Of Experts At Enduring Hardship
BY Femi Akintunde-Johnson
At a bus stop somewhere in Lagos, a middle-aged woman stood before a roadside vegetable seller, clutching a small nylon bag containing three tomatoes, a handful of pepper and half a loaf of bread. She opened her purse, counted the notes inside, frowned and counted them again, as though arithmetic itself had suddenly become unreliable. Then, with an embarrassed smile, she removed one tomato from the bag and handed it back to the seller. “Madam, let me leave one,” she said quietly. “The children can manage.”
A few kilometres away, a young office worker stared at his phone calculator, trying to determine whether it was more prudent to buy fuel for his ageing car or endure the daily combat of commercial buses. In another part of town, a parent stood before a school bursar, pleading for one more week to complete school fees. In the market, a trader had changed the price of a bag of rice for the third time in one week and was preparing for the familiar accusation of greed from customers who were themselves victims of the same economic torment.
These are no longer isolated scenes. They are fragments of a national condition. The average Nigerian has become a full-time strategist. Before breakfast is contemplated, calculations have already begun. Which bill is most urgent? Which expense can be postponed? Which debt can be ignored for another week without provoking embarrassment? Which meal can be adjusted? Which journey can be cancelled? Which medicine can be purchased in half dosage or sachets, and supplemented with faith and optimism?
We have become a nation of reluctant mathematicians. Perhaps that is why some official comments questioning whether there is truly food shortage in Nigeria have been received with bewilderment and, in some quarters, quiet indignation. One occasionally gets the impression that there are now two Nigerias existing within the same borders. There is the Nigeria of briefings, spreadsheets and reassuring macro-economic pronouncements. Then there is the Nigeria where people buy tomatoes one at a time, where eggs have become occasional guests at the dining table, and where many families have learnt to stretch one pot of soup across several meals through methods that would impress the most gifted magicians.
The issue, of course, is not necessarily whether food physically exists somewhere in the country. The issue is whether ordinary people can still afford it with any measure of comfort and dignity. A market can be overflowing with produce and yet remain inaccessible to millions. A man standing beside a full well with no rope or bucket is still thirsty.
What is remarkable, however, is the extraordinary adaptability of Nigerians. We are perhaps one of the most inventive people on earth when confronted with adversity. Families that once enjoyed simple pleasures now reserve them for special occasions. Meat has become increasingly ceremonial. Rice has acquired a certain festive status in some homes. Transport routes are planned with military precision. Invitations to weddings and birthdays now trigger financial calculations. Some people avoid answering telephone calls because every ringing phone appears to carry another request for assistance or another social obligation they can no longer comfortably fulfil.
Even language has changed. The phrase “we are managing” has become one of the most commonly spoken expressions in the country. It is uttered by civil servants, traders, professionals, artisans and pensioners alike. Yet hidden inside those three words lies an entire catalogue of sacrifice and anxiety. Because managing is not living.
Working is one thing; coping is another. Working suggests that effort leads eventually to comfort, fulfilment and progress. Coping simply means finding ingenious ways not to collapse under the weight of circumstances. Increasingly, millions of Nigerians are not pursuing prosperity. They are merely negotiating survival. And survival is exhausting.
A country under prolonged economic stress also suffers emotionally. Anxiety becomes normal. Tempers shorten. Patience evaporates. Relationships come under pressure. Young people become uncertain about their future and older people begin to wonder how decades of labour have culminated in such pervasive insecurity and economic vulnerability. Parents lose sleep over school fees. Workers fear unexpected illness because healthcare has become an expensive proposition. Pensioners perform impossible calculations with pensions that have long lost their purchasing power.
Perhaps the greatest tragedy is that survival itself now consumes time and energy that should ordinarily be devoted to productivity, creativity and ambition. Citizens who should be thinking about investments, innovation and self-improvement are instead preoccupied with transport fares, electricity bills and the next market visit. A nation permanently focused on immediate survival gradually loses some of its capacity to dream.
No country becomes prosperous because its citizens become experts at enduring hardship. Indeed, there is a subtle danger in our celebrated resilience. We have suffered for so long that we have almost romanticised our ability to cope. We applaud ourselves for surviving conditions that ought never to have become normal. We praise resilience without sufficiently interrogating the circumstances that constantly demand it. There is a difference between resilience and resignation. One inspires progress; the other merely accommodates decline.
Government officials would therefore do well to exercise greater sensitivity when discussing economic realities. Citizens are not asking for miracles. They understand that economies pass through difficult periods and that reforms often come with painful adjustments. What they seek is empathy and evidence that those making public policy genuinely understand the burdens being carried by ordinary households.
The woman who returned one tomato to the seller was not asking for luxury. The young man calculating transport costs was not demanding extravagance. The parent pleading for more time to pay school fees was not seeking special treatment. They were simply trying to preserve a measure of dignity in difficult circumstances.
And perhaps that is the real issue before us. The cost of our present economic realities cannot be measured only in inflation figures, exchange rates or growth projections. It must also be measured in postponed dreams, abandoned ambitions, strained relationships and the quiet humiliations that now populate everyday life.
When citizens spend every waking day engineering their own survival, something profound happens to the social contract. People begin to lose confidence not merely in the economy, but in the promise of tomorrow itself. And a nation whose citizens have stopped believing that tomorrow can be better is a nation standing on very dangerous ground.
No people should have to make a full-time profession out of survival. Citizens deserve the opportunity not merely to endure life, but to live it; not merely to manage, but to aspire; not merely to survive another day, but to look towards a new day with confidence, purpose and hope.
