9 Naija Things That Have Survived Longer Than Any Government Promise

1. That one pothole on your street that has outlived two governors and one flyover ribbon-cutting. It has grown children of its own, smaller potholes, branching off the original, each with their own drainage ecosystem. It has been "under review" since the last administration and shows no signs of being any administration's priority.

2. Okada helmets nobody wears, but every rider owns one, for the camera, not the head. Kept in the storage compartment for exactly the moment a traffic warden appears, then swiftly returned to storage once the coast is clear. A helmet's true purpose in Nigeria is compliance theatre, not protection.

3. Your uncle's "I'm relocating abroad next year," now in its eleventh consecutive year. The visa process has changed four times, the destination country has changed twice, but the year has remained, faithfully, "next year," a temporal loop stronger than most government five-year plans.

4. The "Coming Soon" signboard on an uncompleted flyover, now weathered enough to qualify as a historical monument. The paint has faded past legibility. Birds have nested in the scaffolding. Google Maps has quietly reclassified it as a landmark rather than a construction site, which is more recognition than the project has received from its own ministry.

5. NYSC orientation camp jokes about "serving the fatherland," recycled fresh by every new batch since the scheme began. Different corps members, same jokes, same complaints about the camp food, same mama put makeshift economy springing up outside the gates, a tradition more consistently maintained than the allowance payment schedule.

6. The security light at the estate gate that has never once worked but is switched on every night out of tradition. Nobody can remember the last time it actually illuminated anything. The switch is flipped anyway, nightly, a small ritual act of faith in infrastructure that gave up on itself years ago.

7. Your church's "building fund," collected weekly since a groundbreaking ceremony everyone remembers, but nobody can date precisely. The building itself remains a rendering on a banner. The fund, meanwhile, has never once missed a Sunday.

8. WAEC's insistence that exam malpractice is a new and shocking phenomenon, announced fresh every single year. The press conference is identical to last year's. The outrage is identical to last year's. The actual malpractice methods have, if anything, gotten more sophisticated than the government's response to them.

9. The phrase "by next dispensation," used interchangeably and without irony by every dispensation since 1999. Each administration inherits it from the last, promises to be the one that finally delivers, and hands it, gift-wrapped and entirely unchanged, to the next.

A 2027 manifesto has a shorter shelf life than all nine of these combined, and at least the pothole is honest about what it is.