Survival Tactics in the Federal Republic of Confusion

Femi Akintunde-Johnson

It has become increasingly unpatriotic – perhaps even mentally risky – to remain hopeful about Nigeria without looking like a person in need of urgent therapy. The average Nigerian of 2025 lives in an exhausting paradox: a country abundantly blessed with natural and human resources, but cursed by a leadership class addicted to impunity and allergic to empathy. From the dry despair of Zamfara to the suffocating floods of Lagos, and the ashen silence of Plateau to the restless rage of the South-East, the country feels less like a nation and more like an enormous accident site with no emergency services in sight.

Anyone who has been mentally alert since the 1970s and still manages to retain coherent speech and a functioning moral compass deserves to be studied. The Nigerian future? A shimmering illusion. Hope? A luxury item. Those who still mutter “e go better” in public must either be working for government, pastoring a large church, or undergoing therapy for chronic optimism. Most Nigerians have now learnt to improvise. In a place where truth is endangered and decency is often punished, survival has evolved into an art form. Morality and ethics? Mere decoration for graduation speeches. The average man on the street – neck-deep in bills and bribes – has only one pressing question: “Who morality epp?”

To live – not to talk of thrive – in Nigeria requires the invention of parallel realities. Every Nigerian who is not a politician must now create their own coping mechanism, a sort of psychological firewall against the daily trauma of the Nigerian experience. It’s either that, or you’ll lose your mind trying to understand why a country so full of promise continues to be governed by those so devoid of purpose. And in this survival Olympics, those who play dirtier often win bigger.

In the end, the most popular strategy remains denial. We convince ourselves that things are not that bad. We praise small wins, excuse big failures, and celebrate mediocrity as though excellence is a foreign conspiracy. The currency collapses? At least we’re not Zimbabwe. Another fuel hike? At least there’s no civil war. A governor builds a wooden bridge? At least he tried.

And so we continue – inventing ways to survive a system designed to suffocate us. We laugh at our tragedies, convert our pain into memes, and wear our trauma like badges of honour. But beneath the humour, the damage is real – to the psyche, the economy, and the soul of a nation still pretending to function.

If you’re still here, still sane, still sending your child to school without selling your kidney, you deserve a national award. And if not, well – we understand. The jungle is expanding. The animals are evolving. And the rules? They were never meant to favour the honest.
Welcome back to Nigeria – where the miracle isn’t that people are angry… it’s that we haven’t all gone mad. Yet.