Nuclear World War 3: Nigeria Part 1
The Day the “Big Grammar” Ended
I reckon if the Almighty intended for the world to end with a whimper, He hadn’t accounted for the sheer, stubborn noise of a Benin City Bside ! Third ! East Circular That is ! WE Strong pass Ogbe Boys
It was a Tuesday, or maybe a Wednesday—time gets slippery when the horizon turns the color of a bruised mango and stays that way. The news had been full of “preemptive strikes” and “tactical escalations,” the kind of big grammar that white men use right before they do something remarkably stupid. Then, the satellites went blind, the internet caught a fever and died, and the Great Powers—America, Russia, China, and the rest of the gang—decided to turn the Northern Hemisphere into a giant, glowing charcoal grill.
Up there, they say the cities turned to glass in a heartbeat Everywhere no Soft at all . But down here on 3rd East Circular, the only thing that shattered was my neighbor’s ceramic “Mama Akhere 101 Years Burial Obito Cup ” when the shockwave hit. Iye I hail o !
My name is Frank Adeche Obaze. I was sitting on my balcony, nursing a cold Star lager Shine Shine Bobo wey we collect for Club Yester night that was rapidly becoming a warm Star lager, when the sky did a somersault. A flash of light, brighter than a thousand welding torches, blinked somewhere far to the north. A few minutes later, a wind came howling through the street—not a cool breeze, but a hot, dusty breath that smelled like burnt copper and old sins.
“FrankO !” my neighbor, Mama Efe, yelled from her window. “Jesus Don Come ? Na the Second Coming? Wod Wod teeree Don start ( pronounced exactly )” Mama Efe Never Went To School but she kept abreast of All News Both External and Domestic from her FM Radio always tuned to BBC
“Mama No O noe be Baba God Na Dem Don Start for The Abroad ,” I called back, watching a plastic bag spiral into the purple sky. “I reckon it’s just the white man finally finishing his homework afetr all their 1 month tok toki dey talk upandan like 2 youruba bus conductor wey wan fight but dey set blow since 5hrs . we sef come taya (tired ) Iran no gree Drop bomb . Russia sef dey fear shuo ! So e be like say dem don vex na .”
You see, the world was ending we all knew it somehow , but on 3rd East Circular—a place where the potholes are deep enough to bury a small politician and the police only show up if there’s a bribe or a riot—life didn’t skip a beat. While the average Earthling in London or New York was currently dissolving into radioactive dust because their smart-fridge stopped telling them how to breathe, we Nigerians were just getting started.
Here are the tenTen reasons why we’re still standing while the “civilized” world is a Global puddle of Glass . like Tweety used to say I tawt i saw a Puddy Tat Na Dat Yawa Psycho Kolo ooo Putin Total “Were” @ Nut Job wey dey russia . Leave Ukraine Alone e nor gree Naim Dat Short Man Zelensky Release one last Nuclear Bomb wey dem find for inside Old World War 2 Bunker ..
1. We’ve Been Living “Off-Grid” Since 1960
The Americans are panicking because their “Grid” is down. Down here, the Grid is a myth, like mermaids or an honest workman contractor. We haven’t had steady NEPA light since the disco era for 1971 and we know we still wont Until Jesus Comes or Persin Kpai ! When the first electromagnetic pulse fried every transformer on Earth, the Nigerian people just shrugged, pulled the starter rope on their “I-Better-Pass-My-Neighbor” generators, and went back to watching pirated movies wey we dey download from all those websites for China but china no dey exist again . You can’t kill the Nigeria power system that was never alive to begin with.
2. The Great Captivity of the Corrupt
This is the funniest bit. For years, our leaders flew to London for headaches and stashed our billions in Swiss vaults. But when the bombs fell, the runways in Heathrow turned into soup. Our “Big Men” are stuck right here in the dust with us. I saw a Senator yesterday—the same one who stole the local road budget—trying to fetch water from a borehole with a Gucci bucket. He was crying. I told him to keep his head down; the radiation likes shiny things, and his forehead is particularly reflective. For the first time, they have to fix this country, because there’s nowhere else to run.
3. The Pothole Defense
Any invading force or relief army would have to navigate 3rd East Circular. Between the craters and the abandoned Peugeot 404 504 tuke tuke danfo carcasses wey we don line for street dey wait weda na Ghana or South Africa go come attack us or even Ogbe Boys we no even know again . Cos Bucket and Aiye display last week on top World War 3 matter 2 of my friends fall sef . Na So o World War 3 dey come Confra still dey bloody dem sef , So a nuclear winter is nothing. If a Russian tank tried to roll down my street, it would be stripped for spare parts by the local boys before the commander could say “Cyka Blyat.”
