4 Signs You’re A Full Blooded Nigerian.

As a Nigerian who grew up in Nigeria and is living in Nigeria, I see traits that you can find in almost e very Nigerian and I’m here to share those things with you.

Of course, I know you’re not confused about your identity, but you should read this, find out traits you never knew you got, or maybe you just didn’t give them much thought.

1. You don’t question things, beliefs and/thoughts.

Growing up in a Nigerian environment already kills your inquisitiveness and critical thinking ability. Here, children are raised, taught and encouraged to not ask questions. Do not questions people, adults especially, because questioning adult after they tell you something means you do not have respect.

You dare not questions ywho’sarents when they give you an instruction or a piece of "advice". You dare not question your pastors when they tell you that tattoos are from demons. You dare not question your teachers at school when they tell you to cut your hair. Here, Every child from birth is raised to act and live like a robot - with no mind of their own.

The only thing you are allowed to do is follow instructions without complaining and murmuring.

So, if you are a person whose inquisitiveness is still alive, you'll find yourself questioning so many things, because you won't even know that so much is wrong with this society until you have a critical mind..... And when you begin questioning these things, you'll find yourself constantly at war with everyone else. It's normal.

2. You can barely regulate your own emotions.

If you can now, it took you some hard work and personal decision, even therapy to get there, emotional regulation isn’t something you learn in a Nigerian home, because our parents dont even know that their emotions can be regulated.. We grew up seeing them have outbursts.

When they’re angry, they shout at us, they beat us out of anger, they do a lot of wrong things because they were very high emotional at that time and they didn’t regulate their emotions or try to use logic in their dealings with other humans, children especially.

Then, they inflicted trauma on us, and modelled a life of trauma for us, so we grow up with that too, the inability to regulate our emotions and communicate how we feel properly, instead we keep malice, we fight and we have accumulated grievances towards one another, but we don’t ever express our hurts to one another, because there’s this silly fear that telling the other person how they hurt you may make them get angry and then you’d have fights and quarrels.... Often times, that fear is true, it happens just like that....which can be normal if the two parties or group of individuals know how to process their emotions and settle their scores.

3. You can’t stand up for yourself.

Especially when it comes to standing up against authorities, adults, pastors, teachers, bosses, parents and people in general whom you perceive has some kind of power and privilege than you do.

Being raised in a Nigerian home means that you were taught to "respect" adults in general, even when they are stepping on you, abusing, manipulating or violating your human rights. (This is what Nigerians call respect, knowing how to take shit and BS from adults)

Ageism is a big problem. And always it's younger people who find themselves at a place of exploitation and manipulation and abuse, and still, you are expected to keep quiet and respect the abuser, as though an abuser deserves any respect.

This is why children here suffer emotionally more than anyone else. As a child from the the time you start learning to talk and walk, your parents will make it their special duty to teach you and force you into greeting every adult you come across, I've seen parents beat their children or emotionally abuse their child, a 2,3,or 4 years old child because the child didn't greet an adult.

This is how much messy it is for children.

Then, as grownups, children can hardly stand up to their parents. Nigerian parents are often very religious, so you’ll find households where daughters are not allowed to wear trousers, wear earrings or even use make-up and sons are not allowed to keep long hair, dye their hair, wear rings or earrings, wear a kind of clothing etc. In these families, their adult children won’t get piercings or tattoos or wear waist beads or anklets even if that’s what they want.

And some adults who have left home and can now wear these things usually take them off when going to visit their parents.
I’ve seen and heard adults talk about how they take off their anklets, nose rings, finger rings, waist beads or/and cover their hair whenever they are going to visit their parents.

So, they're very comfortable with using and wearing these outside the family house, but they take them away when going home, when I asked them why they have to do that, they said they were respecting their parents. They said that it's better to respect their parents and uncles and aunts and pastors than to resist or be stubborn.

And what often happens is that their parents go outside and harass other people’s children. The policemen arrests young boys for dressing in a way that they consider indecent. The woman at the government secretariat office sends girls out because they wore tight trousers/skirts when they came for their National Identity Card.

These parents take their bigotry and moral policing out of their houses, and bring them into public spaces because their children cannot talk to them or stand up against their tyranny.

4. You think and believe that violence is and should be normal.

A Nigerian adult is a person who grew up being beaten by any adult who has some kind of authority over them. You were beaten by mother and father, you were beaten by an elder sibling or cousin, you were beaten by your teachers at school, your neighbor, your uncles and aunties.

For a person who grew up hearing people say that beating children, that voilence towards children is discipline and is the best way to raise children, they’ll very much grow up into believing that beating children is the best way.

It surprises me how we think that domestic voilence does not include voilence towards children. Yes,It does include children.

Violence does not change anyone, violence makes things worse. We live in a country where everyone is looking for an opportunity to oppress the next person, yet we think that beating children is a good thing. It’s sad.

If you read this article upto this paragraph, I expect that you start choosing to do things differently, to stand up for yourself, to question everything, to begin healing your trauma, learning to regulate your emotions so that you can improve your relationship with people and with children, and stop beating children.

Chidera Ochuagu