The economics of coping (Part 2)

Coping does not scream. It settles.

It becomes routine. It becomes language. It becomes how a country explains itself to itself. Over time, Nigerians stop describing failure as it is. Failures become something you dress for, budget around, and mentally prepare for.

Nigeria has not collapsed. Collapse would be honest. Collapse would force reckoning. Nigeria has done something far more dangerous: it has stabilised around a strain. The economy has learnt how to function just enough to avoid outrage, while extracting more from its people than it ever returns.

“Nigeria’s economy is propped up by sacrifices that never appear in national accounts — only in shorter tempers, delayed dreams, and chronic exhaustion.”

The country that runs on individuals’ sacrifice Every Nigerian household is an UNOFFICIAL MINISTRY.

They generate power, water, insure health, manage risk, and absorb shock. They pay twice — once in taxes, again in survival costs. What should be public responsibility is quietly reassigned as personal obligation.

And because it is done privately, it is never counted.

No budget tracks the hours lost to traffic paralysis. No GDP line captures the cognitive fatigue of constant recalculation. No national statistic measures how much the future is spent maintaining today.

Nigeria’s economy is propped up by sacrifices that never appear in national accounts — only in shorter tempers, delayed dreams, and chronic exhaustion.

When adaptation becomes a cage Coping teaches people how to survive broken systems, but it also teaches them to expect nothing better. Over time, imagination adjusts downward. Planning horizons shrink. Ambition becomes tactical.

This is how a nation slowly loses its sense of possibility. Not through despair — but through realism trained to be cautious.

The quiet class divide coping creates Coping is not equal. It never was. Those with resources convert dysfunction into inconvenience. Those without convert it into depletion. Money does not just buy comfort — it buys insulation from failure. It buys time, predictability, rest, and margin for error.

In Nigeria, wealth is not merely about consumption. It is about the distance from friction.

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The poor spend energy. The wealthy spend money. The economy rewards the latter far more generously.

This is how inequality widens without noise — through cumulative disadvantage layered quietly onto daily life.

Why the hardest workers see the least return Work here is heavy because systems do not multiply it. Energy is spent holding ground instead of gaining altitude. People hustle sideways just to remain upright. By the time survival costs are paid, little remains to compound.

This is why motion is everywhere, but momentum is scarce.

The tragedy is not laziness. It is wasted exertion.

When endurance runs out Countries like Nigeria do not fail dramatically. They continue, quietly, mechanically, long after the cost has exceeded the benefit. What breaks first is not the economy, but the people inside it. What follows is not revolt, but withdrawal.

Endurance has limits, even when it looks endless.

Human beings absorb pressure by narrowing themselves. They become more cautious. More transactional. Less patient. Less generous. The emotional bandwidth required for trust, collaboration, and civic engagement is slowly consumed by survival.

An economy can survive that. A nation cannot.

The silent withdrawal The most consequential response to dysfunction is not protest. It is disengagement.

Talented Nigerians do not always leave physically. Many leave psychologically first. They stop building long-term here. They stop committing capital, time, and imagination beyond what is necessary. They hedge their lives. They keep one foot out of every promise.

This is not cynicism. It is self-preservation.

And it is devastating.

Because growth depends on people willing to bet here, not merely endure here.

When trust evaporates Trust is the most underappreciated economic asset.

It lowers transaction costs. It accelerates cooperation. It allows systems to scale. When trust disappears, everything becomes expensive — emotionally, financially, administratively.

In Nigeria, trust has migrated downward.

People trust individuals, not institutions. Networks, not systems. Personal guarantees, not public ones. This works — until scale is required. Informality cannot build infrastructure. Improvisation cannot replace policy. Survival logic cannot deliver national transformation.

What coping steals from the future The heaviest burden will not be carried by today’s workers. It will be carried by those raised inside this normalised strain.

Children trained in constant adjustment learn to optimise for instability. They become clever, fast, and adaptable—and deeply risk-averse. They are taught how to survive dysfunction, not how to redesign it.

Potential narrows quietly because imagination is disciplined too early.

The final illusion The most dangerous lie is not that Nigerians are strong. The lie is that strength is enough.

A country that depends on endurance is living off borrowed human capital. Eventually, stamina becomes a liability. Strength delays collapse; it does not prevent it.

Nigeria does not need tougher people. It needs systems that stop demanding toughness as proof of citizenship.

Because an economy that runs on coping will never reach its capacity — only its limit. And Nigeria is closer to that limit than it is willing to admit.

Slowly. Quietly. Inevitably.

Emmanuel C. Macaulay is a development thinker and writer who examines the unseen logic behind everyday realities — where leadership, systems, and design shape collective progress.

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