HAPPY PEOPLE

Without biological exegesis, it’s often hard to know which came first; the chicken or the egg.

Nigerians are happy people.

But are we happy because we are Nigerians, or are we Nigerians because we are the only people on God’s green earth daft enough to be happy in a place like this?

We do everything happy people do. We laugh. Make jest.

We go to church, and praise God in a country many would argue is the single most prevalent proof of His lack of existence.

The average thinker thinks it stupid that people here can even believe in a God.

A supreme being who lets them suffer. Die.

Ninety-nine percent of Nigerians are religious. The other 1% are simply experiencing a crisis of faith and will likely be very soon. Perhaps the most prayerful civilization on planet earth. But it’s a vastly documented premise of faith that God can only give you what you can receive.

Sadly, we do not possess the nutrition, education or moral integrity to receive from eternal benevolence any more than our daily morsel of hope.

This brings us to perhaps the one thing that the pursuit of God does give the average Nigerian.

The will to keep on going.

It’s tempting to explain away the phenomenon of a poor but happy people by reaching for the low hanging fruit of ignorance, which as we say, is bliss.

But it is also likely dishonest. You know this from speaking to any Nigerian, rich, poor, or still processing their wealth capacity:

We know we are fucked.

It is, however, likely more arguable that perhaps the only advantage of God-consciousness is that contrary to our environment, we are such a happy people.

It is at least further arguable that you can’t objectively evaluate the pertinence of religious perspectives to a Nigerian’s wellbeing if you’re not at least willing to consider the fact that most Nigerians should, by reason of reason, be depressed.

We might not readily admit, but even our growing counter-culture driven by anti-theists, atheists and freethinkers enjoy the unconscious advantage of this.

The truth is you have just discovered that there is no god. No impending miracle, or doom. You are relieved i, yet somewhat depressed.

You should be dead, executed by nature or yourself.

Yet, you remain.

Sure, likely because you do not even have enough money to buy the right amount of bleach, or a long enough rope. We also notably, due to our infrastructural inadequacies, do not possess buildings and public structures quite tall enough for a premeditated jump to kill one on a single attempt.

And, yes, it is important not to forget the added benefit of the twisted understanding that every Nigerian intuitively possesses:

Since we will all die very soon, there is no point killing one’s self.

Regardless, you are enchanted.

You stay for the culture. The cities. Art.

You stay for the god.

You go into a comedy club in the heart of your district and you forget that you are functionally homeless, have no job, and just buried your father.

Because you’re an emotional being. And you make emotional decisions.

There’s no rational reason to not be nihilistic, and yet, somehow, there’s not enough rational reason to be.

This is why people stay in such hopeless places. Take for instance, Lagos, a city that provides, perhaps objectively, the worst living conditions for its urban population.

Limited green spaces. Terrible noise and air pollution. Heavy traffic.

Exorbitant costs.

It makes no sense for people to be here, on paper or without.

But, the energy.

Enchantment.

Here, the people move. Quickly. They try and fail and try again. Failure is so ingrained in our social consciousness that it is not taken to be a result of a special form of ineptitude.

A single friend group has the same personality distributed in four different people of different consequence.

In one group, you will find the person who’s been recently employed in a company that will no longer exist in 13 months’ time.

Another whose own employer has been owing salaries for the last four months, possessing the necessary financial inviability required to go the distance of a year.

Yet, in the same friendship circle, lies the co-founder of a budding unicorn. The free spirit committed to making it as a rapper at the ripe old age of 34.

Here, we all know what failure is. We see it every day. What depresses us, ironically, is the inability to try again. Impeded movement. Lagosians don’t want to be kidnapped because what would they tell their boss?

Dreadful stagnation.

Perhaps why most of these happy people do not move to less strenuous environments. It makes no sense to stay, yet it makes no sense to go.

I call it the fear of too much peace.