graphic you made on Canva on IG and then you start feeling like a soldier for Christ. You get to feel superior without having to look a grieving, heartbroken mother in the eye…the kind of mother who wasn’t a choice or debate… but a whole human being o…a person with a favourite toy and a unique laugh that is now just…gone. We project every perfect fantasy onto an unborn baby because they are a blank slate for our ideology, but the moment a real child appears on your fyp, swollen stomach from kwashiorkor, eyes too big for their tiny malnourished bodies and suddenly the whole energy shifts. Suddenly, it’s geo politics is complicated, or it’s a centuries old war, or what can one person do?” Bruh, it makes zeero senseee.

I see it everywhere, especially. with Nigerian uncles, aunties and youths sef. They will spend hoourssssss on group chats, and TikTok lives arguing about the evil Western liberal values that have found their way into God’s nation and threatening the purity of the country, but then they will still be the ones who will gladly drive right past a ten year old hawking plantain chips in this thirty one degree weather(bro it’s fucking boiling) in the middle of the road in this awful weather dodging brt busses and Danfos??? Oh, wait, omg I forgootttt…that’s just the hustle right?? We have this ability… this incredible capacity to classify empathy until it’s just a decoration for our identities. We want to be the moral ones, the godly ones, but the morality and godliness ends where our convenience begins. We are sooo obsessed with the potential of life but extremely quiet about the brutal, everyday reality. Even our empathy depends on the postcode. A fetus in a clinic feels like something we can control with laws, sermons and WhatsApp broadcast messages. But a kid in Rafah with shrapnel in her leg or the almajiri boys in Kano begging at traffic lights while their teachers pocket the zakat money?? Oh, that’s too far, the suffering is too loud, too mixed up with corruption, politics, oil and religion. It’s easier for you to look away and easier for you to say “God’s will” or “they should have peace talks” and go back to eating your shawarma.

The funny thing ehn is that some of these pro life voices are the same ones voting for leaders who cut healthcare budgets and let schools crumble. They watch kids hawk pure water on the highway instead of sitting in class. It’s like the child only matters when it’s a weapon in the culture war or when it’s a tool to shame women and police our bodies.

I keep wondering if we even know what pro life means anymore, or if it’s just a brand we wear to feel safe in our heads. If life is sacred, it’s sacred everywhere. It’s sacred in the womb, yes, okay, let’s grant you that for a second, but then it’s also sacred when it’s fleeing across a border, or when it’s shivering in a basement during an air raid, or when it’s starving because of a blockade. You can’t pick and choose. If your heart only bleeds for the life that hasn’t started yet, but stays stone cold for the life that’s being violently ended on your screen, then what exactly are you protecting? Is it life, or is it just your own sense of righteousness?

Maybe we’re terrified. Maybe it’s easier to focus on the unborn because the born are too much to handle. The born have needs. The born have rights. The born remind us that the world is a cruel, jagged place and that we are often complicit in that cruelty through our silence. It’s comfortable to argue about a medical procedure, but it’s uncomfortable to admit that our silence is a luxury paid for by the blood of children. We’ve become so good at this thing, this behaviour of being loud where it’s safe and quiet where it’s dangerous. We’ve mastered the art of the selective tea, crying for the lost potential of a fetus while walking past an entire generation of children in conflict zones whose potential is being buried every single day. We just keep scrolling, waiting for the next thing to be angry about, as long as that anger doesn’t ask too much of us.

I saw a video yesterday of a father holding his daughter…or what was left of her and his face was just... it was a void. There was no politics there, no debate, just a man whose entire world had been deleted. I wondered where all the people tweeting and making videos about “murder” were. Why wasn’t that father’s grief enough to spark a movement or a conversation? Why wasn’t that child’s life important enough to trend? It’s because she was already here. She was already real, and therefore she was complicated. She was a casualty of a “necessary” war. She was collateral damage. We don’t call the unborn collateral damage; we call them babies. But the children in the wars get downgraded to civilians or stats just so we can sleep at night. We use words to distance ourselves from the very thing we claim to cherish.

