I found myself seated beside an American woman on a flight bound for Nigeria recently. Stephanie (not her real name) was making her second visit to the country, having connected online with a young Nigerian man. This time, she planned to spend several weeks deepening their relationship. Over the course of our nearly 12-hour journey from Atlanta to Lagos, we had ample time to engage in conversation.
Stephanie expressed a genuine affection for Nigeria, a country she hoped to eventually call home through marriage. She spoke admiringly of the irrepressible energy of its people, our entrepreneurial drive, and an almost supernatural resilience in the face of chronic governmental neglect. She was especially fond of our spicy cuisine, remarking with amusement that what Americans label “hot” barely registers on her palate. She couldn’t get enough of Burna Boy or the infectious rhythms of Afrobeats.
Yet, there was one aspect of her experience that deeply unsettled her: Nigeria’s pervasive culture of begging.
“Everywhere I turned,” she observed, “people seemed to expect a handout without offering the slightest service in return. And when you didn’t oblige, you could almost taste the disapproval, sometimes even hostility.” Her initiation into this unsettling dynamic, she recalled, began the moment she disembarked the aircraft on her first visit: immigration officials subtly soliciting bribes, unsolicited porters insisting on handling her luggage, and an unending procession of individuals requesting “something small” with neither justification nor effort.
For Stephanie, it was a bewildering cultural shock. For me, as a Nigerian, it was sadly unremarkable, a reality I, like many others in the diaspora, have come to accept as part of our social fabric. We long ago internalized the informal levy of the so-called “Black tax.” But what startled her and what we have grown alarmingly numb to, is not merely a culture of begging, but a manifestation of a deeper malaise: the cargo-cult mentality. At its core lies a flawed worldview, one that presumes the universe, or some anonymous benefactor, is duty-bound to deliver unearned rewards simply by virtue of our desire.
Nigerians are exceptional people. From the tech hubs of Lagos to the corridors of academia in Toronto, we show brilliance and tenacity. Wherever we go, we hustle, we strive, we rise. But coexisting with that resilience is a troubling paradox: the quiet but pervasive belief in something for nothing.
We must be honest with ourselves. Too many among us have been conditioned to expect rewards we haven’t earned. We want success without effort, wealth without work, and breakthrough without process. This cargo-cult mentality is not only corrosive to ambition; it is morally unsound. Because the truth is, the universe owes us nothing. No one does.
The term “cargo cult” originates from post-WWII Melanesia, where islanders, after witnessing Allied troops receive supplies via aircraft, began mimicking their behavior, building makeshift airstrips, donning fake headsets—in the hope that the planes and their goods would return. But that kind of magical thinking, as absurd as it may seem, has its modern equivalent in Nigeria today.