Let me paint a picture for you. Mr and Mrs Johnson have been married for 10 years.
God has been good to them. They have two kids, a boy and a girl. Mr Johnson works for one of the telcos and takes home over half a million Naira home per month. His wife works in one of the new gen banks and pulls a decent six-figure salary.
Their children attend a private school in Ikeja. After school, the kids are picked up by Mr Johnson's driver. On Sundays, the Johnsons attend church, a swanky, millennial church. This summer holiday, the Johnsons went to Dubai with their kids.
The Johnsons are your typical middle-class family, ambitious, church-going and seem structured.
The Johnsons aren't perfect you see. They have a female domestic servant who is under the age of 18. They got her from a woman whose job is to provide families with domestic servants.
At the end of each month, they send an amount of money to their domestic servant's family.
Now, in the Johnson household, this domestic servant wakes up 5 am every day to clean the house and get the kids ready for school. After doing all of this, she gets ready for school too, a good for nothing public secondary school, a couple of streets away from Johnson's residence.
After school, she has to dash back home to prepare what the kids will eat for lunch. After lunch, she washes their clothes and gets ready to make dinner.
And speaking of food, the domestic servant does not eat the same food with the family. Last time she did it, Mrs Johnson almost beat the life out of her.
While the kids in the house wear brand new clothes, the domestic servant wears second-hand rags from bend down boutiques on the street.
The only time the domestic servant wears anything decent is on Sunday when the family goes to church. You wouldn't even tell she is a domestic servant under the age of 18 who works 19 hours every day.
When the family goes out she is left behind at home and she dares not put on the television.
The Johnsons used to go the Ikeja City Mall but have since stopped since their trip to Dubai. Mr and Mrs Johnson think that malls on the mainland are for local people. They laugh at poor families who take their children to the mall to ride on escalators because that's the only thing they can afford.
When it comes to politics, the Johnsons are very active...on Twitter. They tweet all the trendy hashtags and rail against important things like the high price of DSTV services.
When it comes to making a stance, they lock themselves in their three-bedroom apartment and watch Netflix.
You see the Johnsons are your typical middle-class Nigerians. They do not participate in politics but complain the most about the state of the country. While they moan and groan, the lower-class Nigerians go for conventions and rallies, and the upper class call the shots and run office.
They scream for social justice but employ minors to work as slaves in their homes.
Middle-class Nigerians are snubs and faux-elites. They get quite upset when 'razz' Nigerians fill up the mall and can't stop talking about how posh the malls are in Dubai.
They tend to live like one-percenters from other parts of the world, employing drivers and domestic servants but grumble when it is time to pay tax.
The middle class in Nigeria is a wailing machine, it complains about everything but refuses to stand up for something. It is a hypocritical group that wants all the benefits of socialism and capitalism as well.
The sad part about the middle class in Nigeria is that all it takes is one disaster (financial or health-wise) to slip back into the lower rungs of society.
If after reading this, you realize you are just like the Johnsons, you belong to the class of Nigerians holding this country back.
from Pulse Ghana Pulse Nigeria - Nigeria
from LexxyTech Corporation http://bit.ly/2EQIGdL
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