I’m just tired of the hypocrisy lol. If you’re going to tell me every life is a miracle, be ready to defend the miracle that’s currently being starved to death in a war you’re too tired to read about. Otherwise, just admit it’s not about the children. Admit it’s about feeling like you’re on the right side of a story without ever having to leave your comfort zone. Admit that you prefer your victims quiet, invisible, and theoretical. But, lol, the truth is that admitting we’ve failed the living while posturing for the unborn is just too much for our collective ego. So, we’ll just keep praying for the "precious babies" while the actual babies are buried in uncounted graves, and we’ll call it faith. We’re so busy protecting life that we’ve forgotten how to value it. I wonder if, when everything finally goes quiet, we’ll realise that the children we were so desperate to save were the only ones we didn’t have to actually look at.

My journey into feminism wasn’t some overnight eureka moment where I woke up with the theory memorised. It was messy. It started with a nagging feeling that the rules were rigged and unfair, then a few “wait, that’s not right” moments in my own relationships, and eventually, a total unlearning of the nonsense I’d been fed since I was a kid. I had to outgrow my own internalised misogyny in real time, and honestly? I’m still growing cause I catch myself doing or thinking certain things that make me be like “Whoa…is this right? or another internalised misogyny I haven’t unlearned yet?”

And that’s normal bro…It’s actually fucking normal cause we are all unlearning, even the ones that put themselves on a pedestal still make mistakes.

Ehen…before I proceed. Before some useless boys start coming under my comment section to do nonsense…oga, this isn’t for you. Don’t think for one second that my critique of the movement is an invitation for your input. Instead of scrolling through here trying to have the last laugh or find gotcha moments for feminists you hate, you should actually be learning how to be a better person and checking your own chest. This is a conversation for the girls. Move along.

Noowww as I was saying…

If we look at the state of things now? It’s getting scary.

I’m sorry, but feminism on social media is losing the plot. It makes no sense to force exclusion on a movement that was built to fight for inclusion. You’re pushing the same sentiment patriarchy pushes, just with a different label:

“Oh, because you’re married and have kids, you can’t do this.”

“Oh, you have a man in your life, you can’t do this.”

“Oh, you’re Christian or Muslim, so you can’t do this.”

Bro, stfu alreadyyyy.

Saying someone is “disqualified” (actually an insane word to use) from being a feminist because she is married with a child is ridiculous.

Actually, lets do a quick quick history lesson for the gatekeepers of this movement.

I don’t know why you people love to weaponise Radical Feminism online without actually knowing where it came from. In the 1960s and 70s, the movement wasn’t about “rejecting men” in the simplistic way we try to frame it. It was a structural critique.

Many of the women who literally BUILT the movement were housewives, mothers and even women currently in marriages they were questioning. In fact, being married didn’t disqualify them, it birthed the radicalisation. These women entered marriages under traditional expectations, experienced the inequality firsthand (the unpaid labour, the lack of autonomy), and began critiquing the system from the inside.

If you look at the different sectors of feminism, they don’t even agree on what the fix is, so why are you acting like there’s only one door to get in???

Liberal Feminism: They are the make marriage equal crew. They believe marriage is fine as long as it’s a partnership of equals with shared chores and legal rights.

Radical Feminism: They are the ones who interrogate the foundation. They ask if the institution (marriage) itself is a tool of control. Some want to reform it, some want to dismantle it, which is fine

Marxist Feminism: They are the supporters of follow the money. They see marriage as an economic unit that provides free labour for capitalism.

But do you know they all had the same point?? All of them agreed that marriage has historically been unfair to women. But they differ on whether it can be fixed, dismantled, or if it’s just a manifestation of the economy. Nowhere did it ever say in the manual does it say “Married women stay out.”

