By Ebuka Ukoh
Valentine’s Day arrives each year, wrapped in red. Roses. Chocolates. Candlelit dinners. Carefully curated photos. Public displays of affection. The scripts are familiar.
This year, however, many Nigerians are too tired for scripts. By Valentine’s Day, many are already emotionally exhausted from simply trying to survive January.
You see it in the faces at busstops…in the silence of people staring into their phones…and the patience people must summon to get through a normal day. As many now say quietly, “ebi n pa wa” [meaning, we’re hungry]
has become a buzzword across Nigeria. The cost of food. The cost of transport. The cost of simply existing. Life in Nigeria already demands emotional strength before romance even enters the picture.
In a country where survival feels like a daily negotiation, love must mean more than gifts. It must mean gentleness, which itself has become rare.
We live in a society where everyone is carrying something heavy.
The trader worried about tomorrow’s prices. The father is calculating children’s school fees against the rent. The mother is managing a home under quite stressful conditions. The graduate is navigating unemployment with a forced smile. The civil servant stretching a salary that no longer stretches.
Yet, we move through each other carelessly. Sharp words. Impatience. Insensitivity. Harshness. We add to burdens we cannot see.
This Valentine’s Day asks a different question. Not who you are loving, but how you are loving?
Love in a hard country
Love looks like patience in traffic when tempers rise. It’s like fairness in business when you could exploit it. It’s like courtesy in public spaces where rudeness has become normal. It looks like an emotional presence in families where everyone is tired, but nobody says it out loud.
It looks like choosing not to make someone else’s life hard. It’s like the quiet virtues we often overlook because they are not dramatic. Love. Joy. Peace. Patience. Kindness. Goodness. Faithfulness. Gentleness. Self-control. These are not soft ideas. They are survival tools in a society under pressure.
Love becomes the choice to care when you are tired.
Joy becomes the refusal to let hardship steal your light.
Peace becomes the discipline of not passing your frustration to the next person.
Patience becomes the grace you extend in queues, traffic, and conversations.
Kindness becomes the language you speak when the world is already harsh.
Goodness becomes honesty when dishonesty is easier.
Faithfulness becomes showing up for people when you could withdraw.
Gentleness becomes strength in a place where aggression is commonplace. Self-control becomes the decision not to add to the emotional weight others are already carrying.
We have been trained to think of love as romance. But in Nigeria today, love must become a responsibility. Love is how you speak kindly to the cashier who has been standing all day. Love is how you treat the police officer at a checkpoint who is also battling the same difficult system you are. Love is how you listen to a friend who is quietly struggling. Love is how you give someone the dignity of being seen.
This is not sentimental. It is necessary.
A society does not collapse only from big failures. It collapses from small daily cruelties that accumulate. And it heals from small daily kindnesses that multiply.
If you look closely, you will see Nigerians already practising this kind of love. The neighbour who shares fuel during scarcity. The stranger who helps push a stalled car. The woman who feeds a child not hers. I saw these moments many times growing up in Lagos. These are not romantic gestures. They are acts of social love. They are what keep the country breathing.
A chance to make loving acts deliberate
To slow down. To notice people. To remember that everyone you meet is fighting something you cannot see. To choose softness where hardness would be easier, because gentleness in a harsh environment is not a weakness. It is resistance.
It is how we protect one another from the emotional erosion that daily life brings.
In homes, this matters even more. Many families are carrying stress without a language for it. Children feel tension. Spouses feel distant. Everyone is trying to hold things together without admitting how tired they are. Love, this Valentine’s Day, might simply mean sitting down and asking, “Are you okay?” and waiting patiently for the real answer, not the politically correct one.
In workplaces, love might mean mentoring instead of mocking. In markets, it might mean honesty in measurement. On the roads, it might mean giving way instead of competing.
These things sound small. They are not. They shape the emotional climate of a nation.
We often ask what is wrong with Nigeria. We point to policy, leadership, corruption, and insecurity. Those things matter, but there is another layer: How Nigerians treat Nigerians every day. A country where people are kind to one another is harder to break.
This Valentine’s Day, the most meaningful gift may not be what you buy. It may be how you behave, because in a country where life is already difficult, the greatest act of love is choosing not to make it harder for anyone else.
Love, this year, is not performance. It is posture. If enough of us choose that posture, we may discover that the healing Nigeria needs will not start in government offices. It will begin with how we treat the person standing next to us. And on this note, may you find the courage to love gently in a hard country. Happy Valentine’s Day!
Mr Ukoh, an alumnus of the American University of Nigeria, Yola, and PhD student at Columbia University, writes from New York.
