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| Photo by Ssenyondo Gabriel on Unsplash |
By 7:15 that morning, Daniel was already running late.
His alarm had gone off twice before he finally got out of bed. From the kitchen came the sound of plates and his wife's voice reminding the children to hurry.
“Daniel, you said you would leave early today.”
“I know.”
He reached for his phone from the bedside table. Several WhatsApp messages were waiting for him. He replied to one, opened his status updates, and began scrolling before getting dressed.
Then he saw the video.
A campaign vehicle was moving slowly through a crowd. Bread was being thrown from the back. At first, Daniel thought it was another campaign video he could ignore.
Then he saw the crowd move.
People rushed towards the vehicle. A man stretched both hands into the air. Another bent down to pick up a loaf that had fallen on the road. Someone pushed forward. A woman reached across another person's shoulder.
Then Daniel noticed a child in the middle of the crowd, stretching a small hand between adults.
He stopped scrolling.
He watched the video to the end. Then he replayed it. There was something about the way people were reaching for the bread that stayed with him.
They weren't standing in a queue. They weren't receiving food one person at a time. They were scrambling for whatever they could get.
Daniel locked his phone.
“Breakfast is ready,” his wife called. He got dressed and joined his family at the table. His daughter was already eating.
“Daddy, don't forget my chocolate when you are coming back.”
Daniel smiled.
“I won't forget.”
He picked up his bag and left.
He did not know that by evening, he would understand that video differently.
The day moved as usual.
Work.
Calls.
Messages.
Traffic.
Small expenses that seemed insignificant on their own but somehow kept adding up. By the time Daniel was to leave work, he stopped at a shop.
He stood in front of the shelves for a few seconds, comparing prices. He picked up one item. Put it back. Picked up another.
Then he remembered his daughter's chocolate.
He picked it up.
It was not expensive. But Daniel had started noticing how often he now had to think twice about things that once required no thought at all.
He paid and got into his car. The traffic had already begun to build. By 6:10 p.m., the road had barely moved. Daniel rested his hand on the steering wheel and looked ahead.
Then he saw them.
Seven young men were moving between the cars. One approached his window. “Chairman, settle us.”
Daniel looked at him.
“For what?”
The man smiled. “Just give us something joor.”
Daniel shook his head.
“I don't have money.”
The man's eyes moved towards the car. Then back to Daniel. “You don't have money with this kind of car?”
Daniel looked at his car. It was not new. It was not a luxury car. It was simply the car he had worked for and tried to maintain. But explaining that would not change anything.
“Please, let me pass.”
“Oga bring something first.”
“I said I don't have money.”
The smile disappeared. A hand landed heavily on the bonnet.
Bang.
Daniel's body stiffened. Another man came towards his window.
“Bring the money.”
Daniel looked ahead. Cars were trapped behind him. There was nowhere to move. A driver behind him shouted: “Just give them and move!”
Daniel hated hearing it. But he understood why the man said it.
This was no longer about ₦1000 or ₦5000. It was about what might happen if he refused. Another blow landed on the car. Daniel reached for his wallet. He took out some money and handed it over.
The men moved aside.
The road opened.
Daniel drove.
He did not look back.
For the next few minutes, he said nothing. The radio remained off.
His wallet lay beside him. He looked at it when he stopped at the next traffic light. The money was gone. It wasn't enough to ruin him. But it was money he had not planned to spend. Money that could have gone towards fuel. Food. Something for the children. Maybe the chocolate he had just bought. But that wasn't what bothered him most.
It was the fact that he had not given it because he wanted to. He had given it because he was afraid of what would happen if he refused. He had chosen safety over resistance. And somehow, that felt worse than losing the money.
When Daniel got home, his daughter ran towards him.
“Daddy!”
He handed her the chocolate.
Her face lit up.
“Thank you!”
She ran inside. Daniel smiled after her. Then he walked towards the car. There were marks on the bonnet. He touched it. And suddenly, the morning came back to him.
The bread.
The crowd.
The hands.
He stood there for a moment. That morning, he had watched people reaching for food. That evening, he had watched people demand money.
The situations were not the same.
The people were not the same.
And Daniel did not know enough about any of them to pretend otherwise. But he could not ignore what both moments had made him feel.
A kind of desperation.
Different forms of it. Different consequences.
But desperation all the same. He thought about the people in the video. Maybe someone had children waiting at home. Maybe someone had not eaten. Maybe someone simply wanted to take whatever they could get.
He did not know. But he knew what it looked like when people had to scramble for something as basic as food. He thought about the men on the road. Maybe they were struggling too. Maybe they had no stable income. Maybe they had become so used to asking motorists for money that they no longer saw anything wrong with blocking a road to get it.