4. Our Stomachs are Battle-Hardened
In the West, people die if their vegetable or eggs isn’t organic. In Benin City, we eat things that would make a vulture gag and throw up . We’ve survived on “0-0-1” feeding formulas and street-side suya of questionable origin for decades. A little bit of radioactive fallout in the cassava? That’s just extra seasoning. Jarra make e sweet well well see this Star wey i dey drink i sure say e don expire sef
5. We Don’t Trust the News Anyway
When the sirens (which we don’t have) didn’t go off, we didn’t wait for the government to tell us what to do. We knew the government was lying even when the sun was shining. While the “average Earthling” was waiting for a BBC broadcast to tell them to evacuate, Me and my Area Boys Chuks dem we already hoarding fuel and sharpening cutlass plus my police shiny . Osaro sef get 2 Locally Made So We Bam and Bone Thugs 2Face and Davido Dey Play at the same time for the area for loud speaker as people dey wait to kpai from Nuclear Bomb
6. The “Agbero” Survival Instinct
The local street toughs—the Agberos—are basically pre-adapted for a post-apocalyptic wasteland. They already dress like extras from Mad Max and have a sophisticated system of “taxation” (extortion) that functions perfectly without a central bank.
7. Heat is Our Natural Habit
They say a “Nuclear Winter” is coming. To a man who has spent February in Benin City with no fan and a zinc roof, a global cooling trend sounds like a blessing from the Almighty.
8. The Pharmacy of the Forest
With the global supply chains gone, the West has no Aspirin. We have Agbo. It tastes like a goat’s armpit and cures everything from malaria to a broken heart. I reckon it’ll handle radiation sickness just fine, or at least make you too distracted by the taste to care about your hair falling out.
9. Communal Chaos
In America, they hide in bunkers with guns, waiting to shoot their neighbors for a can of beans. Here, we’re too loud to hide. We argue, we fight, but we share the well. You can’t survive aจบโลก (end of the world) alone, and Nigerians are never, ever alone.
10. Pure, Unadulterated “Shakara”
Even with a purple sky and the smell of ozone, a Nigerian man will still iron his shirt using a charcoal iron and walk down the street like he owns the planet. We have a certain “style” that radiation can’t touch.
I watched the Senator struggle with his Gucci bucket for a while longer, then I went inside. The sky was getting darker, a deep, sickly violet that made the palm trees look like skeletons.
“Frank!” Mama Efe called out again. “The radio says the American President is hiding in a mountain!”
“Let him stay there, Ma!” I yelled back, lighting a kerosene lamp. “He’s got the mountain, but we’ve got the street. And I reckon the street is going to last a lot longer.”
I sat down, opened a tin of sardines, and started planning. Part one was over—the world had ended. Now came the hard part: making sure the survivors didn’t make the same mess the dead ones did.
10 Reasons Nigerians Would Survive More Than the Average Earthling
Well, I’ll be switched if this ain’t the dangdest thing that ever happened since the world began turning. My name is Frank Adeche, and I live on 3rd East Circular, Benin City – the part where the gutters run red after every rain and the boys know every shortcut better than the police know their own mothers. They say it’s like South Central Los Angeles, only we got more okadas and less Hollywood. I was twenty-seven, no steady job but plenty of sense, the kind that keeps a man breathing when smarter fellows are lying in the mortuary. That Tuesday afternoon the sky was the colour of dirty brass and the generator across the street was coughing like an old man with TB. I was sitting on an upturned beer crate outside Mama Nkechi’s buka, sharing warm Star with my paddy Chuks, when the radio inside let out a screech that made every goat in the compound jump.
“World leaders confirm – it was a mistake! One single mistake!”
The voice on the BBC Hausa service was shaking so hard you could hear the sweat. Some fool in a bunker somewhere – nobody ever said which of the nine – thought the other side had already pushed the button. China, Russia, America, Israel, Britain, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea – all nine of them, plus every poor cousin that ever shook their hand – they lit the whole sky on fire in one big Mexican standoff bomb-out shoot-out. Phew! Missiles crossing like angry bees. New York melted in a single flash. London turned to glass. Beijing became a lake of fire. Moscow, Paris, Delhi, Tel Aviv, Islamabad, Pyongyang – gone, every last one. The pictures came for maybe eight minutes before the satellites died: whole cities blooming into orange mushrooms, cars fusing into the tarmac with drivers still inside, rivers boiling, people running with their skin sliding off their bones like wet clothes. Gory? Brother, it was the kind of gory that makes a man laugh so he don’t cry.
But not one warhead fell on Nigeria.
The streets of 3rd East Circular went mad in about thirty seconds. Women started screaming “Rapture! Rapture!” and running with their wrappers flying. Area boys smashed the Pure Water factory and began selling sachets at five hundred naira each. One big man from GRA tried to drive his Range Rover through the crowd, horn blaring, until the boys rocked it so hard the sunroof popped like a tin of sardines. I just sat there, sipping my Star, because right then, clear as daylight, I saw it: we Nigerians were going to outlive every average Earthling on this ruined planet. And I counted the reasons out loud to Chuks while the world ended on the radio.
