The Psychology of the Average Nigerian
“We happen to live in a country where those who have no business being a role model nor leader, who ought to be back benchers and miscreants of the society are the ones at the helms of affairs while actual intellectuals fold hands, watch and wax lyrical daily”
~Me
I promise you it is not a political post.
Kindly note attributes like Messi-stans and Ronaldo-stans in this piece are figurative at best and has nothing to do with the actual meaning or not.
“Pawwnnn” “Pawnn” what’s that deafening sound? Yes, your guess is as good as mine. It is the noisy horn from a heavy duty truck. Once again I am in the thick of Lekki to Obalende early morning traffic. The only soothing fragrance in this public transport is the one from my body spray. More than 70% of those in this bus are fixated to their smart phones. The growing affinity towards smartphones are becoming the fastest metric to differentiate between millennials and the older generation. Someone said smartphones is fast becoming this generation safe space, a needed distraction from the unhealthy living conditions. A short daily mental escape or therapy they call it.
A massive daily time sink from the most important things that concerns our life ~ I hypocritically say.
The average Nigerian is impatient
We see this firsthand through all sorts of gimmicks and maneuvering tactics we pull off in road traffic. I once heard someone say to me that impatience contributes 50% of the reason we face traffic daily in this state. You might be like oops you are referring to Lagos. Lagos is not Nigeria. Umm..Yes it is.
I wouldn’t want to avail you with the boring info of why the statement is almost correct. Nonetheless wherever you find Nigerians in traffic across the nation the same impatient attribute is seen.
The Nigerian I pass my Neighbor mentality
Nigerians are becoming too lazy to focus on their own lives and goals for their lives. It is now becoming a part of many Nigerians’ subconscious state to try and outshine their neighbors by any means possible, in a bid to sleep well at night, its a feeling that re-assures them that they are not actually doing too badly in life so far they are in their head seemingly better than their next door neighbor.
What is the state of mind? many may ask. The narrative simply is— its becoming aesthetically pleasing to many and somehow reassuring that they are not doing too badly in this shit hole we all find ourselves “so far I better pass my neighbor” this in itself is derived from another mentality ailment of ours known as the “Copy and Paste Mentality” (Will talk about this mentality in a bit). The different channels of propagating the I pass my neighbor lifestyle has been more propagated over the years through social media & everyday life. You might be like “Yo, but other white people and people of the world celebrate their wins on Social Media as well”. That is in fact true, however not at the alarming rate at which we do ours. We do ours to win whatever cheap social points. We do ours to say “If we don’t give them how will they take it “ and it is cool to be honest until we actually make it toxic was many live their daily lives in chase of the next win not for personal gratification but to score cheap social points amongst friends or strangers on the internet. Many go to extreme measures like internet defrauding, kidnaping and other ilicit means to get rich inorder to do one simple Nigerian thing — inorder to say “I better pass my neighbor”.
We do ours “to pepper them gang”. We do ours to show village people the receipt that we are finally making it or made it.
‘A deep sense of massaging and jaba-wocky of a crumpled suffer-head inferiority complex’ ~ Samuel Okediji
Pyschologist will say its a coping mechanism in some F**ked up way.
Copy and Paste Mentality
The infamous “God when” mentality.
I am thinking one of these days Baba God will just quote someone’s tweet and be like:
“When what? Be specific abeg.. you have asked God when to almost 200 people’s success stories this year alone. When will you start having thoughts of your own?”
The copy and paste mentality is so rampant it cuts across all ages, class and status. From D student using ostrich method in trying to copy and paste what A student has written, to Pius opening an electronics store directly opposite Emeka electronics store all because he saw Emeka business booming, or the newly converted yahoo boy who dumped all his moral construct all in a bid to buy Benz because Kabiru his junior from High school has bought a Benz through Yahoo. Let’s not forget Musicians dropping fire brigade Album’s just cause “Album’s these days’ are supposed criteria being used to nominate Afro-Beat music at the Grammys. What do I know mate?
Initially it was yellow Gokada, then Black Max, now Green Oride has come to scatter the table all in a bid to ‘revolutionize” the way transportation is being done in Nigeria. Mbok we are tired. Very few innovators however so many copy and paste merchants looking for the next in-thing to splash their criminally gotten wealth into(It is their Ghost St Patrick way of going legit and leaving the crime life for good — Copy and Paste is the strategy).
Forgive me. Let’s move on to more pressing issues.
It is becoming a widely accepted notion that many Nigerians derive deep happiness in the downfall of seemingly successful people. There are actually different sides to this coin.
Average Nigerians do like for fraudsters to be called out, exposed and punished. But not as much as how Nigerians cherish and love for seemingly successful people to fall or fail. They might not come out to say “Yeee!!” we happy but the silent laughter and corridor talks are deafening.
To further put things into perspective I did be profiling the three popular Nigerian mentality.
The Mentality of the Average Nigerian
To further drive home the point. The average Nigerian can be fundamentally classified into three sub-groups which I weirdly call the Messi-stans mentality, the Ronaldo-stans mentality and the fence-cist.
