Tales About Naij - Part 2

I've been posting a series from a reader about their time in Nigeria. You can catch up on Part 1 here. Here's Part 2:

I've had this conversation so many times with different people. "Why do you love Nigeria so much?" "You weren't born there, do the hardships even exist to someone like you?" "Ajebutter like you living in Nigeria, they will scam you, with your obodo oyinbo accent." Yup, I heard it all, and I was still undeterred. A whole me, born and bred in America, made the decision to move to Nigeria.

After all, how bad could it be? I go there on holidays and enjoy myself. Naij, according to social media, just seems like the happening place to be. In the blogs you see the flashy life styles of the entertainers. On social media you unintentionally live vicariously through the words people write about their good times in Nigeria. You do hear about the "sufferhead" aspect, but its always generalized to things we feel we can cope with. Having no light? Can't be that bad. Bombing? Only in the north abeg. Nigeria can't possibly be that bad.

Let me tell you some things about Naij that people won't warn you about. A lot of the Nigerians you see on social media are living a fantasy life. They like to paint pictures of the lives they want by tweeting and making posts like its really happening. And us, their audience, will follow them to believe it. I've noticed an increase in this type of behavior on twitter, especially coming from Nigerians. What gives these people liver to spew such rubbish? And it's not only men, there are women that type nonsense on social media as well. I can never understand why. 

All I know is that, with my own social media experience, take everything you read with a grain of salt. Don't believe everything you read on social media because people make it into what they want it to be. Typical example: odds are that you have someone on your TL that has thousands of followers. This person is never off twitter. If its a guy, it's almost a guarantee that somewhere on his TL, he's made slander about women. But come and see these people in real life. I often hear, don't take twitter too seriously, twitter is just jokes. I never fully understood those sayings until I started seeing these "jokers" in real life. You will stare at these people's faces and just catch all types of confuse. These, my friends, are what I'd like to call, twitter-uglos.  

I remember my first encounter with a twitter-uglo. This man, all year had been talking about how he believes in cheating on women even in marriage, but if a woman should try it, she is not marriage material. He would constantly talk about how women were made to be submissive and how they should stay in the kitchen. The day I finally vexed was when he tweeted that his future wife will be delivering his children by natural birth. What level please? Anyways, one day I met with a group of friends at a Bottles in VI for drinks. In walks in this chubby fellow with a slightly hunched back. His face was filled with acne and if 3rd mainland bridge had an armpit, that's what he smelled like. I couldn't hide the horror on my face as I watched him approach our table.

He greeted some of the guys and they proceeded to introduce him by his real name. I have a thing about smells so I heard absolutely nothing regarding his introduction. We all have a couple of drinks in us, and the topic of submission comes up. Twitter-uglo declares that his future wife will not work because women were made to be in the kitchen. Now see, I just met dude. I already didn't like him because he disrespected my nose. I was ready to pop all the way off, but one of the guys sensed where the topic was going and very wisely changed the subject. 

A few days later, I spoke about that night to one of my friends that was there as well. She told me that I shouldn't mind him. That the guy is notorious for tweeting such and saying such in public. That's when I found out exactly who he was on twitter and blocked his entire existence. God forbid. You would swear that the kind of confidence this person tweets with, that they would be God's gift to women. Fine, rich, actually doing something with his life. Even those things don't excuse the behavior. But he gives people the impression that his family has money, that he deserves what he deserves because he says so. But looking at him, experiencing him in person, you could clearly see that he was not about the life that he tweets about. Such annoying behavior.