What It Means to Be Young in a Country That’s Broken

Broken Country

Being young in a country that’s broken feels like running a race with no finish line. You’re full of energy, full of dreams, full of ideas, but everywhere you turn, the system tells you to slow down, to shrink, to stop.

You wake up every day with hope, but that hope is tested again and again. You want to be something, to make your parents proud, to make a difference, but sometimes it feels like the country itself is working against you.

You study hard, you hustle, you sacrifice. But when it’s time to shine, you’re told, It’s not what you know, it’s who you know. Jobs don’t go to the most qualified, they go to the most connected. Your talent is not enough. Your dreams don’t have godfathers.
And still, you don’t give up.

Being young in a broken country means you learn how to survive very early. You learn how to manage, how to improvise, how to create happiness in the middle of hardship. You beecome used to hearing words like, no fuel, no light, ASUU is on strike, the system is down, food are expensive and so on

You carry the weight of the country’s failure on your back, but somehow, you still laugh, yu still sing, you still dream, that’s the part that nobody talks about, the strength it takes to remain hopeful here.

You grow up watching your parents work so hard, yet barely have enough. You begin to understand that success in this country isn’t just about effort, it’s about luck, timing, and sometimes, escape.

That’s why many young people now just want to leave. Japa. Not because they hate their home, but because they want more. They want peace, opportunity, and a future where they can breathe. You can’t blame them. It’s hard to keep pouring into a country that doesn’t pour back into you.
But not all of us leave. Some of us stay.

And those of us who stay, we don’t stay because we’re comfortable. We stay because we still believe. Somewhere inside us, we think that maybe, just maybe, something can change. Maybe one small voice can inspire a hundred more. Maybe our gifts, our stories, our pain, can turn into purpose.

Being young in a broken country teaches you empathy. It teaches you how to feel other people’s pain as your own. Because you’ve seen it, you’ve lived it. The child selling pure water instead of being in school. The graduate who drives keke to survive. The brilliant minds who never had the chance to show what they could do.

It teaches you to be angry, yes, but also to be kind. Because we are all just trying to survive.

But the truth, we are more than victims. We are more than statistics. We are fire, we are resilience, we are change waiting to happen. We are the generation that’s tired of pretending everything is fine when it’s not. We are the generation asking questions, challenging the old ways, building new dreams even when the ground is shaky.

Being young in a broken country is hard, but it also builds a kind of strength that can’t be taught in books. We are learning how to rise without help, how to shine without spotlight, how to fight for a future that feels far, but still possible.

So don’t let anyone tell you you’re just a youth, that you have no power. You do. We all do.
Because broken as our country may be, we are not broken.
We are seeds. And one day, we’ll grow into something beautiful, something strong enough to rebuild what was torn.