Dear Nigerian,
Nigeria has something she would like to say to you.
• Written by Sonia Ihuoma Nwakanma
A letter from Nigeria
— Broken, Betrayed… LIVID! 🤬
I am watching you — all of you.
You who take from me and offer me nothing but insults and hashtags.
You who chant “God when” over foreign flags
You who left me to rot, and now wonder why I smell.
I smell?! Muwa! Lenu e!
Who litters my streets and markets?
Who shits in cellophane bags and tosses them in my bushes?
Who turns every wall on every street corner into a bloody urinal?
Who cut down all the trees that should freshen the air?
I don’t blame you!
Any of you!
You’re all a bloody disgrace!
You — the so-called ‘leaders’ called to serve me —
How do you look in the mirror and not spit in disgust?
You swore oaths to protect me.
But you sell me off in silence —
piece by piece, barrel by barrel, loan by loan.
You watch my hospitals rot while you fly to London for paracetamol.
You let my children drown in gutters when it rains —
then ask for a second term.
You build prisons with budgets meant for schools.
You build silence where there should have been justice.
You build nothing —
except gates and graves.
You call me a failed state —
but you are the ones who caused me to fail.
And you — my citizens.
Let’s not pretend your hands are clean.
You bribe policemen to look the other way
You praise thieves in agbadas if they spray enough money at weddings.
You lie, cheat, swindle — and then act shocked when the country shows your own reflection.
You bash me online in English. “This useless country; I hate this country,”
yet you take without giving, flee without fighting, mock without mourning.
You wear green on Independence Day but bleach your accents by October 2nd.
You abandon me at the first embassy that says “yes” – EVEN THE SAME ONES THAT ENSLAVED YOU!
You forget the milk and honey that is yours by birthright,
and so those same foreigners come to drink their fill
while you go serve their food and wash their cadavers in the land they still proudly call theirs
— and never hesitate to remind you isn’t yours.
You treat me like an old, cracked phone you’re too embarrassed to show off,
but too broke to throw away.
Your audacity!
How dare you act like you were not raised in my heat,
bathed in my harmattan,
kissed by my sunlight?
Who made you?
WHO MADE YOU?!
I carried you all.
From the swamps of the Delta to the savannahs of the North,
from Makoko to Maitama,
from the days of groundnut pyramids to the age of stolen crude —
I held you in my arms.
You were born on my soil.
You drank from my rivers.
You thrived under my sky.
And this… is how you repay me?
You forget…
That there was a time the Oyo Empire ruled the wind itself.
A time when the Alaafin’s army could flatten kingdoms with a whisper.
When you hear the Oyo are coming, you piss your pants in terror two weeks in advance!
Your drums summoned storms.
Your horses trampled borders.
You did not beg for respect — you commanded trepidation!
Now?
The same Oyo are reduced to punchlines.
Memes.
Mocked for not being Western enough.
“Ibadan people be like -” and then you laugh.
But the real joke is you.
Because how did you let this become my story?
Don’t even get me started on my Igbo children.
You were warriors.
Maybe not in title — but in action.
You defied colonial rule when others stayed quiet.
You stood unshaken when strangers came with guns and Bible verses.
You traded brilliance across empires and built cities out of clay and stubborn hope.
Now, you are an insult to the legacy of your ancestors;
the Aba women — women!— who rose up, bare-chested, unbent, unafraid.
They did not ask for rights like meek little lambs.
They demanded justice, and they shook the empire to its core.
Nwanyeruwa must be rolling in her grave.
So must the men and women who bled for Biafra,
who paid the price for preserving your dignity.
They would be ashamed to find their descendants such watered down versions of themselves.
What happened to you?
You were bold.
You were loud.
You were brilliant enough to terrify the world.
You. did. not. bow.
Now, you hide your Igbo names in boardrooms,
and code-switch your legacy into LinkedIn profiles.
Where did your fire go?
But rather than combine this energy.
That Yoruba thunder. That Igbo fire. That Bini power. That Hausa resilience;
that legacy of resistance and command,
you let them sow seeds of discord between you.
You let them whisper lies into your ears,
until you began to see each other as enemies — not brothers.
They weaponized your pride,
turned it into rivalry,
and you fell for it like fools.
Tribalism.
Your favourite excuse for cowardice.
Your most fashionable form of self-harm.
You would rather watch me reduced to nothing than see the other tribe rise.
You, who could have ruled this continent together —
let petty politics and sentiment divide you.
What an absolute disgrace!
I was majestic before they named me Nigeria.
I am older than the borders they drew in Berlin.
I have buried empires.
I have watched colonizers come and go.
And still — I am here.
But I am tired of being betrayed.
Because I am not Ghana.
I am not Rwanda.
I am not your fixer-upper redemption arc.
I am NIGERIA — the pulse, the power, the promise.
The GIANT!
And still — still — I am the one mocked.
By foreigners who used to beg for my help.
By countries whose names couldn’t be spelled without my oil.
By citizens I once saved from apartheid, from war, from famine.
Now they question my value?
Raise their noses at my passport?
Call my children fraudsters?
Murder them and demand they go home?
But YOU let outsiders define my worth,
draw borders across my body,
rename my children,
attempt to shape my future!
But I am not your joke.
I am not a failed experiment.
I am not anyone’s charity case.
I am the land of Obas and Emirs, warriors and kings, thinkers and thunder.
I am still the drumbeat that rattles the bones of the continent.
I am still the reason oil flows, and cocoa grows, and music moves.
I am still majestic.
So I am not asking for worship.
I am demanding recognition.
Respect.
REPAIR.
I can forgive you — but I demand your devotion.
Don’t you dare give your loyalty to another land before you give it to me!
Because I will rise. That much is certain.
The only question is:
Will you rise with me — or be buried by your own cowardice?
I am Nigeria.
I do not need you to save me
I need you to stop getting in my way.
And if you don’t stand for me now…
Don’t come dancing when the drums return.
