Some years ago, a man in a community was approached by his neighbours to contribute money toward fixing their street road. The road had become an eyesore, riddled with potholes and almost impassable whenever it rains. His reply shocked everyone: “Why should I contribute? Instead of wasting money on the road, let everyone buy a jeep.”

I was flabbergasted and amused when I heard the story especially as I thought the man was foolish to think his jeep wouldn’t be affected by a bad road. It was not just funny, it was painfully symbolic. That man’s attitude is the attitude of many Nigerians today: “if I can manoeuvre my way through life, if I can afford a private solution to a public problem, then why should I bother about the collective good? If I have a borehole, why fight for public water? If I have a generator, why push for electricity reform? If my children can go abroad for school, why should I care about the state of our public education system?”

We foolishly assume that if we can provide the things that our government should provide and find a level of individual comfort we can escape suffering.  It’s painful that as a people we often mistake a personal breakthrough for progress, when in reality, the system remains broken. We celebrate crumbs as if they are loaves, and as long as those crumbs land in our laps, we forget the masses who still starve.

The danger of this mind-set is that it blinds us to the bigger picture. We believe that if society crumbles, somehow our case will be different. But history teaches us that when a society collapses, nobody escapes. Your gated estate will not save you from insecurity (we all saw that poignantly during the EndSARS riots). Your private generator will not keep the larger economy afloat. Your foreign degree will not matter if the country you return to is unliveable.  No matter how much money you have, no matter how high your walls are, you cannot fully escape the collapse of the society. The insecurity on the roads, the kidnappings, the failing healthcare system, the brain drain; all of these affect everyone. Eventually, the cracks catch up with us all as we are all beginning to experience.

The danger in the illusion of individuality that we have created is that Nigeria will continue to sink deeper. We will keep producing “testimonies” of personal survival while the nation itself dies. We will not only remain underdeveloped, but our children will inherit a nation where survival is harder than ever. Imagine a future where insecurity is so bad that you cannot travel by road or air without fear. Imagine hospitals that have no treatment for even snake bites. Imagine schools so broken that an entire generation grows up without basic literacy. This is not far-fetched. It is the trajectory we are on. And it is fuelled by one thing: the belief that as long as I am fine, the collective does not matter.

So, What Can We Do?

We have to Shift Our Mind-sets, invest in the collective, Demand accountability from those in ministries, impact in the next generation. Remember, "A rich man in the midst of poor people is also a poor person".