Nigeria’s Culture Of Self-Sufficiency: How Individual Survival Undermines Collective Progress
By DAVID JOHN-FLUKE
ONE of Nigeria’s most defining social traits today is the elevation of individual survival over collective progress. It is not merely an impression that Nigerians prioritize personal comfort and achievement over shared welfare—it is, in fact, an ingrained cultural reality.
Faced with an epileptic power supply, citizens rarely unite to demand better service. Instead, each household scrambles to buy its own generator, enduring the noise and fumes as the price of personal convenience. When public water systems fail, rather than collectively insisting on a functional water board, individuals dig private boreholes—transforming what should be a basic communal service into a private luxury.
The same pattern repeats in matters of security. With public safety deteriorating, those who can afford it hire private guards or subscribe to estate security services. Few pause to question why public policing remains ineffective or to push for reform that would ensure safety for all.
This mindset—“as long as I am fine, the rest can go to hell”—has become the root of Nigeria’s enduring dysfunction. It fuels inequality, corrodes social trust, and perpetuates the very failures citizens seek to escape. Everyone is hustling to rise above the broken system instead of fixing it, leaving the system to decay further.
Meanwhile, political leaders thrive in this environment of fragmentation. A divided citizenry, focused on personal survival rather than collective action, poses no real threat to their complacency. So long as Nigerians are preoccupied with solving problems privately—power, water, security—the state faces little pressure to fulfill its public responsibilities.
If Nigeria is to make real progress, this culture of isolated survival must give way to one of collective demand and shared accountability. A nation cannot thrive on private solutions to public failures. True development begins when citizens realise that communal well-being is not a luxury, but the foundation of a just and functional society.
