Activist and actor, Mr Macaroni, has asserted that the average Nigerian’s survival mentality and mindset is a curse and not a blessing.
The comic voiced his stance during a recent interview with media personality, Biola Adebayo, stressing that the 24-hour hustling spirit is not something to be proud of. Mr Macaroni noted that Nigerians are too quick to accept everything thrown their way.
“What I have noticed about Nigerians? Our survival mentality. We think it is a blessing but it is a curse. The average Nigerian is a survivor, it is in our system we always find a way to make it work. A person who didn’t have money to go to work the day before would make it to work somehow, they may not know how but they would eventually. A person who doesn’t know how they would eat would somehow eat.”
Pointing at the status quo and how challenging situations are often shrugged off in a heart-lighted manner, the actor further said, “We always play about it like ‘I’m a Nigerian, I will survive,’ ‘If you can survive in Nigeria you can survive anywhere’ and it’s not something to be proud of. It’s a curse because that way anything that comes our way, we would accept it and move on! If the dollar goes up or anything goes bad we would move on. Why? Because by instinct and by default we just want to survive so we never know when it’s enough,” said the actor.
He ended his train of thought by challenging Nigerians, “So I ask Nigerians ‘When would we stop surviving and start living? What is the average lifespan of a Nigerian?’
“We are always stressed and we are comfortable because we feel like that is part of the hustle and we must survive”
