SURVIVING NIGERIA: HOW WELL HAVE THE MILLENNIALS DONE? PT. 1

This post is part of the Naija Life Skills (Surviving Nigeria) series which is set to be promoted across varying multimedia platforms.

First off, this clearly doesn’t speak for ALL Millennials as it more or less just paints a broad picture, so if you feel your view point as one hasn’t been well represented or even at all, you can shoot me a hate mail at the address provided at the end of this article (let’s just pretend there’s one).

This wasn’t supposed to be a blog post, in fact if everything in the universe aligned as we’d always like it to be, this was supposed to be a podcast, but shit happens, from lack of equipment to trying to figure out the right equipment to guests not being available (you know who you are), to… well, Coronavirus reminding us there’s only so little of our daily lives that we actually can control. Never thought I’d come back to blog-posting, but here we are!

I’ll skip the intro for what the podcast was supposed to be, because we might still end up doing it (providing Lord Procrastination does not call me to further service) and get right to our first topic: adulting in Nigeria or better yet, the survivalist guide for Millennials. How the hell do you guys do it?! One day at a time, huh? I hear that’s how the world moves too. The best description of adulting I ever saw was from a tweet read: The most tiring thing about adulting to me is how CONSTANT it is. There is ALWAYS some shit to sort out. You 'chilling' means you're probably just ignoring the million things on your to-do list.

The most tiring thing about adulting to me is how CONSTANT it is.
There is ALWAYS some shit to sort out. You 'chilling' means you're probably just ignoring the million things on your to-do list.

— Lord Babbi (@tee_babz) January 13, 2020

Now, for the most part I quite like adulting, it comes with a lot of freedom I never had, but there are things about it that pop up every now and then that makes you question its purpose. For one, as stated in the tweet above, this shit is fucking constant. There are virtually no time-outs, except when a disease shuts the world down or you die. The other thing for me, is when you adult alone, you realize why people end up getting partners. Imagine being quarantine all on your own! Geez! But that’s the other thing, you think adulting means you’re an actual adult and then you live with another “adult” and you realize you two are babies! Welcome to relationships, lol!

But… we’re going to find a solution, collectively… although I’m the only one writing this. By the way, my auto-correct kept changing “adulting” to “adulating”, which means to praise someone excessively, which makes me think of how they hyped up adulting to us as children! SCAM!!!

So many of us come into adulthood unprepared, because growing up we’re not actually taught life-skills that would help us. No, instead emphasis is being made on cramming books to pass exams! African parents, thank you for the education, but I’m looking at most of you here… and our various educational systems! So what are some life-skills all adults should know? Well, here’s an interesting article to help guide your path: https://medium.com/the-mission/the-12-important-life-skills-i-wish-id-learned-in-school-f4593b49445b

To be a fully functional adult in today’s world, one must have a livelihood. Trust fund babies, this article may not be for you! And if you’re an adult in Nigeria, well, there goes your dilemma: 1.) You’re an adult. 2.) You’re an adult IN NIGERIA, which means you know that jobs don’t just come and go with ease for most people. There are too many people vying for the same white, blue, purple & mutli-coloured collar jobs out there. There are so many factors against you even within the work environment when you do have the job sef!

Interestingly though, jobs that were once seen as “less than” or meant only for people of a lower background about a decade or two ago, are now being celebrated by the children of those who decried them.

The importance of an occupation cannot be understated, for it tends to come with some form of financial freedom, which is a big part of being your own individual and an even bigger part of just being a Nigerian. As they say, “if you don’t have money, forget it!” Sad, but that is the financial reality of being Nigerian; wealth can dictate a lot, as it generally can elsewhere. The difference here being how blatant it is!

When it comes to housing, most of us have been able to survive urban living, because ours is a society that allows multi-generational households, so it’s not surprising to see thirty year olds living with their parents and extended family, although that is slowly decreasing within some areas, especially as more and more youths are moving to cities with the hope of better jobs and a better standard of living. This however is not necessarily the reality. First of all, urban areas offer a high cost of living. You’re basically paying for just existing there and all the other added drama that comes with it.