Not everyone is going to realise feminism the same way or at the same time. We were all indoctrinated into patriarchy. Unlearning it is not a race, and it’s not fucking linear. Some women start questioning things after marriage, after kids, after years of living inside the system. That doesn’t invalidate them.

It doesn’t change the fact that they are feminists. It doesn’t change the fact that they are fighting for women. It doesn’t change the fact that we are ultimately pushing toward the same goal.

We are turning this into a gatekept movement, and that’s fucking weird.

MIND YOU, THERE ARE DIFFERENT TYPES AND APPROACHES TO FEMINISM. Some of you want everyone to be the same…which is being radical and queer and that’s wrong asf. You are making women scared to speak up and join the movement because they are walking on eggshells. Radical feminism is not the only valid expression of feminism. Queer feminism is not the only valid expression of it. Liberal feminism, intersectional feminism... brooo, all of these exist whether you like it or not.

Some of you want uniformity. You want everyone to think the same, speak the same, live the same version of “correct feminism.” That’s not liberation. That’s control.

And the irony is, in trying to “protect” feminism, you’re making it inaccessible. You’re making women afraid to speak, afraid to learn, and afraid to even associate with the movement because they feel like they have to be “perfect” before they’re allowed in. That defeats the entire point.

Feminism is supposed to create space for growth, not punish women for where they are in the process. Because if the movement only makes room for the “perfect feminist,” then it’s not a movement anymore, bro, it’s a performance.

We have to stop acting like everyone was born with the theories already memorised. We are all unlearning a lifetime of conditioning in real time. If there’s no room for the woman who is halfway through her journey, then this movement isn’t for “women” lmao, it’s for you people’s fucked up egos.

You can’t build a revolution by subtracting people.

Imagine this real quick. Pastor is touching down in his Gulfstream, fresh from a “ministry trip” to Dubai, wearing a suit that costs more than your uncle’s annual salary. The church members? They’re back home in Surulere or Ajegunle doing 21 days of dry fasting, drinking only water and breathing in faith, believing that if they sow one more “seed” (Translation: a bank transfer that clears their last savings), their own miracle is coming. The pastor’s wife just posted a new Range Rover with the caption “God is good💕,” while half the congregation is praying for Nepa to give them light and money to finish paying WAEC application fees.

Bruh.

This is not me hating on God, abeg let’s get that straight.. This is me asking the question I know we’ve all whispered in the middle of praise and worship when the offering basket comes around for the third time for the “church project” that has been projecting for 5 years now… how exactly did we get here?

Look, I’m 21, I grew up in Lagos, I’ve done the whole “church girl” arc… I’m talking from children’s church, teenage church, youth church, drama group, choreography, the works. I still go sometimes, not cause I’m perfect or want to go, but that’s a topic for another day. Let’s be honest with ourselves: the modern Nigerian church, especially the big ones, has become the best booming hustle after politics in West Africa. Our pastors might be more creative with stomach infrastructure than our politicians.

The prosperity gospel is the ultimate “get rich quick” scheme they’re selling it’s seductive asf. “Name it and claim it”, “sow and you shall reap”, but have you noticed the reaping seems to be happening only in the pastor’s domiciliary account? Private jets, custom phones, schools and universities named after them like they’re mini gods. And we, we the members? We’re the ones sowing in tears so they can reap in joy. It’s giving colonial missionary 2.0, except this time the white man was replaced by one of our own who understands the language of tithe and offering better than any oyinbo ever could.

But…just calling it a scam feels too easy. I want us to focus on the harder questions. Please, why do we still go? Why do we still dress up, dance like our ancestors are watching and drop our last five thousand naira when the landlord is literally breathing down our necks?

