The delusion of Nigerian exceptionalism (1)

Act I: The messiah who never comes (but we keep buying tickets anyway)

Nigerians are not known for patience, yet we’ve perfected the art of waiting. Not for rain in dry season, nor for light amid endless gridlock – no, we wait for Godot. Not the enigmatic figure from Samuel Beckett’s 20th Century play, but our own political messiah: the mythic leader who will untangle decades of graft, pacify bandits with a stern glance, and turn the naira into gold.

In 2022, Dan Agbese cast this national pastime as a tragicomedy, arguing that Nigerian politics is a perpetual “waiting for Godot.” He stands in a long tradition of writers who have likened our national politics to Beckett’s fruitless and lamenting wait. But here is the real punchline: Godot is not late. He is a decoy.

The search for a saviour is less about hope than a collective coping mechanism—a way to absolve ourselves of responsibility. Even if a Nigerian Godot materialised, he would need more than integrity and a Canva manifesto. He would require governors who do not loot their states’ coffers before breakfast; legislators who have read the constitution beyond the “emoluments” section; a civil service that does not treat efficiency like a foreign delicacy; and a civil society which knows what it wants. Leadership, as it turns out, is not a Nollywood hero act of long-suffering and sudden promotion. It is a relay. In our despair, we have forgotten how to pass the baton.

Act II: “America of Africa” (but with worse infrastructure and better Jollof)

Nigeria loves a grand comparison. We are the “Giant of Africa,” “Africa’s Silicon Valley”, and even the “Americans of Africa.” Our cultural swagger appears to justify the hype: Burna Boy outsells British pop stars, Nollywood has clawed its way to the global stage, and our fashion designers dress global elites. Demographically, we are a behemoth: by 2050, one in three black humans will be Nigerian. Yet, we have conflated this unfulfilled potential with exceptionalism.

Just as American exceptionalism has long perpetuated a myth of inherent superiority, Nigerians nurture their own version of this narrative. Here, challenges like corruption, infrastructural decay, and ethnic divisions are dismissed as uniquely Nigerian—too labyrinthine, too culturally specific, to be addressed through global frameworks. This fatalistic mindset, which I call “Nigerian exceptionalism,” reduces the nation’s complexities to a monolith of dysfunction, obscuring both its potential and the agency of its people.

In the 1970s, Nigeria’s GDP per capita was over $1,000 while China’s stood at $200. Today, Nigeria remains stuck at around $2,200, whereas China has risen to $12,700, Botswana has reached $7,800 on the back of diamonds. This gap is not caused by an invisible hand but by a failure to commit to a clear, strategic development path.

Act III: The colonialism of low expectations

In 1960, we threw off the yoke of rule from Westminster. Today, we have internalised a subtler colonialism: the belief that dysfunction is a destiny. Media headlines scream, “Failed State!” while think tanks reduce 200 million people and 36 states to a clickbait dystopia.

Policymakers and citizens alike cling to the notion that Nigeria’s sheer size or diversity exempts it from universal principles of development. This belief manifests in ad hoc fixes to systemic crises, deflection of accountability, and a resignation to cycles of political disillusionment. While legitimate grievances fuel Nigeria’s negative reputation, the leap from critique to fatalism echoes colonial tropes that once dismissed African societies as inherently chaotic. Our struggles are unoriginal – what’s exceptional is our insistence on treating them as mystical afflictions.

Our fatalism wears a disguise: “E no easy,” we sigh, as though governance were alchemy rather than a replicable science.

Act IV: How to stop waiting and just fix it

Nigeria’s story need not be one of inevitable decline, but rewriting it requires rejecting the myth of singularity and embracing the humility to learn. The “Giant of Africa” must choose – romanticise its exceptional struggles or finally heed the global playbook of progress.

This task requires us to revisit the national consciousness and feed its algorithm with new information. We need to look at the countries who have traversed our present challenges and be intentional about uncovering their mechanisms of change to rekindle expectations. Not the kind of hope that wishes on a superhero president, but the sort that sees the horizon as building functional systems.

Nigeria’s path is not shrouded in mystery. It is paved with boring, unexceptional steps: independent judiciaries, meritocratic civil services, and budgets which can realistically close our infrastructure gap. Somehow, it seems easier to imagine these challenges as insurmountable than to refuse to hand them down to the next generation.

Final Scene: Exit, pursued by a mob

Nigerian exceptionalism is both a trauma response and narcissism. It fuels our pride but excuses our inertia. We are not waiting for Godot; we are hiding behind him. The baton of development hasn’t slipped between our fingers—it is buried under the rubble of our low expectations.

Let us retire the myth. Nigeria is not special, and that is a good thing. We have much to learn from the world around us, if only we would broaden our gaze. As a Lagos street philosopher once quipped: “If we want better light, we must fix the wiring – not pray for the moon.” To fix the wiring, we must consult those who have been success-ful in doing so before us. To paraphrase James Baldwin, we think our challenges and suffering are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then we read. It is to this end that I write this series, to dispel the myth of Nige-ria’s exceptionality, one case study at a time.

Epilogue: A sermon by the riverbank

In 1992, Professor Olaoye Abioye’s Yoruba translation of Waiting for Godot – Eni n reti àtisùn Akàn – drew its title from a proverb as piercing as it is poetic: “One who waits to see a crab sleep will spend a long time at the riverbank.” The crab, of course, never ‘sleeps’; its eyes remain open, even in death. So too does Nigeria’s endless wait for salvation – for leaders to awaken, systems to self-correct, or some divine intervention to untangle its knots – reflect a collective paralysis. Nigerians have grown accustomed to waiting at the proverbial riverbank, mistaking stagnation for patience, resignation for resilience – all the while insisting that all we can do is wait. Yet the parable whisperers a warning: to wait for the impossible is to surrender agency and collective will to the whims of chaos.

History’s leaps forward were made by those who left the riverbank, rolled up their sleeves, and confronted the mess head on. Nigeria’s transformation, too, begins when enough of us stop finding excuses – and start building, with clear eyes, a blueprint for the future we deserve.

Oyinkan Teriba is a charismatic changemaker, strategic project manager and highly sought after communications professional with a proven ability to plan, deliver and evaluate impactful and award-winning projects on time and within budget. Oyinkan has over a decade of experience working for partner ranging from Goldman Sachs, Newham Council, and the Foreign Office, to the University of Oxford. She is a regular contributor to thought-leading digital media panels and consults for a wide range of clients in the public and private sector in Nigeria. In addition, she has delivered speeches and panels tackling matters of public policy and social cohesion in the chamber of the House of Lords, at 11 Downing Street, Ghent University, University of Amsterdam, and at the Oxford Union. Her expert analysis has also featured on Al Jazeera News, Al Jazeera Inside Story, Sky News, Channel 4 News, BBC News and BBC Radio 1Xtra.