Gideon Galadima

Nigeria, man. There's no escaping the rot, insecurity and dysfunction, no matter how rich you get. 1. Buy an SUV because the roads are bad, and you become a prime target for kidnapping, extortion, and inflated prices 2. Live in an estate for quiet and security but the moment you drive out the gate, you're back in the same poverty, crime, chaos and insecurity everyone else suffers. Your safety exists only within the walls of your expensive prison 3. Spend millions on solar so you don't have to suffer generator noise but your neighbours still use generators. You stop hearing yours, not theirs. 4. Make money and the women will come but the women who come are poor. You work hard to escape poverty, only to give your money to women who are hoping to escape their own poverty by 'working' you 5. Buy Starlink to escape MTN and Airtel, and now the whole compound wants your password. "But it's unlimited now?" Decline and you're a bad neighbour The tragedy of trying to buy your way out systemic dysfunction is that you never truly solve the underlying problem. You just spend money trying to insulate yourself from it, and in that process, create new problems for yourself. But you interprete it as progress because you no longer have the exact same probems as the next Nigerian. Because progress here is less about better roads, reliable power and security for all. Progress here is more about owning an SUV while everyone else dodges potholes in their Camry, having steady power and uninterrupted airconditioning whilst everyone else sweats through the heat, and living behind the 'security' of estate gates while everyone else lives with insecurity. It is that contrast that gives me fulfilment. It is what makes you stand out, and provides both of us something to brag about. So the benchmark is not whether the system works; It is whether I am better than others in a system that does not work. And I say "I", because I, also find myself thinking that way sometimes. I also want to brag about paying 8 million for rent, rather than demand afforable housing for all or protest against the fraud of agents and the greed of landlords. Afterall, I am also a product of the system. As a result, most of what I, and by extension, Nigerians broadly speaking, consider progress, is a maladaptation to systemic failure. It is, to condense it, progress measured against dysfunction, rather than freedom from it. And 'Maladaptation' because the actions we have adapted to help us cope with the dysfunction, ultimately does more harm than good. So for example, rather than protest insecurity, bad roads or unreliable power, we maladapt by travelling by air, buying SUVs and installing solar. We spend money to work around failing institutions while the institutions themselves continue to decay. But the problem with our "I better pass my neighbour' cope is that it will eventually reach its limit. Because as the rot and decay deepens and spreads, even our workarounds will fail, our estates will no longer keep the criminals and the abokis that surround us out (Abuja residents beware), the kidnappers will come to our doorsteps, like they're doing in Ekpoma, and our roads will get so bad even our four-wheelers will no longer be able to handle them, leading to accidents that will land us in hospitals with no doctors and nurses because our best health workers have japa'd. Checkmate