Life in Africa, Life in the West: When Trust Erodes Quietly

Culture is often described as a people’s way of life.

I spent much of my early childhood in Nigeria, where family and community are deeply embedded in everyday life. Relatives matter, because in many ways they function as Africa’s version of the welfare state. People often rely on one another in ways that can feel unfamiliar in more individualistic Western societies.

There is beauty in that, especially if you are on the receiving side.

But there is also a harder truth.

In many African countries, community is not only cultural. It is functional. It often steps in where institutions fall short. When welfare systems are weak or non-existent, families become the safety net. When public services fail, people rely on each other. When governments underperform, communities absorb the pressure.

From the outside, this can look warm, generous, even idealistic.

From the inside, it can be exhausting, especially when the beneficiaries of the family-funded welfare system abuse it, similar to what is sometimes seen in Western state-funded welfare systems. I saw support systems meant to help people recover become permanent expectations. Some relatives kept taking on responsibilities they could not sustain, assuming others would continue to carry the load. For example, some would continue to have more children than they could feed, without using family planning, and without raising their children to break the cycle of reliance on other family members. Worse still, some non-family members now try to adopt such practices in the diaspora, claiming that all Nigerians were now family simply because we are abroad, regardless of how anyone had arrived there.

Unfortunately, this allows governments to grow comfortable with incompetence. If citizens and families continue carrying the burden, the pressure on institutions to improve can weaken. It raises an uncomfortable question: what is the point of funding embassies abroad if citizens are still expected to act as their own consular support system?!

When dysfunction becomes routine, neglect can start to feel normal. That may be one reason suffering in parts of Africa can become normalised, both locally and internationally.

I was reminded of that recently when I came across yet another report of Christians being killed in northern Nigeria.

Villages attacked. Lives lost. Families displaced.

What struck me was not only the violence.

It was how easily it disappeared.

If a country does not consistently treat the suffering of its own people as urgent, the outside world often follows that lead. Repetition breeds desensitisation. Tragedy becomes background noise.

Growing up in Nigeria, the West was often sold as something close to a promise. A place where systems worked. Where the rule of law was consistent. Where institutions could be trusted. Where the media, whatever its flaws, would at least value truth and fairness.

That belief does not disappear overnight.

It erodes.

Because when you start paying attention, you begin to notice patterns.

Conflicts like the Israel–Hamas war dominated global coverage within hours. Every development was analysed, debated, repeated, and emotionally amplified in real time.

Meanwhile, violence in parts of Nigeria involving groups such as Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province has continued over years with far less sustained attention.

This is not about ranking suffering.

It is about recognising that not all suffering becomes equally visible.

And visibility matters. It shapes outrage, policy, donations, pressure, and memory.

The same imbalance appears elsewhere.

When a failed rocket launched from within the Gaza Strip caused an explosion at the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza around 17 October 2023, immediate blame spread rapidly across global media and social platforms, with claims from the Hamas-controlled Gazan Health Ministry and several international news outlets that it was a deliberate Israeli airstrike. Later, independent evidence from investigations by groups such as Human Rights Watch, the Associated Press (AP), and several media outlets, including CNN, the BBC, and The Wall Street Journal, concluded that the damage, including a small impact crater and extensive fire damage, was inconsistent with a typical Israeli air-dropped bomb but consistent with an errant rocket carrying leftover propellant. This raised serious doubts about the original narrative, yet the correction never travelled with the same force as the accusation.

That pattern is becoming familiar in modern media.

The headline races ahead.

The retraction arrives quietly.

I noticed something similar when footage spread online of an Israel Defense Forces soldier damaging a statue of Jesus in Lebanon. The outrage travelled quickly. Far fewer people seemed interested in later reports that the act was condemned, the soldier faced consequences, and the statue was replaced.

The accusation is often louder than the resolution.

In the UK, the conversation becomes even more uncomfortable.

Jewish communities have faced harassment, vandalism, threats, and hostility during periods of heightened Middle East conflict. These incidents are usually condemned. But condemnation alone does not always feel like protection.

Instead, there can be an unspoken expectation that Jewish communities should simply adapt. Increase security. Be more cautious. Carry the burden quietly.