There are multiple social issues to contend with once you’re out in the world and striving. Things we never heavily thought of before or wish to confront are coming more and more to the fore. We now talk about mental-health, rape culture and so much more. On our mental well-being, we as a society operate on a daily basis without much thought to whether we are all right. As long as everything is physically okay, we automatically translate that to mean everything is okay mentally too. However we know that’s not really the case. Thankfully, more and more individuals and organizations are providing support and awareness for people in need and there’s less stigma around talking about our problems to well-trained individuals.

As adults we mingle and this leads to various types of relationships. Dating life in Nigeria can be comically and at times tragically complicated. Aside from cultural and social differences, not to mention the gender differences in a society that favours one sex over the other, we’ve slowly began addressing rape culture in a society that only had one definition for the crime, but also refused to see the culture that could and had allowed it to happen in the past and till date.

With so much insecurity from the law and from within social circles, it’s easy to see why so many of us may find it hard to speak up beyond our keyboards, just speaking alone is a courageous act for some and should be greatly appreciated in an environment where it hasn’t always been welcomed to talk about the ill-treatments handed out to you or others!

I’ve only so far spoken about things we generally go through as individuals, when you add in a fully functional relationship and/or family, you’ve got bigger things to think of. Culturally speaking, there are expectations of being an adult in Nigeria, one of which is the menace called marriage. Don’t worry, my mom doesn’t know I write this stuff. In all honesty, I respect marriage. I just don’t understand why everybody made it a priority on everybody else’s list of things to do. Who started that memo?! They should be fired!

And speaking of our culturally inclined society, a lot younger Nigerians are moving away from the norms and customs that our parents and their parents before them held so dear. This obviously results in some generational clashes, but also within our generation, where some people are less inclined to the norm while others prefer to retain the status quo. These battles are often fought across the religious, social, gender and political landscape that paints Nigeria with no signs of slowing down. This isn’t a bad thing, if at all it makes us grow as a society.

       
So here’s to surviving Nigeria, may our generation right enough wrongs just to make it easier for the next one. Cheers… and wear your masks!

MY "BEEF" WITH WORLD WAR HISTORY

Ever since I was a child, I was taught about World War I & II and the impact these two great events had on modern history. I was taught about the planes, the weapons, the nations and the peace treaties that came about; how the U.N was a direct result of this, coming out of the League of Nations.

The one thing I wasn’t taught and wasn’t made aware of until I grew up was that there were African soldiers involved. And not only Africans, but even other people from South-East Asia and French North Africa, all fighting for the major players in the war. And not to mention the impact that they too had on helping to win the war.

When I saw the movie Wonder Woman, which was mostly set during the First World War, I was happy. The attention to the historical detail was amazing. They were fighters from all background. In one scene at a train station, you can see at least two Indian fighters with their turbans on.

Wonder Woman even has a motley crew that includes a French North African fighter and even an American Indian. This was rare for cinema. Most time big screen portrayals of the wars only show White soldiers and this may be rightly so because they were the majority, but they weren’t the only race nor the only story perspective that can and should be told.

In Nigeria, thanks in part to the works of Barnaby Philips with Al-Jazeera, we know the story of Isaac Fadayebo who died in 2012. A then young man from the South-West of Nigeria, Fadayebo fought for Britain (and by extension its allies) as did other Nigerians & West Africans during World War II. They fought for the colonials against the threat in Asia, which they the Colonials faced and not we, the people who were hired as mercenaries more or less.

The likes of Fadayebo were recruited from all over the country and sold the thrill of adventure and of course the chance to serve the crown… a “noble” cause! They were willing and able. Fadayebo’s story is short of remarkable and I wish would be turned into a feature film to show a more diverse view of the war.

During World War I, it was the South-East Asian soldiers who helped Britain, most of them from India and mostly Muslims. Their interaction with the mostly White Judeo-Christian comrades is believed by some to have played a slight role in the modern English language as we know it now.

Through the interactions of these two seemingly different groups of people, serving one crown, new words were picked up from the Indians that would enter the present English language as we know it.

These little details make the wars more interesting than the mainstream commercial versions we get told in books and movies where we already know the main characters, because every two years or so, someone makes a movie about it. No shade to the filmmakers of Dunkirk and the Darkest Hours, but it proves my point as to the almost one-sided perspective we constantly get.

My goal now forward is to help document these other sides of the wars, whether by writing about them or hopefully through visual representations such as art galleries and or movies. We should have all sides of a story!