First, community. Lagos is huge asf, chaotic, soo many people, but it can still be lonely as hell. You leave your village, you’re adulting, you’re hustling in this jungle called a city, your family is busy too, your friends are also hustling…everyone is busy. Church becomes the one place where people actuallyknow your name, you’re no longer just another face…you’re now “Sister Yetunde”, ushers smile at you like they’ve been waiting for you all week, where one random mummy will pray for you just for greeting her, where you get refreshments after any special service or celebration and somebody actually asks “how are you?” and actually wants to talk to you.

In a country where the government has basically ghosted us, the church stepped in as unofficial services. They build boreholes, pay school fees, organise medical outreaches and skill acquisition programmes. That part isn’t fake…it feels like something deep…it’s ironic though… we end up in this weird, toxic yet nurturing relationship. It’s like dating a guy who’s definitely cheating on you (with a private jet), but he’s the only one who remembers your birthday.

Secondly, hope. Pure, undiluted, “God is about to do a new thing”, unwavering hope. This is why the marketing works so well. I mean, when everything else… the economy being downcast, the roads…can I even call what we have roads???, the police seeing your iPhone and calling you a scammer or a prostitute, the “leaders” who treat us like we don’t exist, the electricity, the amenities… in a country that keeps telling you and showing you that you don’t matter, you walk into a church and the church tells you that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is personally invested in your promotion, He’s not just “aware” of you, he’s actually plotting your “sudden breakthrough”. After years of JAMB, NYSC and job hunting that feels like a scam, when your country fails you, when your government fails you, when your leaders fail you, you look for something bigger. And in Nigeria, that something bigger has always been spiritual because the big man in the sky is the only one who hasn’t sent an automated rejection email… he’s the only one who hasn’t kicked you out for not paying house rent. The reality of living in Nigeria is physically unbearable. Who wouldn’t want to believe in that supernatural open door? It’s not stupidity. It’s not even religion in the traditional sense. It’s survival… It’s psychological, actually; it’s both. We have basically outsourced our governance to the supernatural. The church has become a coping mechanism. We are paying weekly subscriptions to believe that tomorrow won’t be as ghettolicious as today.

And the pastors know this. They know that they are the main suppliers of optimism in a country that keeps breaking our hearts. They sell us the “suddenly” while they live in the “already”. It’s brilliant if you ask me. In a country this loud, the silence of a God who “hears” is more comforting than the noise of a government that doesn’t care. Sometimes it feels like the most expensive therapy session in the world.

Third, fear and social currency…now, before I go into this, while I was thinking about this topic and the points I wanted to write on… this one really hit me. I don’t want to pretend, I don’t want to lie to myself and I also don’t want us to lie to ourselves. In this country, when someone asks you “Which church do you attend?” it’s essentially… uh, let’s say a credit score check. It’s not a question, it’s actually a vetting process and you saying you don’t go to church is like you saying you don’t believe in electricity, like you’ve become a primary suspect in a ritual killing. The vibe shift immediately, people will look at you with side eyes. Your mother will start calling prayer warriors and start asking if you worship the devil. Your friends and colleagues will assume you’re into something else”. We’ve been programmed to believe that moralities tied to a building. If you aren’t under a canopy or church every seven days, your automatically shady. You’re either a Yahoo boy., a prostitute, a wild girl, or you’re just fundamentally broken with no one to guide you. In this country, Nigeria, church is not just a religion, it’s an identity, a class marker, it’s the marriage market, it’s networking. You think every Fine girl wearing ankara or their best outfits and “minimalist” make up every Sunday are only there for the Holy Spirit? Abeg. Sunday morning is the premium tinder of Lagos and Abuja. Some of them are strategically positioning for destiny helpers. You’re looking for a brother in Christ who has a tech job in the UK and a clean beard but also a bad boy and he’s there looking for a virtuous woman who can cook, clean and look like a baddie without being “too much”. The house of God has been turned into a country club with an altar.

But there’s a part I keep coming back to, and the part makes me both mad and a little sad. We know.. deep down, a lot of us know the game. We see the pastor’s son driving a Rolls Royce while we’re squeezing into danfo and keke. We see the Mummy G.O. changing outfits three times during one service, while we’re re-wearing the same shoes for the third year.