Sounds off yeah? I know but I am going somewhere.
The Messi-stans
The Messi-stans are basically people who are society conscious. They stand with logic and rational thinking they never make decisions on popular consensus. They are the intellectual bane of the society they believe more in working their way out of every challenge without making much fuss about it. They are not big fans of publicity nonetheless they’d evenly standby what they have analyzed and vetted to come to a rational conclusion. They are discipline, tact, and believe in due process. The are analytical in their approach and at best eschew every form of bias or politicking. Recently these guys are fed up with the living conditions and are topping the charts of emigrants leaving here for greener and saner climes. The population of people with this form of mentality are growing less by the day. They could transform Nigeria’s future but the back benchers would rather have hell froze over before they give Messi-stans a place in governance or society.
The Ronaldo-stans
The Ronaldo-stans on the other hands are the negative elements. You should know them yeah.. They are the TEAM TACHA or should I say TITANS. The NBG’s also popular known as marlians, we can also rope northern nigeria folks in here. Yeah I know they are not too bright like that. I mean they claim they are but they are not too.. you get? They are our typical criminal politicians. They see progress in other countries but rather loot national wealth than do progressive things.
Okay let’s get right into it.
The Contrarians go against popular right and due process opinions. So far it is becoming popular and has some pint of moral/ truthful construct to it. They go against it just for the fun of it and wreck the whole system.
APC — POLITICAL party is a typical example.
Why I added negative to contrarian is because unlike true contrarian that just go against popular opinions these sets go against what is seemingly too good, too moral or too conscious. So they be like “Fuck it! this opinion is trash”. They align and support blindly to dictators and people with beautiful, handsome, brash and imposing personalities. They tag the other side of the divide wailers and blindly go against the truth even if it means they are shooting themselves on the foot. Sadly these sects of people has the highest head counts in the country. You’d see traces of these sects in the fan base of despots like BuBu, Trump, Titans, Cristiano, Naira marley, APC party obviously! Just to mention a few. They are loud and cheap popularity chasers. They always want to be noticed at every gadamn opportunity they have. Don’t misquote me. This stans have some intelligent people amongst them but their societal configuration happens to be that of one with a Ronaldo-stan mentality as a results of how they were raised or the friends that influence their thought pattern while growing up.
The Ronaldo-stans however do contribute positive vibes in form of social activity. Their carefree lifestyle is a factor that influences why they are great at dancing, cracking jokes (which sincerely serve as short therapy to everyone regardless of where they stand) making banger Music as well.
Now for all the woes the Ronaldo-stans has caused the Messi-stans in terms of collective growth of the Nation. The biggest evil for me are the fencist .
The fence-ist are the bigger of all evils and that’s solely because they have failed to choose a side. The fence-ist are those sect you never really know where they stand and that’s dangerous cause you might not be fully able to place them in the bracket they belong hence it did cramp on the way you want to relate with them. Even bigger threat is they can catch you off guard sink
I’ve a theory about the fencist though. I feel this theory put things into perspective for me on who the fencist truly are.
FENCIST THEORY
Now you see this so called middle men were primarily and originally Ronaldo-stans, because Messi-stans are too noble to be shape-shifters or better still chameleons. They talk from all sides of their mouth. These shape-shifting imbeciles forming woke secure the bag merchants are biggest stumbling block the country faces collectively as a Nation. These guys are are primarily hustlers who just want to win at all cost hence they really don’t care about the great divide. They take this shape shifting stance in order to dance to the tune of whatever sect’s ideologies pays the most. They jump at whatever is being thrown at them from both parties so far it facilitate them going to the top they did use any sect as ladders to whatever selfish agenda they harbor. They are pretty good at re social engineering. Be careful of who you listen to on SM all in the name of influencers. These shape-shifters are very good at talking you into stupidity.
Some of these so-called middlemen can be detected from people who will do all sorts to get their bidding. This people are highly competitive motherfuckers who just believe everything about life is a race and they are more concerned about reaching the finish line being the “First”. Be it do all sorts to score an A or people who smear and use extreme social engineering measures to make people do their biddings. You see them jumping from one party to another in politics. They tend to believe they are invisible, that no one knows their grand agenda, they tend to make friends but see those friends as puns that can be manipulated to achieve their biddings. They are like “No be sade, I get sense pass am, I go find way work e head”.
Fence-ist are Omojuwa, Segalink, Reno Omokri, all top individuals who see wrong and refuse to call it out for personal selfish interests. They are more evil than ronaldo-stans
These guys are the devils themselves. Primordial narcissist yet in denial of their narcissistic tendencies. True narcissist admits they are narcissists and give zero fucks but these guys are the primordial narcissist who are in denial of their narcissistic traits cause they be like “How can I be a narcissist when I do selfless deeds whenever I want to. “Yeah man that’s because you are a shape-shifting money bag grabber who stands for nothing but your pocket.
There is no right or wrong to these guys. All they see is how does this profits me.
I hope you have been able to look in-wards and decide on what sub-group best describe you. You can leave me popular fencist individuals you know in the comment section.
