An honest little conversation about masculinity, image, pressure, and the exhausting business of proving you are a man.
I have a question. Actually, I have several, and I promise I am asking them because I genuinely want to understand.
Nigerian men, who are you performing for?
Who is sitting in the audience?
Who is keeping score?
Because sometimes I watch the things some men do, the things they buy, the way they speak, the pressure they put themselves under, the way they compete with one another, and I find myself wondering:
Who exactly are you trying to impress?
Is it the woman?
Your friends?
Your father?
Your mother?
The men in your neighborhood?
The men on Instagram?
The man you think you are supposed to become?
Or perhaps the little boy inside you who was told very early that a real man must never look weak?
I am genuinely curious. Because I think there is a performance happening around Nigerian masculinity that many men are participating in without ever stopping to ask whether they actually want the role they are playing.
Take money.
A man earns ₦1 million. Suddenly, there is pressure to look like he earns ₦10 million.
The car must communicate something.
The clothes must communicate something.
The restaurant must communicate something.
The wedding must communicate something.
The house must communicate something.
Even the bottle of drink on the table must apparently have a résumé. I understand the positive side of this. There is something beautiful about ambition.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to provide, nothing wrong with wanting your family to be comfortable, and nothing wrong with wanting to build wealth, dress well, drive a good car, own a beautiful home or become successful. Please, by all means…Build…Grow…Win.
I am not asking Nigerian men to become monks, but sometimes I wonder whether we have confused success with the appearance of success.
Those are not the same thing. A man can be genuinely wealthy and quiet, while another can be deeply in debt and extremely loud. One has assets, and the other has evidence of spending. One is building, while the other is performing. And social media has made this particularly interesting, because now everybody has an audience.
You can wake up, put on a designer shirt, sit inside a rented car, take a photograph and suddenly the internet knows that “my brother is doing well.”
Meanwhile, the bank knows the truth.
The landlord knows the truth.
The credit card knows the truth.
And perhaps the man himself knows the truth at 2 a.m. when the performance ends and he is alone with his thoughts.
So I wonder: What happens when the performance becomes more expensive than the life you’re trying to live?
Because eventually somebody has to pay for it, and sometimes that person is the man himself.
Sometimes it is his wife.
Sometimes it is his children.
Sometimes it is his parents.
Sometimes it is the future he sacrificed because he was too busy proving something to the present.
And then there is the performance of toughness. This one fascinates me.
Why must everything be strength?
Why must every emotion be swallowed?
Why is vulnerability treated like a contagious disease?
A man is struggling.
“Man up.”
A man is grieving.
“Be strong.”
A man is overwhelmed.
“You’re a man.”
A man needs help.
“Don’t let people see you weak.”
But what exactly are we protecting? And from whom?
Because if being a man means you must never admit that you are afraid, confused, tired, hurt or overwhelmed, then Nigerian men are being asked to perform an extraordinary amount of emotional theatre, and theatre is exhausting.
I wonder whether some men have been taught to confuse emotional silence with emotional strength. But silence is not necessarily strength. Sometimes silence is simply pain with nowhere to go, and perhaps this is one reason some men struggle to communicate in relationships.
How do you say: “I am scared”
when your entire childhood taught you that fear makes you less of a man?
How do you say: “I don’t know what to do”
when everybody expects you to have the answer?
How do you say: “I need help”
when asking for help feels like surrender?
How do you tell your wife: “I am struggling financially”
when you have spent the last five years building an image of the man who has everything under control?
Eventually, something has to give, and sometimes it is the marriage.
Sometimes it is the bank account.
Sometimes it is the man’s mental and emotional wellbeing.
Sometimes it is all three.
Then there is the performance of being “the man of the house.”
I understand the cultural meaning, I really do.
Leadership can be beautiful.
Responsibility can be beautiful.
Providing can be beautiful.
Protecting your family can be beautiful.
But I have always wondered why some men interpret leadership as having the final word on everything, because leadership is not the same thing as dictatorship.
If you are the leader of a family, shouldn’t you be the person most concerned about the wellbeing of everyone in that family?
Shouldn’t leadership require listening?
Shouldn’t it require accountability?
Shouldn’t it require humility?
A captain doesn’t prove he is captain by drowning the passengers. His job is to get everyone safely across.
Perhaps marriage is not supposed to be a competition between two people trying to establish who has more authority. Perhaps it is two adults trying to build a life.
This brings me to women. I wonder how much of this performance is actually about impressing women, because sometimes Nigerian men behave as though women are constantly sitting around with clipboards, grading their masculinity.
“Let’s see…”
“House?”
“Car?”
“Money?”
“Height?”
“Connections?”
“Can fight?”
“Can drink?”
“Can provide?”
“Good family?”