In a country that prides itself on fairness and the rule of law, that expectation is difficult to justify.

What is harder to ignore is how easily criticism of a state can become hostility toward a people.

Israel, like any country, is not beyond criticism. No government should be.

But criticism of a government should not become a licence to target individuals who merely share an identity connected to that state.

We do not apply that logic consistently elsewhere. Ordinary Russians are not universally treated as extensions of the Kremlin. Iranians abroad are not automatically held personally responsible for the actions of the Iranian regime.

Yet when it comes to Jews or Israelis, the line between politics and identity can blur with alarming speed.

And inconsistency is where trust starts to fracture.

A part of me sometimes wonders whether the UK today feels less different from Nigeria than it once did when I first arrived. Not because the countries are the same, but because I have become more aware of how majority cultures can lose confidence in expressing themselves while still being expected to accommodate everyone else.

When I first came to the UK, Christianity still felt like the cultural default in many spaces. Over time, I noticed growing discomfort around public Christian expression, alongside greater confidence from some other religious groups in asserting their own visibility. Whether one agrees or not, the contrast was noticeable to me.

More recently, I have noticed growing debates in Britain and Europe around identity, religion, secularism, and the confidence of majority cultures. Having spent most of my early childhood in the Christian part of Nigeria, where shifts in power, identity, and public norms can happen gradually before they become obvious, some of these debates feel strangely familiar.

For instance, a part of me is seeing the slow erosion of the Christian values and status of the UK, which I observed happening in Nigeria over the years.

In my early childhood, Nigeria, especially the Christian part of Nigeria, was widely regarded as a Christian country. It then shifted into a more secular identity, and now, in many ways, is seen as more of a Muslim country, even in parts once considered firmly Christian.

In my early childhood, the national news channel, NTA, and public holidays were geared mostly towards Christian holidays, at least in the Christian-majority parts of Nigeria where I was raised. Toward my last years in Nigeria, there was a growing spread of Islamic holidays, rules, and culture across the country, not only in the Muslim-majority north.

The Christian parts of Nigeria had long been tolerant of other religions and cultures, much to our own detriment. When reports of mass killings of Christians emerged from Muslim-majority regions, they were often downplayed as tribal conflict or justified with claims that the victims had committed blasphemy or disrespected Islam.

Ironically, the Christian part of Nigeria often tried to appease the Muslim half of the country in the name of peace.

Over time, Nigeria became desensitised to the killings of Christians in Muslim-majority regions. Now it appears desensitised to the killings of Christians and moderate Muslims alike, many of whom would historically have been natural allies.

Today in the UK, I see similarities emerging across Britain and Europe.

Christians can face growing discomfort about displaying their religious identity in some public spaces, while other faith expressions appear more confidently asserted. In some cases, non-Muslims are asked to adapt to religious customs, whether through dress expectations or behavioural requests during Ramadan.

To me, it can feel like a twisted déjà vu in slow motion.

While living in London, I even had a classmate repeatedly try to convert me to Islam, warning me about judgement day and asking what I would do if I died.

I replied, truthfully, “I would just die.”

The conversation ended quickly.

It reminded me that not everyone can be persuaded through fear or group pressure.

More recently, while studying in Derry-Londonderry in Northern Ireland, I noticed that on one university year announcement board, which was usually intended for science course-specific notices, there was a religious announcement in 2025 related to Ramadan, with nothing about Christmas, Easter, Lent, Passover, Diwali (the Festival of Lights), or any other religion. I found that puzzling in a society historically shaped by Christianity, as it echoed aspects of my early childhood experience in Nigeria.

At the same time, I now better understand that no society is immune from selective outrage, institutional weakness, media incentives, or the quiet influence of money and power.

The illusion was never that the West was perfect.

The illusion was that it was consistently fair.

That is a much harder illusion to keep once it starts to crack.

Trust rarely collapses all at once.

It erodes quietly when no one bothers to uphold what drew people to Western countries in the first place.

I came to the UK because I believed in individual liberty, opportunity, and a society confident enough to be tolerant without losing itself. I wanted to live in a capitalist, liberal, Christian country.

Those ideals still matter.

Which is why watching trust erode matters too.