A life in Nigeria
The youngest country of the eight and the shortest lives. Everything is paid for privately, including the power.
In One Life, a Nigerian life is born in Ibadan, Enugu, Kaduna, Benin City, Abeokuta or Jos. Children take the school bus. The year runs through the rainy season and the dry season. School runs from JSS to SS and ends with the WAEC exams. The money is in naira.
What the game gives you
Nigeria is the country of the eight where the most is paid for privately: school fees, medicine, the generator for when the power goes, and old age. There is no general state pension. A Nigerian life in the game has to build its own safety net, and the first place it looks is family.
Stories only a Nigerian life has
Some situations in One Life are dealt only to a life lived in Nigeria, because that is where they happen:
- The service year. The NYSC posting after a degree, to a state you did not choose.
- Two years upfront. The landlord who wants two years of rent at once, the agent’s fee and the lawyer’s fee.
- The family account. What a working son or daughter is expected to carry for the whole family.
- The introduction. The Nigerian version of “Do you marry?”: the knocking, the list and the weddings.
- Cash before treatment. A parent’s surgery, when the hospital asks for the deposit first.
- Japa. The chance to leave the country: the cost, the proof of funds, and who is left behind.
- The pension. Retiring at sixty, and the pension that does not come.
Money in the game
The game sets each country’s money against the United States, then shows it in local currency, here in naira at a fixed rate of ₦700 to the dollar. In a life here, an ordinary job pays about 9% of what the same job pays in the US, and everyday prices are about 20% of American prices. A university education costs about 26% of the American price, and medical bills about 1.6 times what an American pays out of pocket for the same illness.
Those ratios are the shape of a life here. Pay is under a tenth of the American figure and prices a fifth, so most money is spent on the basics. Illness costs more out of pocket than in the US, against a fraction of the pay, which is why one hospital bill can take a family’s savings.
The odds
The UN estimates life expectancy at birth in Nigeria at about 55 years, the shortest of the eight countries. That figure is pulled down sharply by deaths in early childhood, and a Nigerian who survives childhood can expect to live considerably longer. Because a life in One Life begins at five, the odds a Nigerian adult faces in the game are better than 55 suggests, but they are still the hardest of the eight. Nigeria is also the youngest country of the eight: most of its people are children and young adults.