Because Nigerian spirituality runs deeper than any pastor’s hustle. Nigerians have always believed in the invincible…. From Yoruba orishas to Igbo chi. The church just became the acceptable, colonised version of that same hunger for something more. We returned the God of the Bible into the ultimate ATM because the real economy refuses to work for us. And the pastors? They’re not stupid. They studied the assignment. They understood that in a country this broken, people will pay anything for HELP… even if it’s packaged in designer suits and private jets.

I’m not saying you should burn down every church tomorrow oo. Some churches are genuinely feeding souls and not just pockets. Some pastors are actually shepherds and not CEOs. But you see the ones that aren’t? The ones turning Faith into a Ponzi scheme? We need to stop giving them a pass just because they could quote scripture better than we do. Questioning your pastor is not backsliding. Asking yourself, “Why am I still here?” is not a sin. It is maturity.

At the end of the day, the church might actually be the second biggest scam after politics. But we keep going because Nigeria taught us that sometimes this scam is the only thing keeping us from losing our minds completely.

The real miracle isn’t another private jet.

The real miracle would be if we started demanding the same accountability from the pulpit that we (attempt to) demand from our government

Honestly, all this is just spiritual Stockholm syndrome.

Like, haven’t we realised this already??? The medical centre is a death trap. For years, we’ve watched students enter the gates of Covenant University with dreams of a degree, only to leave in a body bag because the school’s idea of an emergency response is a prayer meeting. They switch off the wifi to kill the story, but they can’t switch off the grief of the parents whose children’s lives were traded for your stupid spiritual reputation. The “Covenant” being made there isn’t with God, it’s with a system that thinks prayers can replace an oxygen mask.

I think it’s time for us to stop pretending like this is some “unfortunate incident”. It’s pure negligence, and they’re telling the students, “We don’t actually care about you.”

Another boy is gone, another person’s child! Tunmise, a 500 level Building Technology student in his final stretch, slumped during the Chancellor’s Cup football match. Short of breath, weak and asked for an early sub like any normal guy. Half-time hits, the situation is worse. They rush him to the school medical centre. No oxygen tank. No nebuliser. The doctor allegedly looks and says, “he just needs air”, in 2026 ??? At a school charging millions??? Then the boy stops breathing.

Instead of a proper emergency response? Prayers. Students say the chancellor, Bishop David Oyedepo, himself joined the session. It took three whole hours before parents got the phone call. Some students claim the school was literally debating whether to continue the tournament while a student was dying. Wifi gets switched off to control the narrative, classic CU madness. Pure gaslighting.

This is not new. This is a story we’ve seen before…too many times. It has become a franchise at this point.

Back in April 2017, another 500 level building technology student…Segun Micheals hit his head while swimming in the school pool. Friends revived him right there and rushed him to the same clinic. No oxygen. No defibrillator. Slow response mixed with the usual spiritual angle. He died.

Fast forward to June 2025. Mordi Nwense Daniel, 200 level Engineering. Struck by lightning on that same football pitch while playing in the rain. Staff started praying instead of rushing him straight to their medical centre or an actual fucking hospital since their medical center is obviously shit. By the time he reached the medical centre, it was too late. Again, the same complaints, “Pastors praying for a thunder struck boy instead of a hospital.” Same pitch. Same inadequate response. Same silence from the school.

In 2008, 11 year old Morenike Yireobong Toye Arulogun, A JSS1 border at Faith Academy (the secondary school tied to Covenant University), fell seriously ill with cerebral malaria and acute renal failure. Her father later spoke on the neglect in the boarding house and at the Covenant University Health Centre…delayed care, mismanagement, referrals that came too late. She never regained consciousness and died at just 11 years old. Her father sued the school and the health centre for negligence. That case should’ve been a loud wake up call. Instead, here we are years later with the same complaints about the same medical centre.

