By Lillian Okenwa
Not all exhaustion comes from long hours or heavy labour. Some of it comes from carrying a future that never seems to arrive.
Not the ordinary waiting that lasts a few minutes in traffic or a long queue at the bank, but the deeper kind that slowly settles into a person’s life. It is the waiting that stretches into months, sometimes years, until it begins to reshape how people think, dream and even pray.
Across Nigeria this morning, millions of people woke up carrying that weight.
A young graduate refreshed an email inbox again, hoping an employer had finally responded. A father counted the days until an overdue salary might arrive. A retired civil servant wondered whether this month would finally bring a pension. Somewhere, a mother stared at her phone, praying for news of a child who left home and never returned. A businessman waited for foreign exchange that could rescue his struggling company. Another family waited outside a courtroom, hoping justice would not be postponed once again.
Different stories.
The same waiting.
We often describe Nigeria as a resilient nation. That is true. We endure disappointments that would overwhelm many societies. We adjust to rising prices, unreliable electricity, worsening insecurity and economic uncertainty with remarkable determination.
Yet resilience has a hidden cost. It asks people to keep moving while large parts of their lives remain suspended. Life does not stop while people wait.
Rent is still due. School fees must still be paid. Elderly parents still need medication. Younger siblings continue looking to older brothers and sisters for help. Weddings must be attended. Funerals require contributions. Every month introduces another financial obligation long before yesterday’s burden has been lifted.
Many Nigerians are trying to build lives of their own while carrying the weight of several others. It is a pressure that rarely appears in economic reports, yet it shapes countless homes.
A young woman finally secures her first job after years of searching. Before her first salary is fully spent, requests begin arriving. A cousin needs tuition. An uncle requires hospital treatment. There is money to contribute for a burial, another request for a wedding, another relative hoping for assistance with rent.
None of these requests comes from malice. They come from love, obligation and a culture that has always believed families should carry one another through difficult times. Yet there comes a point when even the strongest shoulders begin to ache.
Many people are no longer waiting only for prosperity. They are waiting for room to breathe. The language of young Nigerians reflects this reality. Words like sapa, hustle and burnout have become part of everyday conversation. Social media is full of jokes about empty wallets, impossible bills and surviving another month.
We laugh.
We create memes.
We turn hardship into comedy.
Humour has always been one of our greatest survival skills.
Still, behind the jokes are people whose emotional reserves are running dangerously low.
Life in Nigeria has become a continuous race. The alarm rings before dawn. Hours disappear in traffic. Work extends into evenings through messages that never seem to stop. Inflation rearranges carefully prepared budgets. Parents worry about school fees. Business owners calculate exchange rates before opening their shops. Farmers worry about insecurity before worrying about rainfall.
Every new day brings another calculation.
Another adjustment.
Another postponement.
What makes prolonged waiting especially difficult is that it rarely announces itself as trauma.
There are no bandages.
No visible scars.
No hospital admission.
Yet psychologists have long warned that prolonged uncertainty places enormous pressure on the human mind. The World Health Organization has repeatedly recognised chronic stress and uncertainty as major threats to mental wellbeing. When people spend months or years unable to predict what tomorrow may bring, anxiety grows, concentration suffers and hope gradually becomes harder to sustain.
That reality is becoming increasingly familiar across Nigeria. Many people continue going to work, attending church or mosque, laughing with friends and posting cheerful photographs online while privately wondering whether life has somehow become stuck.
The danger is not merely financial. It is psychological. There is a difference between being patient and being suspended. Patience expects movement. Suspension slowly begins to fear that movement may never come. That fear changes people.
Dreams are delayed.
Business plans remain inside notebooks.
Couples postpone marriage until conditions improve.
Young families delay having children.
Medical treatment is deferred.
Home ownership becomes an increasingly distant aspiration.
Years pass while people continue preparing for a future that never quite arrives. One postponed decision may not change a person’s life. A decade of postponement often does.
Mental health specialists describe prolonged uncertainty as one of the most emotionally demanding experiences human beings can endure. Family therapist Pauline Boss introduced the idea of “ambiguous loss” to explain the emotional burden carried by people living without resolution. Families of missing persons understand this well. So do relatives of kidnapped victims who wait endlessly for news. The suffering lies not only in what has happened, but in not knowing when, or whether, the waiting will end.
Nigeria has produced far too many such families. Parents still wait for children abducted from schools. Communities wait for justice after violent attacks. Victims of fraud wait years for court judgments. Patients wait for surgeries they cannot yet afford. Thousands of young people wait for opportunities worthy of the education they struggled to obtain.
Waiting has stealthily become one of the defining experiences of our national life. The emotional burden does not stop there. Comparison has made waiting even heavier.
Social media has created a world where everyone else’s breakthroughs appear immediate. Promotions are announced daily. New homes are unveiled. Wedding photographs fill timelines. Departure lounges become symbols of fresh beginnings. Success is constantly on display.
For those whose own lives feel unchanged, the comparison can become deeply discouraging.
It is not envy.
It is discouragement.
People begin asking questions that have no easy answers.
“Am I doing something wrong?”
“Why does everyone else seem to be moving except me?”
“When will my own turn come?”
Those questions rarely remain on a phone screen.
Eventually, they settle inside the heart.
● A lawyer and equity advocate, Lillian is the publisher of Law & Society Magazine. She can be reached at Lillianokenwa@gmail.com.