From Potholes to Power Cuts: How Prayer Fuels Daily Survival in Nigeria

I once met a foreigner who prayed for peace and wisdom. I nodded, hiding my own list of prayers. In Nigeria, we pray before sleep and again on waking. We pray the sleep itself wasn’t a rehearsal for death. While others pray for promotions, we pray to reach our destinations alive. A mother abroad may pray for her child’s confidence in school. Here, she prays the school bus won’t forget her child by the roadside or that the teacher won’t beat madness into her son. Our prayer points cover security, economy, health, transport and even generators. We pray for doctors and fuel in hospital generators. We anoint our buses against accidents, kidnappers and ritualists. Travel here runs on prayer and second-hand spare parts. We blame government, yet we also fuel the cycle ourselves—praying against corruption while collecting bribes. We spend more time praying for disasters we create. Maybe God is asking what we actually do after praying. Still, every morning we pray again, because surviving in this country often feels supernatural.

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