Reason Number One: We are already champions at living off the grid. Bad roads? We never trusted them. No water network? My grandmother taught me to fetch from the stream before I could walk. No electricity? NEPA trained us better than any army. When the big EMP or whatever them oyibo scientists warned about finally killed every light on earth, we just shrugged. Mama Nkechi lit her kerosene stove same as always. I pulled out my old Nokia torch – the one that charges with a small solar panel I bought for two thousand naira last year. In New York they were dying in the dark, elevators becoming coffins, subways filling with smoke. Here? “Light don go since morning,” I told Chuks. “Na today?”
Reason Number Two: Our corrupt leaders are now stuck with us. Every big man who stole enough to buy a house in Mayfair or a condo in Manhattan was suddenly the loneliest soul alive. London was radioactive soup. Washington was a crater. Their private jets sat on the tarmac at Abuja with nowhere to land. I saw it live on the TV before it died – one senator in a white agbada crying real tears while his pilot told him, “Oga, radar say Europe na oven.” Now those same thieves had to stay and fix the country or face the boys with cutlasses. Funny how quick “federal character” becomes “fix the transformer or we roast you like goat.”
Reason Number Three: We are the undisputed kings of hustle. While the average American was waiting for FEMA that would never come, we were already pricing “anti-radiation garri” and “nuclear holy water” at the junction. By nightfall I had sold three generators on “trust” and collected two live chickens as deposit. The end of the world is just another market day if you know how to price panic.
Reason Number Four: We never expected the government to save us in the first place. Hospitals with no drugs? Normal. Police that collect money before they answer call? Tuesday. When the big countries’ emergency services collapsed and millions died waiting for help that wasn’t coming, we just did what we always do – carried the wounded on okada, used herbal leaves for bullet wounds, prayed, and moved on. No disappointment, no shock.
Reason Number Five: Family and community never broke down here. My cousin from Lagos called before the lines died – his whole street was sharing the last bag of rice, one cup per person. In 3rd East Circular we already knew every child by name and every widow by face. When the sky turned grey with fallout dust later that week, nobody starved alone. The average oyibo in his lonely apartment? He died with a full fridge he couldn’t share because he didn’t know his neighbour’s name.
Reason Number Six: 3rd East Circular had already trained us better than any survival school. Every night here is a small war – cult boys, armed robbers, police “operation”. I can run through back alleys blindfolded, hide in a gutter with only my nose above water, and still come out smiling. When the first real looting started and guns began to speak, I just slipped between two zinc houses, same way I dodge cult initiation every December. The boys from the GRA died in their first gunfight because they thought money could buy sense. We knew better.
Reason Number Seven: We can eat what other people would bury. When supermarkets in Europe turned into graveyards full of rotting food, we were pounding yam with cassava leaves and dried fish that had been sitting in the sun for weeks. One woman even fried grasshoppers and called it “protein bomb.” My belly don’t care if the meat once walked on four legs or six – if it fills the hole, e dey sweet.
Reason Number Eight: Our faith is bulletproof. By 7 p.m. every church in Benin was packed like sardines. Pastors shouting “The wicked nations are judged! Nigeria shall rise!” People were dancing in the aisles while the radio still played stories of cities turned to ash. The average Earthling lost hope when the lights went out. We just sang louder.
Reason Number Nine: Black market and “arrangee” is our native language. Petrol? We siphon. Medicine? We know the chemist who knows the doctor who knows the importer. When the big countries’ supply chains snapped like dry sticks, their people froze or starved in neat lines. We just entered “one chance” mode and kept moving.
Reason Number Ten: We are too many and too stubborn to kill easy. Billions of us packed into cities and villages, young, tough, used to heat, malaria, bad water, military coups, and “next level” promises that never came. The bomb didn’t even bother coming for us because we were already living like the world had ended yesterday. Now the world really had ended, and we were still cracking jokes and pricing beans.
Night fell thick and heavy. The generator across the street finally died for good. Somewhere far off, a woman was still crying, but closer by, boys were roasting maize and laughing about how “Trump and Putin don finally shake hands in heaven – with fire.” I lay on my mattress on the floor, staring at the stars that suddenly looked brighter without any city light to fight them. Chuks was already snoring beside me, one hand on the cutlass we kept under the bed.
The world had ended for the nine powers and all their fancy friends. But right here on 3rd East Circular, Frank Adeche was still breathing, still thinking, still ready for whatever came next.
Because we Nigerians – we don’t just survive. We turn survival into hustle, hustle into party, and party into tomorrow.
And tomorrow, my brother, was already coming, whether the sky was falling or not.
