I think about this thing we call “anyhowness” in Nigeria a lot.
Not in some grand academic way. More in the sense that I keep seeing little things that should not be difficult to get right, and yet somehow, we never seem to.
And it feels like it’s everywhere. Normal enough that after a while, you almost start to feel foolish for expecting better.
A photo of American musician Chloe Bailey went viral a while back. There had been rumours she was in Lagos, visiting Afrobeats star Burna Boy. Neither had confirmed it. No official sightings, no press — all still conjecture, right until she posted a photo of herself on Instagram.
That photo was confirmation.
She took it in an enclosed space. No landmarks, no indicative captions, not even a location tag. But every Nigerian who saw it could tell instantly.
From the tiles.
The tiles in the background of her picture gave it away.
Felt like a gut punch. This was supposedly taken in Burna Boy’s house. Dollar millionaire by any reasonable measure. Somebody with enough money to buy almost anything he wants.
And yet, inside the house, Nigerian tilers had still somehow announced themselves.
The comments were brutal.
“You can never be rich enough to escape Nigerian tilers.”
“As I see the tiles, I recognize my country handwork.”
People were dragging the picture in the comments, but not from a place of insidiousness; but rather from familiarity. and surprise I guess, because, many, like me, had wrongly assumed that anyhowness was a purely poor and middle-class thing in Nigeria.
You weren’t supposed to see the tell-tale signs in a Banana Island mansion and yet, that’s where we were.
Maybe the problem is not that we don’t notice anyhowness. We notice it very well. Sometimes too well.
We see the smudged socket. The crooked signboard. The tiles that don’t quite align. The banner that looks like three different people designed it in a hurry.
We know.
The problem is that we see it clearly, then we sigh, complain, maybe price it into our expectations, and still somehow end up saying, “I go manage am.”
And before I start forming saint, I’ve done it too.
I’ve approved brand work I knew needed one more pass. I’ve let artisans sign off on jobs that were not quite there because I was tired of explaining, pushing, arguing, and becoming “that difficult person” again.
That’s how “almost right” becomes normal.
Not in one big dramatic collapse. Just one small compromise after another.
One smudged socket. One badly aligned tile. One “leave am like that.” One “we move.”
I realise talking about how and why said anyhowness has become so pervasive is another, massive, topic for another day. So maybe I should stop here for now....
Perhaps I’ve done just enough to make my point, no?