“Excellent. Nine out of ten.”
But women are not one giant committee. Women are different. Some women want wealth, some want peace, some want ambition, some want companionship, some want a provider, some want a partner, and some want all of the above.
Some want to build together. Some want a traditional marriage while some don’t. Perhaps the healthier thing is to find the woman whose understanding of marriage actually aligns with yours instead of performing masculinity until someone approves your application. Because what happens after she says yes?
The performance has to continue, and marriage is a very long stage. You cannot spend thirty years acting. Eventually, the actor gets tired, and the audience starts noticing the cracks.
I also wonder about male friendships. Why are some men unable to tell their friends: “I am not doing well”?
Why must every gathering become a subtle competition?
Who bought the car?
Who got married first?
Whose wife is finer?
Who has more money?
Who travelled where?
Whose child attends the more expensive school?
Who has the bigger house?
Who knows the more important politician?
Who is “making it”?
At what point does friendship become an annual shareholders’ meeting? Maybe men need friendships where nobody is performing. Where you can sit down and say:
“Brother, I am tired.”
And nobody laughs.
“I am broke.”
And nobody mocks you.
“My marriage is struggling.”
And nobody turns it into gossip.
“I don’t know what I’m doing.”
And somebody says:
“Neither do I. Let’s figure it out.”
Imagine that.
A friendship where you don’t have to arrive with evidence of success.
A friendship where your worth isn’t measured by what you can afford.
A friendship where you can be human.
Perhaps that is the performance I would most like Nigerian men to retire from: the performance of having everything figured out.
Because nobody does. Some people are simply better at hiding the confusion.
I think there is another positive side to masculine performance that we shouldn’t ignore. Sometimes the desire to provide pushes men to achieve extraordinary things.
A man who knows people depend on him may work harder.
A father may sacrifice enormously for his children.
A husband may endure difficult circumstances because he wants his family protected.
A young man may look at his parents’ struggles and decide: “My children will not experience this.”
That kind of responsibility can be powerful.
It can create discipline.
It can create ambition.
It can create resilience.
It can make men build businesses, learn skills, take risks and pursue opportunities they might otherwise never have pursued.
So I am not saying: “Stop trying.”
I am asking: “Who are you trying for?”
There is a difference.
Build because you want to build.
Provide because you value providing.
Lead because you know how to lead.
Protect because you love.
Succeed because you have something meaningful you want to accomplish. Not because another man bought a car, not because your former classmate posted a photograph from Dubai, not because your girlfriend’s friend’s boyfriend just bought a house, and not because X (formerly Twitter) has decided that a “real man” must have achieved twelve things by thirty.
Your life is not a group assignment. You don’t need to submit it for marking.
Perhaps Nigerian men need permission to redefine success.
What if success is not just: “I can provide everything.”
What if it is: “I can provide without destroying myself.”
What if leadership means: “My family can disagree with me and still feel safe.”
What if strength means: “I can admit when I am wrong.”
What if masculinity means: “I can love without controlling.”
What if being a provider means: “I don’t use what I provide as a weapon.”
What if being a husband means:
“I am building a life with someone, not acquiring someone to complete my life.”
What if being a father means:
“My children know me not only as the man who paid the bills, but as the man who listened.”
And perhaps most importantly:
What if being a Nigerian man does not require you to prove anything to anybody?
Maybe you can simply become a good man. Quietly, without the noise, without the competition, without the endless comparison, and without the need to convince strangers that you have arrived.
Because the truth is, I don’t think most women need Nigerian men to be superheroes. I think many women simply want men who are honest.
Men who know themselves.
Men who communicate.
Men who take responsibility.
Men who can provide but also receive.
Men who can lead but also listen.
Men who can be strong without making everyone else feel small.
Men who can say:
“I don’t know.”
“I was wrong.”
“I need help.”
“I’m afraid.”
“I love you.”
“I am proud of you.”
And perhaps most revolutionary of all:
“What do you want?”
And actually wait for the answer.
So, Nigerian men, I return to my original question.
Who are you performing for?
Because if the audience disappears tomorrow, who will you be? If nobody is watching the car, the house, the clothes, the wedding, the money, the toughness, the connections and the carefully constructed image…
What remains?
I hope it is a man who likes himself.
A man who knows his values.
A man who has built something real.
A man whose wife does not need to be afraid of him to respect him.
A man whose children do not need to pretend around him.
A man whose friends can call him when life falls apart.
A man who does not need an audience to know that he is enough.
Maybe that is the performance worth giving up. Not masculinity, not ambition, not leadership, just the exhausting need to prove them.
Anyway, I think Nigerian men are capable of much more than the performance we’ve handed them. Perhaps we should give them permission to be human, and perhaps they should give themselves permission too.