Star Zahra
I have lived several different lives within the span of one. In Nigeria, class is not a static label; it is a pendulum, and I have swung across its entire arc.
When I was born, my father, a young man in his twenties already established at the Nigerian Ports Authority as a fireman, provided a world of relative certainty. But by the time I was an older child, that certainty was gone. He retired far too early, and we quickly fell. By my teenage years, we had sunk even lower. We weren’t just poor; among the poor, we were the ones people looked down on. A teacher once told me in high school “It’s your type we don’t want here.”
Today, I find myself in the middle class again. But the view from here is not one of rest; it is one of hyper-vigilance.
In a system like ours, observing class differences is like studying the very architecture of the country. Nigeria is built with these tiers in mind; it is governed to this narrative. To study it is to understand exactly what you need to fear and exactly what is available to you. You do not, under any circumstances, want to fall below a certain mark. In Nigeria, class even though never actively mentioned, determines the quality of the air you breathe in a hospital, the curriculum your child is taught how seriously the world takes your humanity. The margins are not just wide, they are overwhelming. And currently, these margins are stretching to a breaking point.
The middle class is being hollowed out, leaving only a small elite and a massive, struggling lower class. Staying in the middle has become a frantic hassle. My electricity bills are rising simply because the neighbourhood I live in is increasingly categorized as the rich part of town. The cost of existing in the “right” place is becoming a tax on a lifestyle I can barely maintain.
Nothing illustrates this architectural divide better than healthcare in Abuja. I live near two government-owned institutions: the Federal Medical Center (FMC) and the General Hospital in Garki. The distance between them is short, but the difference is astronomical.
The FMC is organized and clean. It is smaller than the General Hospital, more expensive than public care, but cheaper than the private clinics that would bankrupt me. My family keeps a card there. We dare not lose the ability to afford the FMC. To fall back to the General Hospital, with its crushing crowds, exhausted doctors, and systemic disorganization, is a risk I am terrified to take.
But perhaps the most terrifying part of falling below the line isn’t just the lack of healthcare; it is the loss of agency. In the lower depths of the Nigerian class system, people get stuck in cycles of abuse because they simply cannot afford to leave.
Whether it is domestic violence or the silent epidemic of child abuse, poverty acts as a cage. When a woman has no financial floor, she cannot walk away from an abusive partner into a world that offers her nothing but a different kind of suffering. When a family is desperate, the safety of a child is often traded for a meal or a roof.
In Nigeria, justice and safety are luxury goods. If you cannot pay the entry fee for protection, you are often left to endure the unthinkable in silence.
It is a sobering reality to realize that for many Nigerian families, even the stress and risk of the General Hospital is a luxury they cannot afford. We have reached a point where the basics of a dignified life – stable power, organized healthcare, and the right to a life free from violence – have been rebranded as middle-class privileges.
It is a tragedy of design.
And as the middle ground disappears, more of us are finding that there is nowhere left to stand.