Daniel could understand that hardship could push people into desperate choices. But understanding desperation did not mean excusing intimidation.
That was when he began to see the problem differently.
It was not simply about food prices.
It was not simply about transport fares.
It was not simply about people asking for money.
It was about what prolonged economic pressure could begin to do to the way people treated themselves and one another.
We often talk about the rising cost of living through numbers.
Inflation.
Food prices.
Fuel prices.
Transport fares.
Rent.
School fees.
But numbers cannot show what happens to people when ordinary life becomes increasingly difficult to afford. They cannot show a person stretching their hands into a crowd because they do not want to return home empty-handed. They cannot show a driver handing over money he does not want to give because he is afraid of what refusing might cost him.
They cannot show shame.
Fear.
Frustration.
Anger.
Or the gradual process of becoming accustomed to all of it.
And perhaps that is the part we should be paying closer attention to. Because hardship does not always announce itself as hunger. Sometimes it appears as desperation. Sometimes aggression. Sometimes as humiliation. Sometimes as entitlement. And sometimes, it appears in the quiet decision to accept something you would never have accepted before because you simply cannot afford the consequences of saying no.
Daniel went inside and sat at the dining table.
His daughter was still talking about the chocolate.
He listened.
He smiled.
But his mind was elsewhere. He thought about how quickly the morning video would disappear. It would trend. People would comment. Some would laugh. Some would blame the politicians. Some would blame the people in the crowd. Some would say they were only trying to survive.
Then another video would appear.
Another crowd.
Another confrontation.
Another person being humiliated.
Another person being forced to choose between dignity and survival.
And everyone would move on.
Daniel picked up his phone. The bread video was still there. He watched it again.
This time, he didn't look at the campaign vehicle. He didn't look at the politician. He looked at the people. At the hands. At the urgency. At how quickly the crowd had turned into a struggle over something as ordinary as bread.
Then he thought about the road. About the hand striking his bonnet. About his own hand reaching into his wallet.
Two completely different situations. Yet both had left him with the same uncomfortable question:
What happens when dignity becomes something people have to negotiate just to get through the day?
Daniel had always thought of the cost of living as the price of things.
How much food costs. How much fuel costs. How much transport costs. How much money remained after the bills were paid.
He had never considered that dignity could have a cost too.
But perhaps it did.
The cost of reaching for food in a crowd. The cost of accepting humiliation because you need help. The cost of giving up your money because refusing feels unsafe. The cost of becoming so familiar with these scenes that they no longer shock you.
That last one frightened him most. Because once humiliation becomes normal, people stop asking why it is happening. They simply learn how to survive it.
Daniel looked towards the room where his children were playing.
He thought about the kind of country they were growing up in. A country where people should be able to work and afford food without waiting for a political rally. Where people should be able to move through public roads without being forced to pay unofficial fees. Where asking for help should not require humiliation. Where desperation should not become an excuse for violence. And where having a little more should not automatically make someone a target.
The problem is bigger than one politician throwing bread. It is bigger than a group of louts stopping cars. It is bigger than one viral video. These moments are symptoms of a deeper economic and social strain.
When people cannot reliably meet basic needs, survival begins to reshape behaviour. And when society becomes accustomed to seeing people survive through humiliation, coercion or desperation, something more than money is being lost.
We begin to lose our sense of what people deserve.
Daniel looked at the marks on his bonnet again. It could be repaired. The money could be replaced. But he wondered how many people had gone through something similar and simply accepted it as part of life. How many had been forced to choose between speaking up and staying safe? How many had gone home embarrassed because they had scrambled for food? How many had stopped expecting better?
And how many more would experience the same thing tomorrow?
Perhaps the greatest danger is not only that people are struggling to survive. Perhaps it is that we are slowly becoming comfortable with what survival is asking them to surrender. Because the cost of living is not only what we pay for the things we need. Sometimes, it is what we are forced to give up to get them.
***
At Shades of Us, we believe development cannot be reduced to economic figures, policies or programmes while ignoring what those realities look like in people's everyday lives. The way people eat, move, work, seek help and interact with one another tells us something about the conditions in which they are living.
When a person has to scramble for food, the question should not end with whether they got something to eat. We should also ask what made that form of survival necessary. When a motorist is forced to hand over money before being allowed to pass, the issue is not simply the amount lost. It raises questions about safety, livelihoods, public spaces, enforcement and the pressures that allow desperation and intimidation to coexist.
Development should create conditions in which people can meet their basic needs without having to surrender their dignity in the process. It should mean access to decent livelihoods, affordable necessities, safe public spaces and systems that protect people rather than leave them to negotiate survival on their own.
Because people deserve more than survival. They deserve to survive without being made to feel less human for needing to.
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