A few nights ago, I learned a small lesson about how the mind protects itself by choosing to acknowledge only or mostly familiar patterns.
Our estate usually gets electricity for up to 20 hours on a good day. So, two nearly-dark days in a row felt unusual, but not unthinkable by Nigerian standards. Our generator was under repairs, so we went to bed expecting another hot, restless night.
While we tossed and turned and the children cried, a quiet thought crossed my mind: there is no generator noise around; maybe there is light. It wasn’t a dramatic realization, just a subtle internal nudge. Yet my mind had already formed a newer pattern from the last two days: power has not been coming as usual lately, so manage it. I stayed in bed.
Hours later the heat became too much. I got up to check and found that there was light; we only needed to recharge our prepaid meter. My body suffered longer than necessary because my mind preferred a convenient expectation over a weak contrary signal. I ignored the “silent beep” because answering it was more expensive: getting up, and potentially firing up brain muscles and neural pathways. It brings to mind the refrain Nigerians say when they express regret; “And one mind told me to recheck that thing o”
This is normal brain efficiency, however. The brain relies on pre-arranged patterns or schemas to interpret the world fast. And when harm repeats without a call to action, it breeds desensitization and then learned helplessness. This term is called habituation — the feeling that alarm is wasted because nothing changes. This is why Nigerians settle and endure hardships, severe harm and discomfort to their lives because their minds have tricked them that suffering is cheaper. They may grieve privately, joke to cope or adopt an all-man-for-himself strategy. It is the nervous system adapting the individual for immediate survival.
After that night, I kept thinking about Nigeria. I realized that our civic mind is battling a zombie-brain rot: not because Nigerians are inhumane, but because our collective alarm system has been dulled by constant exposure to abnormality and the lack of a call-to-action that should follow.
On November 21, terrorists kidnapped over 300 children from a Catholic primary school in Niger State, and the churches continued, hosting December Praise concerts. Kids as little as five may end up spending Christmas with rapists and killers. Medical practitioners are on strike but the conversations online are completely dissonant from children dying and the sick without access to healthcare.
Fear of authority is part of this numbness, but not the whole story. Repetition lowers surprise, helplessness lowers hope, and the high risk associated with fighting back discourages public sentiments. The result is a national alarm threshold that keeps dropping.
Engagement, however, does not mean rage alone. Rage burns out. What we need are sustained forms of agency — protest, non-bureaucratic organizing, documentation, citizen accountability, and refusal to sanitize dysfunction with jokes, because agency interrupts helplessness. Even small wins stop the nervous system from concluding that nothing can change.
Nigeria does not need outrage every second. It needs citizens who can learn to keep recognizing abnormality as abnormal and refuse the training of silence. The danger is not only the suffering we endure, but what prolonged suffering teaches our minds to accept.