Nigerian Students Are Now Losing Sleep Over Work

There was a time when being a student was fun.

All a student had to worry about was graduating with a first class, attending parties, and meeting the 65% of class attendance requirement. Other than these, life wasn’t more than bread and beans, arguing about football, relationships, or whether Wizkid was better than Davido.

But something changed.

Over the last decade, things have fallen apart, and they are still falling, probably more times than rain this year. Entry-level jobs demanded experience from people who had barely left school, there were back to back ASUU strikes, global inflation, and a collapsing Nigerian economy made the need to survive more important than schooling. 

As we speak, somewhere in Nigeria, a final year student is leading a one-man marketing team between lectures. 

He is inside a crowded classroom of over 100 students, pretending to look at a course outline on his laptop. What he’s actually doing is reading messages on Slack: a client wants yet another revision, and the brand designer is asking for feedback. The lecturer is explaining something about Pascal’s policy. 

“Pascal? Which one be Pascal again? Did he mean fiscal policy?” He isn’t sure.

Two rows behind him, another student is editing a Canva presentation for a startup founder in Lekki. Someone beside the window is replying to emails with the seriousness of a market woman counting money. At the back of the class, one guy suddenly stands up and rushes outside because his “father is calling.”

But that’s not his father.

It’s his boss.

This is campus life now.

The line between school and work has collapsed in Nigeria, and it is not without some consequences.

It Is Costing Students Their Rest

The thing about working while in school is that it doesn’t just take your time and focus; it takes your soul. Students are now losing the parts of them that made them students. They are exhausted trying to juggle work, classes, assignments, events, relationships, and other commitments.

I know this because I was one of them.

In my final year, while writing my project, I left campus 2 or 3 times a week for work, returning each time feeling like a father of 5. My laptop was always open, glued to my body like a rat in a mouse trap, only that the laptop was the trap, and I was the mouse. I was always tired and busy. 

There was always something to edit, something to submit, something due.

I had no time for relationships, games, or hobbies. 

It Is Costing Students Their Time

One of the first things students lose when they start working in school is time.

They lose actual breathing space that allows them to attend classes properly, rest properly, or even gist without checking their phone every five minutes.

I saw this one afternoon when I visited a friend, Tolani, at her hostel room. I was expecting the usual student banter around assignments, lecturers, and hostels. But by the time I arrived, she was panicking over a recent query letter from work instead. 

“Omo. I’d be in big trouble if I don’t submit this content calendar by 1 pm,” she said, as she kept beating her keyboard like an African mother flogging her child.

She had two remote jobs, one of them paying in dollars, and expecting her online at specific hours. But she had been missing meetings because of classes and missing classes because of meetings.

She was always tired and didn’t have time.

None of us did.

It Is Costing Students Their Relationships 

The hustle is also quietly changing how students relate with other people.

Friendships become harder to maintain, and romantic relationships start feeling stupid. Everybody is too tired or too busy trying to ‘make it.”

I saw this with another friend of mine, Oluchi, who lived alone in a two-bedroom apartment outside school. At first, I assumed it was family money. You know… NEPO baby and all that. But it didn’t. 

It came from her social media management agency.

While most students worried about toilet water and bedbugs, Oluchi was more concerned about managing clients, coordinating deliverables, handling revisions, and managing her team from the comfort of her space. At one point during our conversation, she casually mentioned she had been working since 2018. 

That was 7 years, at the time. 7 years. A fellow student. She somehow managed to keep up her excellent grades, but it had cost her a friendship group that slowly stopped inviting her out, and a relationship of 5 years that ended quietly.

Her agency was more important.

But that’s not all..

It Is Costing Students Their Degrees

For some students, school is no longer relevant.

Work has become the main thing, while school is the side hustle.

That was what happened to Chidi.

Chidi simply stopped caring about school altogether by the time he landed a job at a startup in Lekki by his 3rd year. 

After all, “na person wey see food chop go fit reason well. I’m almost 28 and there’s nothing I can do about my grades again. I don leave school for who get am.”

He eventually dropped out. Didn’t even show up for graduation, and is still working at the same company in the same role, with added responsibilities, but the same pay.

It Is Costing Students Their Youth

The university years once represented a transition period: friendships, boredom, campus love, heartbreak, experimentation, small enjoyment, and the freedom to be confused about life.

Now, many students see the university as a hindrance to their progress. Even ordinary conversations have changed. They now discuss deadlines, KPIs, salary delays, client behaviour, toxic managers, and whether they should quit one job for another.

But Would You Blame Them?

Some of these opportunities genuinely change lives. They help students support themselves and their families. They create career acceleration that previous generations could only dream of.

However, the reality is:

Nigeria did not just create a generation of hardworking students.

It created a generation of hardworking students who no longer care about being students alone.

And it’s costing them their youth.