The late Morenike

Three boys. One little girl. Different years. Same “elite” educational institutions charging 1.5–2 million naira per session (plus medical fees). Same clinic that can’t keep basic life saving equipment stocked. Same pattern of prayer over protocol, delay and “God’s will”.

This is not a coincidence. This is a system.

Covenant sells the dream to parents and students: discipline, excellence, divine covering. And Nigerian parents are eating that shit up. They suffer, they sell their lands, hustle extra, send their bright children there because “at least no cultism like public schools and good education”. They pay expensive fees, thinking their sons and daughters are safe under spiritual and academic covering, yet the medical centre is just running like a village prayer house in 2026.

Prayer is not the enemy. God forbid. But when your child is gasping for breath on the ground, you don’t bind and cast as the first line of defence when an oxygen tank costs less than one student’s monthly feeding. Especially not when you’re collecting millions from over 11,000 students every session. This is just a repeated act of misplaced priority.

This is the problem with Nigerian faith based institutions…we have romanticised spirituality to the point that it has become a shield for systemic and structural issues. In the same way, some churches fast instead of fixing generators. The same way we shame government hospitals but defend private ones like Covenant University medical centre, that can’t handle basic emergencies. It is an extreme case of misplaced priority. Spiritual arrogance that refuses to admit that healthcare and proper equipment are part of the covering.

I have seen the fear in students who can’t speak up because they’re one statement away from expulsion. I have seen the children and adults… talented, smart, skilled individuals close to convocation or just starting secondary school, whose only crime was needing real medical help in a school that preaches excellence and “world class” but delivers excuses wrapped in “God’s plan is the best”.

Enough is actually enough.

Faith based institutions can keep their chapels and their anointing. But if you want to collect expensive fees, meet the expensive standards. Stock up on oxygen, train staff for actual emergencies, have an ambulance ready and stop treating medical crises like a deliverance service. Because right now, the only covenant these children seem to be entering is with early graves.

To the parents still defending this with “touch not my anointed”…please, be for real. Your child’s life is not a seed offering. Stop being a pick me for a system that won’t even provide an oxygen mask for your child. Demand better. Or keep paying millions while the next one slumps on that same pitch or falls ill in the hostel. While praying that the next name we’re typing RIP for isn’t your own.

We can have faith and functioning clinics. It’s not a lot to ask for.

RIP Segun Michaels.

RIP Mordi Nwense Daniel.

RIP Tunmise.

RIP Morenike Yireobong Toye Arulogun.

RIP to every other name we don’t know.

And to every parent still writing that cheque in 2026… may your eyes open before your heart breaks.

We need to talk about why half of our aunties are currently glowing in a shade of shrimp pink…that definitely wasn’t in the original plan for their lives. It’s 2026 and somehow the chokehold that lightskin has on the Nigerian psyche is still so tight. We like to pretend we’re past it, that we’re all about melanin popping and black girl magic, but then you walk into any market from Balogun to Wuse and see the shelves screaming at you with Caro white, pure white, Bioclair, hydroquinone, steroids, fair & white, even the ones promising you “even skintone in seven days.”

But like, seriously though, we need to stop acting like this is just a “skin care choice.” Nobody wakes up and decides they want their knuckles to be three shades darker than their forearms for just aesthetics. It isn’t just a beauty trend. It’s a whole inheritance. See, colonialism didn’t just steal lands and resources; they didn’t just plant flags…it planted the idea that lighter skin equals better…premium subscription to humanity. Closer to the coloniser, closer to refinement, closer to opportunity, Dark skin?? That was seen as primitive, rural, “village people”. To the point that even after independence, that script never got rewritten. It just got remixed with capitalism, Nollywood, and now filters. They left but forgot to take their colourist hierarchy of beauty with them and now we’ve turned their left overs it into a multi billion naira industry of self erasure.

