Someone told me in Uganda once that the problem with Nigerians is that they never go back home like others. They come to stay. I told him that it is because there is nothing to go back home to. He asked,” What about all those expensive buildings and cars we see in the movies?”

The Nigerian is very good at what we call ”Film Trick.” Most of that flash and dash you see is just a veneer hiding our true poverty. Most of those people are either owing or are fronts. We are the champions of faking it before making it or living beyond our means.

I used to have a girlfriend who had to make a new outfit every week before church. Interesting thing is, she was still a UNILAG student at that time. I asked her if she thought the people in church didn't realize that she was a broke student? Her response ”I rebuke your word.”

Religion has not helped our pretense. We pretend to be prosperous in church because we compete against others in the same church to show that we are better Christians and the evidence of that is that we are ”more blessed.” People steal or go into debt just to show that.

A couple of years ago, we were going to see a movie with some startup founders in a Google Launchpad cohort and had to go through the back streets of Lekki. A young lady from Kenya was in the car with me and she was shocked at how be the roads and houses were.

So shocked that she asked if there had been a war? I mentioned it here on Twitter and people went up in arms. Denial is also another Nigerian superpower. Denial is what allows us to remain in the midst of dysfunction while hoping for miracles. We deny it, fake it, and hope for it

Many of Nigeria’s problems can be solved by collective effort once we can acknowledge the truth to each other. Instead we have a mentality of ”I better pass my neighbour.” I wrote a whole thread about that attitude here already. I will find it and append below. It is our bane.

We have mastered the art of illusion so much in Nigeria and I wasn't surprised about 419 fraud. That deception is why most Africans are also afraid but don't realize that it is really just an inferiority complex. The louder a Nigerian is, the poorer he is. True wealth is silent.