Something I read yesterday: ”In 1981, Nigeria entered an 11 year recession.” Even after the recession was technically over, Nigeria wasn't sunshine and roses. Only in the 2000s did the country come out of the woods. That was two decades of strife.

My parents got married in 1982, the year I was born. They had four children. We all grew up through that difficult period. None of us was aware of what was going on: kids will be kids. Only later (like now) did it occur to any of us that things were not easy.

I remember events like arriving school with a letter for the principal (Mrs Omo-Osagie) explaining that the school fees would only be complete in a few weeks, and asking leave to begin the term while my parents made a plan. The school administrators were always understanding.

I realise now that one branch of my family prospered because they had dollar incomes while the rest of us foundered, collateral damage from the economic bomb detonated after the cement armada days of the 1970s. The dollar family brought us Kool Aid and Smarties when they visited.

Second-tier cities with minute middle class populations like Calabar, Makurdi, Warri, and so on emptied of their middle classes: they all fled to Lagos and other commercial centres, running from spreading economic carnage. Those who could fled abroad.

This was the beginning of the era of the “unemployed graduate,” a veritable institution these days. Lawyers discarded their robes and opened video clubs, architects because hustlers—survival became the order of the day.

Social norms hardened over this time. It is true that the shine-your-eye culture was always there, but there was a bulwark of probity working against it and defending the vestiges of a noble society. All of that came crashing down in the 80s & 90s. Survival meant surviving.

And I am aware, now, that what I describe is a quintessential middle class experience. For the overwhelming majority of Nigerians, the entire history of the country has been one long forced march through poverty and hardship.

Let me try to wrap this up before I completely lose track of why I started this thread to begin with. I have been thinking a lot about my past because our path to the present—with talk of the country falling off a cliff—is so familiar as to almost be a repeat of the path to 1981.