We are told to be proud of our heritage, while the society you live in rewards you the second you start looking more refined… which is just a code word for closer to white.

And if you think I’m being dramatic, the World Health Organisation dropped the stats, which state that Nigeria has one of the highest rates of skin lightening use in Africa, which is basically 77% of women at some point reaching for that cream. But do you know what the crazy part is? It’s no longer the aunties in their 40s… not those ones we used to stare at and wonder what happened to them. Young girls, uni students, even mothers putting it on babies as young as six months old…yes, you read that right. Recent studies in semi urban areas found almost 20% of mothers lightened their under fives, with most of those babies under two. They know the risks: kidney damage, thinned skin, mercury poisoning and so much more…but they care more about the aesthetics of having a fair baby. Lighter skin is still one of the highest social currencies, the cheat code for better marriage prospects, job callbacks and fewer side eyes when you walk into certain places.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not here to shame anybody who has ever put a little something. I get it. This heat in Nigeria will have you looking for any shortcut to “glow”, but let’s call a spade a spade, it’s not glowing or toning. We love euphemism in this country. “Oh, I’m not bleaching o, I’m just brightening.” “I’m just clearing spots”. “I’m just restoring the glow the sun took from me”. Sis, please, you can literally invest in sunscreen and actual skin care for that. The sun is doing its job…it’s our internalised inferiority complex that has destroyed us. We’ve been conditioned to believe that “fine” is synonymous with “fair”, and we see the proof of that lie everywhere, every day…from the music videos where the lead is always the lightest girl in the room, to the job interview where presentability lowkey refers to skintone, to the beauty pageants. It’s a literal scam. We are paying money to peel off the very thing that protects us from 32 degrees sun. The irony is actually painful.

Then social media came and made it worse and louder. Filters that auto lighten, influencers and celebrities who “glow up”(change races) overnight, and celebrities whose before and after photos have a lot of holes. We’ll drag them when the bleaching goes wrong, then turn around and praise the “glass skin” results. The same way we drag BBLs and weaves, but still chase the same aesthetic. It’s just cognitive dissonance.

Don’t even get me started on the “organic” cream sellers on TikTok and Instagram lmao. Those are the real villains in this. They’ll show you a video of a concoction that looks like custard and tell you it’s made from “pure herbs and goat milk”, but three weeks later, your veins are looking like the satellite view on Google Maps. They are selling you this beautiful fantasy wrapped in insane levels of chemical burn. It’s the same old colonial lie just repackaged. Even the men are on it but are we really surprised?? They’ll be the loudest on Twitter claiming they prefer “natural babes” until the right light skinned babe slides into the DMs. And let’s be honest, lol the men are bleaching too, they do it quietly because admitting it bruises the ego, but hanty, we actually see the knuckles, we see the effects but hoorrr we see…we don’t judge. We’re all chasing a standard that was never meant for us, destroying our skin barriers to fit into a mould built by people who thought our ancestors were “uncivilised.”

At the end of the day, this isn’t just about skin… It’s about power. Who gets to define beauty? Who profits when we reject ourselves? Why does our melanin literally built to protect us from the sun, still feel like something we need to apologise for, reduce, or erase? I’m not saying we all need to rock raw melanin 24/7 with no skincare (please moisturise and use sunscreen, the sun is not our friend). But why not question why “brightening” is still the default marketing language instead of “healthy”? We need stricter regulations that actually work. We need more darkskinned girls in lead roles who aren’t the “strong best friend” or the comic relief. We need to normalise conversations where choosing not to bleach isn’t seen as “broke” behaviour.

I believe in freedom, but that freedom shouldn’t require self erasure. Babes, you’re a whole icon in your original shade, white women literally tan to get your shade, why trade that in for a chemical burn??

What do you think, loves? Have you ever felt the pressure to "brighten" just to fit in? Is the yellow sisi era finally over, or are we just getting started? Drop your thoughts below... muah.