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Gaya

Forget the Independence Day speeches for a minute. Forget “our great nation.” Forget “the Giant of Africa.” Forget the carefully written words about your potential and the promises that everything will be better someday.

Honestly, some of us are tired. Tired of watching people work themselves to exhaustion and still struggle to afford a decent life. Tired of watching opportunities disappear. Tired of hearing the same problems discussed year after year like they are family traditions. Tired of laughing at things that should actually make us angry.

Maybe that's why this Independence Day feels a little different: how do you celebrate a country you love while grieving the things it has taken from you? How do you stay hopeful when hope itself has started to feel like work? How do you tell Nigeria “Happy birthday” when so many of her children are wondering whether there is actually a future here for them? But then, somehow, the love is still there.

It is in the food. In the music. In the culture. In the people. In the ridiculous humour. In the stubborn belief that somehow, someday, this country can still become what it was supposed to be.

That contradiction is what these letters are about.

We asked Nigerians to write to Nigeria this Independence Day. They wrote about what they love, what they've lost, what they're angry about, what they're tired of, and what they are still hoping for.

Some of these letters are sad. Some are angry. Some are funny because Nigerians will joke through literally anything. And some are hopeful, but none of them are indifferent.

So, Nigeria, forget the speech today. Your children have something to say.

I love you. I really do. I love the way your people can turn almost anything into a joke, a business, a celebration. I love the food, the music, the stories, the stubborn hope that somehow keeps finding its way back. But sometimes, I am tired of loving you like this.

I am tired of watching people work so hard and still struggle to afford the basics. Tired of seeing brilliant young people dream about leaving because staying feels like a punishment. Tired of hearing promises that sound beautiful during campaigns and disappear when the applause is over.

I have lost things here. Time. Opportunities. Sometimes even the excitement I used to feel when I imagined my future. Yet somehow, I still hope. I hope our children inherit more than resilience. I hope they inherit functioning systems, honest leadership, safety, opportunity and a reason to stay.

Nigeria, I don’t need you to be perfect. I just want you to become the country your people have spent generations believing you could be.

Happy Independence Day.From one Nigerian who is still hoping.

Happy Independence Day(from the former Hell)!

Thank you for years of independence and a lifetime supply of character development. Thank you for teaching us that ‘power’ can mean anything except electricity, and that ₦1,000 can disappear before you even leave the house.

You’ve given us traffic, fuel queues, insecurity and inflation, but thankfully, you gave us memes to cope.

Yours in tiredness,Iwo-ati-emi

I have always loved our cultural diversity, our ability to adapt to things and happenings. But adaptation don tire me.

We need to be better. I’ve lost a whole lot because of your decayed system in all hemisphere of the country. But for strange re, I still have a flicker of hope that hasn’t waned.

So I have a question, it’s your birthday tomorrow.

I have a lot to say but, I hope and pray that someday, you do be recognized for greatness.

Thank you for making me miss out on alot of opportunities but again, thank you making me resilient, courageous and above all, thank you for making me believe in possibilities even when it doesn't feel like it is possible.

I love the food, I’m tired of our coping mechanism, it has cost me my life and youth, Everything.

I've always been a big believer of this country. I love that culture, the people and food growing up. But getting to the age where I need to start earning, I realized this country have stolen more from me that it have given.

Nigeria gives the hope that everything will be fine tomorrow and years pass by and it gets worse.

I lost hope in a lot of things already except in God and myself.

But in all, I still haven't given up on this nation.

Nigeria @ 66. I wish her potential is explored and utilized because there's so much resources enough to make us a great nation.

Hey beautiful girl. Are you surprised that I called you beautiful? Well, you are stunning, in fact. It breaks my heart that you are burdened with terrible leaders who have exploited you in every way imaginable and refused to invest in your children.

Today, your children work so hard, brutally hard, yet the results rarely match their efforts. Leaving for other nations, places not even half as blessed or beautiful as you, has now become a constant prayer point. It is truly heartbreaking to watch.

Still, despite it all, I refuse to give up on you. I hold firm to the hope that you will yet rise to become the true Giant of Africa you were always meant to be. May brighter days come for you, for your children, and for generations to come.

Hi Nigeria, I hate the fact that you've been long governed in a most unpleasant manner. Half the time, I'm Pan Africanist, the other half, I'm reeling from the pain of having my youth wasted by a country most dear to my heart, because I can't help but wonder how unpatriotic one must be to let another dictate how much disdain with which you can treat your kin...

I have a simple question...

“Nigeria, what exactly must we do to make this country fit for humans to live in?”

Davyd's is the hardest letter of them all. After all the anger. After the disappointment. After the jokes. After everything Nigerians have had to explain, endure and adapt to, what else is there to say?

Maybe those three dots hold everything we couldn't fit into a letter. The frustration. The grief. The exhaustion. The love. The things we've lost. The things we are still waiting for. The things we have become too tired to keep asking for.

If we had to say it anyway, this is what we want.

We want a country where your children can live, not just survive. We want safety. We want functioning hospitals and schools. We want reliable electricity, good roads, decent jobs and public systems that work without making ordinary life feel like a daily battle. We want to work hard and actually have something to show for it. We want to earn enough to afford a home, feed ourselves, take care of the people we love and still have a life outside of trying to survive.

We want young people to dream about their lives here without automatically following the dream with, “I need to leave Nigeria.” We want leaving to be a choice, not an escape plan. We want to build businesses, careers, families and communities without constantly having to calculate whether this country will make it impossible. We want our children to inherit more than resilience.

Resilience is beautiful, but it should not be the only thing a country teaches its people. We want them to inherit stability. Opportunity. Safety. Dignity. We want them to know what it feels like to grow up in a country that gives them reasons to believe in their future.

Maybe that is what all these letters are really saying. We are not asking for perfection. We are asking for a country that works.

A country where the basics are not luxuries. Where being young does not feel like something you have to survive before your actual life can begin. Where being Nigerian does not automatically mean becoming an expert at adapting to things that should never have been normal in the first place.

We want to be able to stay.&nbsp;We want to be able to return.&nbsp;We want to be able to believe, and we want the hope that has kept generations of Nigerians going to finally have something real to hold on to.

So, on your birthday, Nigeria, this is what we wish for you. Not another beautiful speech. Not another promise that things will get better someday.

We wish you a future where your children can look around and see something worth building, something worth protecting, something worth staying for. We wish you a country that gives back some of what its people have spent generations giving to it. We wish you a country where our children inherit more than stories of how hard their parents had to fight to survive. We wish you a country they can simply live in.

Happy Independence Day, Nigeria. Your children are tired, but they are still here. Give them something to stay for.

If Nigeria were a person sitting across from you, what would you say? This Independence Day, young Nigerians are writing the letters they’ve been meaning to send.

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