What it is to be Nigerian

1. Fear: You fear that the armed police man who has flagged you down will 1) ask for the originals of our your vehicle’s particulars 2) tell you that your new license plate is actually the old one 3) tell you that the affidavit you signed with the court is illegal 4) tell you to stop insulting his intelligence by responding to his questions 5) threaten to waste the rest of your day at a police station 6) take five thousand naira from you as penalty for your ‘illegal’ affidavit and say that he ought to have taken ten.

2. Community Living: Your colleagues help keep track of how much weight you’ve gained since you've been back from leave. They also keep track of what you had for lunch on Monday and Tuesday and, if you’re eating the same thing on Wednesday, be prepared to explain why.

3. Distrust: You distrust the ‘man of God’ who just gave you a word from the Lord; you fear he might hand  you his bank account number and ask you to ‘drop a seed of faith’, or give you his suit size and tell you to ‘sow into the life of the man of God’ (literally). You also distrust your landlord; that he might tell you to leave his house before your rent expires, for reasons you can never understand.

4. Open Hands: Everyone wonders if you have “something” for them, and why you didn’t “do Christmas” for them because, evidently, the death of Christ wasn’t enough.

5. Irony: You forget the war raging in your country – whole villages razed to the ground, hundreds of women, men and children taken captive, a lunatic group unable to be curtailed by the same national army which led peace keeping missions in Liberia and Sierra Leone – and you mourn with Syria, Pakistan, Iraq, Kenya, France. You forget your own disarray, the blackness and soullessness sweeping over your entire country, and focus on the grief of others.

6. Cowardice: You are not like the Americans or the French who have what it takes to stand up against injustice by literally standing. You cannot go on organized protests and marches speaking against, not just the wickedness of a merciless sect, but of your own government. You cannot stand in solidarity with the slain and their families; because you have work in the morning and you are busy and you do not even know if the protests will make a difference, and the government might just as well send trigger happy officers who will shoot into the crowd at will. It is stressful. Who wants to die?

7. Kindergarten: When it comes to standing in queues and waiting their turn, the entire nation is stuck in KG2.

8. Funfair: Church has become an entertainment industry; they mimic fashion shows and their parking lots sport the finest rides in town.

9. Silence: Your celebrities like to sing about booty and their expensive watches, but will not use that influential platform to speak up against the ills of the nation.

10. Regression: Some of the leaders of your country talk as though they barely made it out of puberty alive.