In the midst of the chaos, I sensed a deep brotherhood among them. Nigerians love each other. They stand for each other.
As a Ghanaian, my first trip to Nigeria was not just a journey across borders it was a confrontation with uncomfortable truths, complex contrasts, and soul-searching questions. The moment I landed in Lagos, a storm of thoughts began to brew in my mind. I found myself wrestling with three haunting questions:
- When will this mess be fixed?
- Who will fix the mess?
- How will the mess be fixed?
These weren’t idle musings. They were born out of raw, unfiltered encounters with the realities of Nigeria realities that shook me and made me appreciate my own country in ways I had never considered before.
I was lodged at a hotel in Alaka Estate, if my memory serves me right. The room was decent, the hospitality warm enough, but what kept me awake at night wasn’t a lack of comfort. It was the sheer weight of what I had seen in just a few hours in the city.
Lagos was bustling, yes, vibrant and full of life but it felt like a city living on the edge. There were no visible signs of order, no coordination. The traffic was anarchic, horns blaring in a symphony of frustration. Trash piled up by the roadside. Armed men, bold and unafraid, chased after cars in broad daylight, targeting travelers like us with no fear of consequence. The rule of law seemed absent or ignored, and with every passing hour, I kept asking myself: Is this how a country of such promise should look?
It was on that very day that I realized something shocking: Ghana, for all its flaws, was a kind of heaven compared to what I was witnessing. Not heaven in the perfect sense, of course we have our own challenges. But in terms of structure, relative peace, and a sense of civic order, Ghana stood taller in ways I had taken for granted.
But here’s the irony beneath all the dysfunction, there was something undeniably admirable about the Nigerian people themselves. They were loud, passionate, fiercely driven, and full of a type of raw energy I rarely see back home. In the midst of the chaos, I sensed a deep brotherhood among them. Nigerians love each other. They stand for each other. They fight together and hustle with a shared fire that is both inspiring and intimidating. But here’s the paradox: They love each other, but they seem to hate their country.
It was this contradiction that truly disturbed me. How can a people so full of strength, talent, and resilience be trapped in a system that works so poorly for them? How can such a rich land suffer such poverty, disorder, and insecurity?
And then I turned the mirror inward. In Ghana, we have a different kind of tragedy. We enjoy relatively better governance, cleaner streets, and more stability. We take pride in our democracy, our peace, our hospitality. But peel back the surface and you’ll find another disturbing truth: We love our country, but we struggle to love each other.
We are quick to criticize, quick to envy, and slow to support. Tribalism runs deep. Political divisions tear us apart. There is a quiet cynicism in the air, a sense that if someone rises, it must be because they’re corrupt or connected. Our unity is fragile. We don’t chase each other with guns, but we pull each other down with words, suspicion, and indifference.
So there I was, a Ghanaian in Nigeria, torn between two different heartbreaks. One nation was dying from the neglect of its systems, the other from the fractures in its soul.
And yet, I don’t write this to mock or judge. I write this because I believe in the power of honesty. We must talk about these things not with arrogance, but with urgency. Because Africa cannot rise if its two most culturally powerful nations Ghana and Nigeria continue to be held back by dysfunction, division, and disillusionment.
That evening in Alaka Estate, I realized that the future of Africa will not be built by governments alone. It will not come through foreign aid or lofty speeches. It will come when everyday Africans Ghanaians and Nigerians alike begin to answer the hard questions:
- When will this mess be fixed? Only when we stop normalizing it.
- Who will fix it? We will if we stop waiting for saviors and start becoming leaders in our own right.
- How will it be fixed? Through courage, through unity, and through a fierce refusal to accept mediocrity as our destiny.
My journey to Nigeria gave me more than culture shock it gave me perspective. And sometimes, perspective is the first step toward progress.
Let’s have these conversations. Let’s confront the chaos and fix what’s broken. Not as Ghanaians or Nigerians alone, but as Africans with a shared destiny and a responsibility to generations yet unborn.
Sulley Kone
(First time Ghanaian Traveller to Nigeria)
