There are things we keep calling normal in Nigeria simply because we have lived with them for so long. We wake up to problems we have already accepted and rarely stop to ask whether they should be normal at all.

Bad roads.

Unreliable electricity.

Endless queues.

Delays that nobody explains.

Systems that require you to know someone before they work properly.

Public services that feel like favours.

Basic things that somehow require extraordinary patience.

And because everyone else is experiencing the same thing, we call it normal.

That may be one of the most dangerous things a society can do.

Things We Keep Calling Normal

Nigerians have become remarkably good at adapting to dysfunction.

Give us a broken system and, within weeks, someone will have found a workaround.

Another inconvenience appears, and we create a WhatsApp group, find a contact, pay somebody, make three phone calls and somehow get through it.

Then we celebrate our resilience.

Perhaps, however, we should ask why that resilience has become necessary in the first place.

There is a difference between being resilient and being permanently subjected to conditions that should never have been acceptable.

Survival is admirable.

But a society should not have to survive things that could simply work.

When Low Expectations Become Normal

We have also developed an interesting relationship with standards.

People complain when things are terrible, but become suspicious when someone demands that they be excellent.

The person asking for accountability is difficult.

Someone asking for better service is entitled.

The person who refuses to accept incompetence is somehow the problem.

Eventually, low expectations become culture.

A road does not need to be good. It only needs to be better than the last one.

A public official does not need to perform exceptionally. They only need to be slightly less disappointing than their predecessor.

A company does not need to respect its customers. It simply needs to answer the phone eventually.

Then, when something finally works the way it should have worked from the beginning, we celebrate it like a miracle.

How Things We Keep Calling Normal Become Culture

This is how dysfunction becomes invisible.

It does not disappear.

We simply become used to it.

The danger is not only that we tolerate bad systems. It is that we eventually lose the imagination required to expect better ones.

We stop asking why a basic service is difficult.

We stop wondering why a simple process takes hours.

We stop expecting public institutions to work without personal connections.

We stop believing that things can be different.

That is when a problem becomes bigger than the problem itself.

It becomes an expectation.

We Should Expect Better

Perhaps the next time we say, “That’s just how things are,” we should pause.

Who decided?

And more importantly, why have we decided to accept it?

Nigeria does not have to remain trapped by every problem we have learned to work around.

Resilience should help us move forward, not become an excuse for keeping broken systems in place.

The things we keep calling normal deserve to be questioned, especially when they make ordinary life harder than it needs to be.

Good morning, Nigeria.

Some things are normal only because we have been normalising them for too long.