Introduction
She birth ten children, raised eight and buried two. She has also buried a husband. She survived things that would have broken most people.
Now she is 74, lives alone, and her children all scattered across Lagos, Abuja, London, and Houston call her every day. Sometimes twice. They send money, argue about who is doing enough, arrange visits when they can and each carry guilt that they have not been able to name. They feel like they are committing a betrayal of something sacred.
Nobody is talking about what she actually needs.
This story is not unique to only Nigeria, but is playing out across the country, because we no longer have a system that caters to the elderly. Our culture has evolved beyond what we grew up with: a world where extended families live in the same compound, daughters-in-law stayed at home and proximity was the default. That is no longer the case and Nigerian families need to have the conversation about the kind of care the elderly need and how to provide just that kind of care.
A demographic shift we are not ready for
By 2050, Sub-Saharan Africa will have over 160 million people aged 60 and above, four times the number we have today. Nigeria, as the region’s most populous nation, will carry the largest share of that number.
Japan has been living with this reality the longest. Over 29% of its population is now over 65, and the country has spent the last two decades building systems around housing, healthcare and the labour market in a way that serves the elderly. They have built an architecture that allows their citizens to grow old with dignity and they are still not done.
The United Kingdom is in the middle of what its government calls a social care crisis, a structural shortage of care provision that leaves hundreds of thousands of elderly people without adequate support, and places mounting pressure on the already strained National Health Service.
Neither Japan nor the UK got ahead of this. They ran into it after it had already become a crisis. Nigeria has an opportunity to prepare for that period before it arrives, but the question is whether the nation will act on it or not.
Growing old in Nigeria should not mean becoming invisible, but for too many of our elders, it does.
