You're Not Lazy - You're Just Nigerian
...and that alone can drain anybody
You walked into a buka determined not to be caught unfresh unlike the last time. Last time, you waited till after eating to pay — only for your bank app to misbehave. The food seller made you wash plates. Not in theory. Not metaphorically. You actually washed plates — in public, with foam and bucket and everything. Chai!
So today, you decided to be smart. You opened the app before eating. You clicked “login” with confidence. But the app was already on its own break. “Service unavailable.” You refreshed. Nothing. You restart your phone. Still nothing. At a point, hunger was holding your neck, choking you but your bank app had already decided you’d be fasting today.
If you live in Lagos, you’re probably tired before your day even begins. You wake up by 4:30 a.m. — not because you’re chasing purpose, but because you’re chasing danfo bus. You don’t snooze your alarm; you just stare at the ceiling wondering if you’re still alive. Bath water is cold, the light is out, and NEPA has left you with two percent battery and zero percent joy.
By 6:15, you’re already fighting for space in a danfo, shoulder to shoulder with strangers and their hot breath. Someone steps on you and says nothing. One person advertises a herbal drug that can cure all kinds of diseases even cancer. Another person brings out fish roll and the smell hits you like regret. But you say nothing. Because your mind is already at the office, calculating deadlines, traffic, how much is left in your account, and if your boss will remember the mistake you made last week.
And this is just Monday.
Culled from Google
But the real tiredness? It’s not in your body — it’s in your brain. You’re tired of calculating and budgeting. Tired of pretending. Tired of constantly having to manage. You smile at work even though your landlord just threatened you. You say “I’m good” in conversations even though your GTB bank app just allowed Spotify to wipe out your last ₦3,200. That thing dey painnn! You enter meetings acting like a team player, but deep down, you’re wondering how your life became a group project that’s failing.
You scroll through social media, clapping for people who just got jobs abroad, bought cars, or got proposed to in Dubai. Meanwhile, you’re trying to figure out if your next meal is from your kitchen or your neighbour’s pot. You’re mentally sharp, emotionally drained, and somehow still expected to “show up” every day with ideas, confidence, and 100% productivity.
You’re tired, but you can’t stop. Because stopping means crashing, and you can't afford to crash. Not when the economy has done that.
The worst part? You can’t even rest without feeling guilty. You finally take a break — lie down, scroll, maybe even sleep — and your brain starts shouting: “Is this what you’re doing while others are building generational wealth?” One hour into resting, and you’re already regretting it. You start checking LinkedIn, looking at people’s “I’m happy to announce…” posts with tears in your eyes and earpods in your ears screaming “We are in battle, we are in the battle in this world🎵”
Culled from google
Enjoyment feels suspicious. If you’re not constantly grinding, you start to panic — not because you’re lazy, but because this country makes you feel like you have to outrun poverty every single day or it will catch you and hold you like village people. So even when you sleep, your dreams are full of to-do lists. You wake up more tired than you slept. In Nigeria, rest is not a reward, never is. Chai!
And then there’s society — the way it normalizes tiredness like it’s proof that you’re doing life right. Complain and someone will say, “Welcome to adulthood,” or “Na everybody dey tire, abeg.” You say you're exhausted and they clap for you like you just became a full citizen. We treat suffering as seasoning, and if you’re not burnt out, people assume you’re unserious. It’s like if you’re not hustling to the edge of collapse, you haven’t earned the right to complain.
Even in church, testimonies come with stress: “I almost gave up, but God…” Nobody just says, “Life is soft.” Because if your life is soft in Nigeria, it either means you’re hiding something, doing yahoo, or your uncle is in the Senate.
The goal is not to stop being tired — it’s to stop pretending we’re not. To stop measuring our worth by how exhausted we are. To stop treating burnout like a badge of honour. It’s okay to rest without feeling useless geez. To take one day off without explaining and over shalayeing. To sleep in on a Saturday and not be scared of poverty descending upon you like a thief in the night. To not pick that 11 p.m call to protect your peace. To leave that WhatsApp message on “read” until much later when you have the energy to face it.
Because the truth is: you’re not lazy, unserious, or unambitious — you’re just living in a country that demands Olympic-level resilience just to survive. And sometimes, surviving is enough. If all you did today was get through it, you’ve done plenty. Trust me you have because we lived to fight another day. 🌚