Archive Details
A systems-oriented reflection on survival, provision, and the hidden economics of responsibility. The piece examines how informal income streams become critical mechanisms of household stability, quietly restructuring dignity, power, and identity. Beneath the familiar Nigerian prince trope lies a structural portrait of adaptive survival, where liquidity, obligation, and moral tension converge. Not a defense, nor a condemnation, but an act of recognition.
Psalms From The Boys
It feels good, you know.
To swipe your card and not flinch. To hand your little sister transport fare and watch her light up. To tell your dad “I’ve handled it”—and he nods, a little smaller every time.
It feels good to not be at anyone’s mercy. To fund your dreams, or what you think are dreams.
To drive your car, post your wins, talk aesthetics, plan rebrands. To finally speak and not get shut down.
But sometimes—sometimes it strikes like a stone in your chest: your father can’t hold you off anymore.
Because you’re the one feeding him. Wiping his shame with your money when he never wiped your bum as a toddler. Too busy telling his 16-year-old son to “be a man.” Grey hairs and all.
You’re tired.
But tired in a way that looks like freedom. Every few days, something breaks.
The car. The generator. Your cousin’s stomach lining.
One operation here. One school fee there.
You register for a gym membership—because you’re trying to be normal. To fix your body like it’ll fix your mind. But halfway through your first month, your mom needs surgery.
So you cancel the subscription.
Again.
You try to legalize everything—build a business, legitimize the image. But you’re constantly patching holes faster than you can pour concrete.
You’re trying to build a family from fragments. One emergency to the next.
You do what you can—but it always feels like you’re surviving a storm while holding up the house on your back.
Key Highlights
- Reframes the Nigerian prince archetype through systems thinking
- Examines informal income as household liquidity engine
- Explores generational role reversal and dignity tension
- Analyzes survival pressures within constrained economies
- Highlights the hidden cost of provision and responsibility
- Connects migration discourse (japa) to systemic strain
- Uses narrative to reveal structural economic realities
And then, the talks come: “Why don’t you just japa?”
“You’re smart, you’re sharp—this life doesn’t fit you.”
“What do you want to do with your life?”
And bitterly, you want to answer:
“What exactly am I not doing with my life?”
But what comes out is softer. Slower.
More. . . rehearsed.
“I’m just… I don’t know. Small small. With time. Everything go align. God dey.”
And your dad smiles. He doesn’t believe it, but it’s the closest thing to peace he’s heard all week.
The silence is awkward.
A little appeased.
A little sad.
You make sure to transfer money to his account—clean, quiet, mobile banking kind of love—so he can claim “man of the house” while the boy mans the house.