The Cost of Being “Okay” in Nigeria
Femi Akintunde-Johnson
There was a time in this country when being “okay” was not an ambitious life goal. It was merely the minimum expectation. You had a modest job, paid your rent without organising a family summit, filled your fuel tank without checking your blood pressure, and bought groceries without calculating exchange rates like a Central Bank analyst. You were not rich, but you were not drowning either. You were simply… okay.
Today, however, “okay” has become a luxury category. In modern Nigeria, there is poverty, there is wealth, and then there is that exhausted class of citizens permanently trapped in between – the people who look fine in public but silently panic every time their phone rings unexpectedly. Because every unexpected call now sounds expensive.
The cost of being okay in Nigeria has risen beyond inflation figures and economic graphs. It is now psychological. Emotional. Spiritual, even.
You see it in the faces of working-class Nigerians who earn what used to be respectable salaries but now spend half their lives moving money from one emergency to another. One school fees payment away from borrowing. One medical test away from financial acrobatics. One electricity bill away from becoming motivational speakers on LinkedIn.
Some years ago, a young graduate got a decent entry-level job and could at least dream progressively: first a small apartment, then maybe a used car, eventually marriage and stability. Today, many graduates with “good jobs” still live like refugees from adulthood. They earn salaries every month and still whisper, “How did all the money finish?”
Because nothing adds up anymore. Transport costs rise before salaries even arrive. Food prices now behave like crypto markets – unpredictable and emotionally draining. A bag of rice has become something people discuss in lowered voices, almost with diplomatic sensitivity. Nigerians now price tomatoes the way people abroad discuss stock portfolios.
And let nobody pretend this is merely about “global economic realities”. Nigerians are not complaining because life is difficult. Human existence has always involved struggle. Nigerians are complaining because the relationship between effort and reward has collapsed spectacularly.
A civil servant can work for thirty years and retire into immediate anxiety. A small business owner can make sales every day and still remain permanently broke because diesel, rent, taxes, insecurity and inflation are all waiting outside like area boys demanding settlement.
Even laughter has become expensive. That is why Nigerian humour today sounds increasingly desperate. Our jokes are no longer merely entertainment; they are survival tools. When citizens joke that “the only thing cheaper in Nigeria now is advice”, they are not trying to trend on social media. They are managing collective trauma with comedy.
Some people have stopped dreaming entirely. Their ambitions have become frighteningly modest.
“I just want peace.”
“I just want to eat comfortably.”
“I just want to pay my bills without stress.”
Imagine reducing the vast possibilities of human aspiration to the simple hope of uninterrupted electricity and stable garri prices. But perhaps the greatest tragedy is how quickly abnormality becomes normal in Nigeria.
We have adjusted to conditions that should provoke national outrage. Parents casually discuss relocating their children abroad as though they are evacuating from a conflict zone. Young people with university degrees celebrate obtaining visas with the emotional intensity of prisoners receiving presidential pardons. Professionals work multiple jobs, not to become wealthy, but merely to remain afloat.
Some Nigerians now earn salaries that sounded impressive five years ago, yet cannot afford lifestyles that were once considered basic middle-class existence. Owning a car has become a financial relationship with suffering. Rent advances resemble ransom negotiations. Healthcare is increasingly a privilege reserved for those lucky enough not to fall sick seriously.
Meanwhile, the country continues producing billionaires and luxury estates at astonishing speed, as though two different Nigerias are operating side by side without ever greeting each other. One Nigeria buys champagne in dollars. The other Nigeria buys cooking oil in instalments.
And somewhere in the middle sits the exhausted citizen trying to maintain dignity under impossible economic conditions. The person still dressing neatly, speaking good English, attending weddings and replying “We thank God” while mentally calculating outstanding debts.
That phrase – “We thank God” – may actually be Nigeria’s most sophisticated economic policy. Because honestly, what else can people do?
There is also a dangerous cultural pressure in Nigeria to appear successful regardless of reality. Social media has intensified this madness. Everyone must look soft, happy and prosperous even while surviving on financial CPR. People now spend borrowed money maintaining appearances for people equally pretending.
A man is broke but attends owambe (parties) with rented confidence. A woman is emotionally exhausted but still posting “soft life” captions beside borrowed aesthetics. Virtually verybody is packaging. Nobody is breathing.
The result is a society quietly collapsing under performance pressure. Depression rises silently. Anxiety hides behind fashion and humour. Families break under financial strain. Friendships become transactional. Young people begin to associate self-worth entirely with economic survival.
And still, policymakers often speak about hardship with the detached language of weather forecasts. “Temporary pain.” “Necessary sacrifice.” “Economic adjustments.” But sacrifice means little when citizens no longer believe relief is coming.
The truth is simple: a nation becomes unstable when ordinary people can no longer afford ordinary lives. Not luxury. Not extravagance. Just ordinary, decent existence.
History repeatedly shows that societies survive not merely because the rich are comfortable, but because the average citizen still believes tomorrow can improve through honest effort. Once that belief dies, cynicism becomes national culture.
Nigeria must be careful. A population permanently surviving in “manage mode” eventually loses emotional attachment to systems, institutions and leadership promises. Citizens become angrier, more impatient, more vulnerable to manipulation and despair.
Still, despite everything, Nigerians continue displaying astonishing resilience. Markets still open at dawn. Workers still report to offices. Parents still sacrifice for children. Young entrepreneurs still launch businesses in an economy that behaves like an angry landlord.
Perhaps that resilience is our greatest blessing. Or perhaps it is the government’s greatest excuse. Because the more Nigerians endure silently, the easier it becomes for leadership to confuse endurance with progress.
But survival is not success. Merely being “okay” should not require financial wizardry, emotional stamina and divine intervention.
Yet here we are – in a country where stability now feels like luxury, peace of mind feels imported, and the middle class survives mainly on hope, humour and hypertension.
And somehow, every morning, Nigerians still wake up, iron their clothes, charge their phones during the two hours of electricity available, and continue chasing a version of life that used to be ordinary. That alone deserves national honours.
