{"id":1180,"date":"2026-07-01T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T01:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oluabikoye.com\/blog\/?p=1180"},"modified":"2026-02-01T11:14:01","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T11:14:01","slug":"fear-came-with-light-but-nepa-took-the-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oluabikoye.com\/blog\/fear-came-with-light-but-nepa-took-the-light\/","title":{"rendered":"Fear Came with Light \u2014 But NEPA Off Light"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dear Dairy,<\/strong>
September 01, 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fear came feeling unstoppable in the light\u2026
Until NEPA off light<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It had arrived like it owned the place\u2014buff, bold, and Bluetooth-connected.
Chest out. Voice loud. Standing in full daylight like, \u201cToday na me and you<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But then\u2026 PHCN did what PHCN does.
They off light. Threw fear into darkened silence.
And even fear looked around and whispered,
\u201cAh. Omo. I no do again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because that\u2019s the truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be Nigerian is to wake up daily to a system engineered to humble your confidence<\/strong>\u2014
and still make you show up with eyebrows done, CV updated, and hope packed in a Ziploc bag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We dodge potholes like prayers.
Queue in fuel scarcity wearing office clothes.
Zoom from data bundles.
Smile in traffic.
Speak in tongues on Monday.
Negotiate contracts on Tuesday.
And live like heaven is watching\u2014because it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We survive both poverty and police.
We push past stereotypes, side comments, and the constant \u201cWhere are you from again<\/em>?\u201d
And still show up present, prepared, and sometimes even with jollof rice in our bags.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We don\u2019t flinch.
We may panic for a moment, but in the end we throw our hands in the air as we lean back in the chair saying: \u201cYou think being Nigerian is for the faint-hearted? No. It\u2019s for the naturally charged<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that brings me to Ol\u00fa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Nigerian girl. PhD student. Studying law in Europe.
Not just abroad\u2014Europe abroad<\/strong>.
The land of soft-toned disagreements and polite rejections.
Where people say \u201cinteresting<\/em>\u201d when they mean \u201cnonsense<\/em>,\u201d
and smile while cutting your point into pieces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She didn\u2019t just carry her textbooks\u2014
She came with fire, faith, and fufu energy<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back home, she was unstoppable\u2014
Quick with her words, sharp in class, raised to \u201cspeak when it matters.\u201d
She knew how to argue her point with facts and fire\u2014
and still tell you \u201cGod bless you<\/em>\u201d while doing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But abroad? Everything was soft-spoken, smile-wrapped in \u201cLet\u2019s revisit that later<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Silence was currency.
Politeness wore suits.
Confrontation was seen as aggression.
Her passion got labelled \u201ctoo much<\/em>.\u201d
Her name? Mispronounced\u2014sometimes on purpose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She had to learn that \u201cinteresting<\/em>\u201d sometimes meant \u201cnever say that again<\/em>.\u201d
That \u201cI see where you\u2019re coming from<\/em>\u201d
actually meant \u201cI\u2019m completely ignoring your point.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One day in class, a professor asked for opinions on a human rights case.
Ol\u00fa gave hers\u2014brilliant, bold, clear.
It was so good, it could win in court and still get retweeted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ten minutes later, another student rephrased it\u2014
with an unidentifiable British accent and three extra commas to ensure he didn\u2019t miss Ol\u00fa\u2019s point.
And they applauded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ol\u00fa just blinked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She didn\u2019t shout.
She didn\u2019t roll her eyes.
She smiled the kind of smile only Lagos traffic can teach you<\/strong>\u2014
and wrote down her next point\u2014hotter, stronger, sharper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because she knew something they didn\u2019t:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She wasn\u2019t raised in comfort.
She was raised in torrents of current that comes and goes.
And you learn to shine \u2014 with or without light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She understood what it meant to be overlooked\u2014but overqualified.
They might not see her now. But she still showed up with the mindset:
\u201cI\u2019m still the blueprint<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did it hurt? Yes.
Did she confront them? Not every time.
Did she still top the class?
Let\u2019s just say\u2026 the transcripts are loud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ol\u00fa struggled not to shrink.
She overtime learnt to adjust the voltage\u2014hot, hotter or just wiser<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She learned when to speak.
When to smile.
When to fold her arms and let the silence cook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She learned that being Nigerian wasn\u2019t a flaw to unlearn\u2014
it was a superpower to carry with grace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She wrote her thesis.
She asked bold questions.
She submitted ideas that got rejected, rewrote them, and got cited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She let them whisper.
She let them underestimate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because that\u2019s the thing about Nigerians:
We might walk into systems not designed for us\u2026
But we walk out with the certificates, the scholarships, and the extra plantain for home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So yes, fear will come.
But the next time it shows up Loud. Well-spoken. And wearing oversized Western Wi-Fi confidence\u2014
Let it meet your NEPA-trained spirit<\/strong>.
Let it know your Tiger generator soul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We don\u2019t fear closed doors\u2014we knock louder<\/strong>.
We don\u2019t fear rejection\u2014we redirect<\/strong>.
We don\u2019t fear darkness\u2014we glow in it<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because we were not trained in comfort.
We were raised in chaos and carried by grace<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And if you must, look fear dead in the eye and say: \u201cI may have been born in the dark. But I run on charge<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yours-from-the-dark-lighting-up-with-glitters,<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my calmness I replied, \u2018You think being Nigerian is for the faint-hearted? No! It\u2019s for the naturally charged.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dear-diary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oluabikoye.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oluabikoye.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oluabikoye.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oluabikoye.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oluabikoye.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1180"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/oluabikoye.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1208,"href":"https:\/\/oluabikoye.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1180\/revisions\/1208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oluabikoye.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oluabikoye.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oluabikoye.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}