The Nigerian Adjustment Uprising

Nigerians Don’t Protest Anymore. We Adjust. When the “Olodo Uprising” started trending on TikTok and everyone began speaking their mind, it was entertaining to watch. But there’s another uprising nobody talks about. The Nigerian Adjustment Uprising. The First Lady suggested that people should start selling akara and roasted corn. Almost immediately, people dusted off their ring lights, set up their tripods, and started creating content around the idea. Not because they wanted to. Because that’s what Nigerians do. We adjust. I remember when a bag of rice was ₦7,000. Today it’s many times that price. And somehow… we adjusted. Food keeps getting more expensive. Transportation gets harder. Basic survival feels like a luxury. And yet we adjust. Every single time. This isn’t a call for another protest. The last time many Nigerians took to the streets, too many lives were lost and too many families were left grieving. That reality still hangs over the country. But surely there has to be another solution. Beyond hunger, there’s insecurity. People are kidnapped every day. Families live in fear. Many of those with power or wealth can leave the country whenever things become uncomfortable, while ordinary Nigerians have no choice but to stay and hope tomorrow is kinder than today. Sometimes I look around and wonder if we’ve become experts at surviving instead of living. We normalize things that should never be normal. We laugh through pain. We turn suffering into memes. We create businesses because salaries no longer sustain us. We call it resilience, but sometimes it feels more like forced adaptation. Then there’s the endless parade of people claiming supernatural power. Some say they can perform miracles. Others claim spiritual authority or extraordinary abilities. Yet ordinary Nigerians still face kidnappings, violence, and fear every day. Instead of competing for views and trends online, imagine if all that influence translated into real change for communities. At the end of the day, Nigerians don’t just deserve coping mechanisms. We deserve functioning systems. We deserve safety. We deserve affordable food. We deserve leaders who solve problems instead of giving us new ways to survive them. We don’t need another adjustment. We need a country.

Other insights from Zarah Writes

Referral Earning

Points-to-Coupons