What life looks like for a Lapo baby in Nigeria

In Nigeria’s ever-vibrant social media space, a fresh generational conversation has been sparked by a witty but searing contrast—Nepo Baby vs Lapo Baby. And while the “nepo babies” get flak for cruising on parental privilege, the lapo babies are finally having their moment, sharing the quiet heroism—and heartbreak—of hustling without a safety net.

But who exactly is a Lapo baby?

You don’t find a lapo baby; life introduces you to one. They are born into what can best be described as “You’re on your own” (YOYO) households. While a nepo baby’s biggest stress might be choosing between Harvard and Yale, the lapo baby is busy researching how to apply for scholarships to “University of Tough Luck,” majoring in Hustlenomics with a minor in Anxiety.

To be a lapo baby in Nigeria is to carry a PhD in perseverance. You may not have pedigree, but you have scars—literal and metaphorical—from life’s gbas gbos.

Born Broke, But Brilliant

Being a lapo baby is not just a condition—it’s a lifestyle. Your resume starts from childhood.

Remember those days when you had to pick between buying a textbook and paying for WAEC? Or when you borrowed someone’s jamb form to practice before buying yours next year? That’s lapo energy.

As a lapo baby, you learned early that the only person coming to save you is you—and maybe your cousin who just got a job as a POS operator. You weren’t born into comfort, but you inherited a strong WiFi connection to hustle.

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Secondary School: The Bootcamp

For a lapo baby, secondary school is where the survival instinct begins to bud.

School uniforms? Recycled. Shoes? Patched more than third mainland bridge. Lunch? Either swallowed with pride or replaced with loud chewing gum. The average lapo baby mastered the art of appearing okay even when the last meal was “garri and vibes.” They knew that if you cried too much about it, you’d be asked to go and “thank God you even have something.”

While nepo babies were doing ballet and violin lessons, lapo babies were trekking long distances to school, learning life skills like dodging danfo conductors, crossing express roads like commandos, and calculating the change from ₦100 like economic consultants.

University: The Degree and the Debt

By the time a lapo baby gets to the university—after multiple strikes, delayed admissions, or change of course—they’re already battle-hardened.

Tuition fees are not just a number; they are an existential crisis. Lap babies are the ones who paid fees from money saved doing home lessons, selling thrift clothes, or being “unofficial” campus barbers and bakers.

A nepo baby’s university experience includes internships in tech firms owned by daddy’s friends. Meanwhile, a lapo baby is interning as a course rep, hostel plug, and occasional spiritual adviser—all unpaid.

Final year? You’re not only writing a thesis—you’re negotiating with life. Your prayer point is not “God I want a first class,” but “God let me graduate before ASUU remembers us.”

NYSC: National Year of Scattered Chances

NYSC for a lapo baby is not a gap year; it’s a potential career move. This is where you either:

• Marry into money,

• Get retained at your PPA, or

• Hustle your way to a life that can finally afford a daily shawarma.

But first, you must survive the PPA in a village where Google Maps ends and network disappears. You’ll teach Integrated Science with no textbook and discover talents like farming, borehole repair, and making noodles for 50 corps members in one pot.

Somehow, you make it. Why? Because lapo babies are wired for resilience. They know how to write cover letters that sound like epistles to destiny, how to rebrand “unpaid internship” as “consultancy experience,” and how to survive in a house where the generator is louder than your aspirations.

Job Hunting: Hunger Games, Nigerian Edition

After NYSC, you enter the wild—job hunting as a full-time hustle. A nepo baby gets job offers before their POP picture is uploaded. But for lapo babies, it’s LinkedIn, emails, walk-ins, and fasting.

You’ve written so many aptitude tests that you start solving logical reasoning questions in your dreams. You’ve become a pro at interviews—even the ones you never get a call back for.

In this space, your biggest qualification is “experience,” but nobody wants to give you that first job. So you volunteer, freelance, run errands, and start side gigs—from content creation to selling wigs to becoming the family’s unofficial tech support.

The Emotional Tax

There’s also the emotional weight.

The pressure to succeed, not just for yourself but for the family watching you like a Messi penalty shootout. Your success isn’t just yours—it’s a communal project. Every phone call from home starts with “Have you heard from that place you applied to?” and ends with “We’re praying for you, but send small something for your younger ones.”

Dating? Don’t try it unless you’ve mastered how to budget love with ₦5k. You may be sweet, but no one wants to eat affection for breakfast. Even in relationships, your worth is debated like an oil subsidy.

Success: A War Medal, Not a Handshake

When a lapo baby finally breaks through, it’s not just a job—it’s a generational shift.

Unlike a nepo baby whose LinkedIn profile is a catalogue of family-linked firms, your CV is an archive of perseverance. And when you finally earn six figures, you don’t just pop champagne—you pay rent, send money home, fix the broken wall of your father’s house, and then eat gala and Lacasera to celebrate.

No Lapo baby ever “arrives” quietly. You arrive loud—not out of pride, but because you know what it took. You carry your battle scars like awards, not regrets. You’re not bitter; just built different.

So, What Does It Really Mean to Be a Lapo Baby in Nigeria?

It means fighting every day to rewrite a story you didn’t author.

It means being the first in your family to travel by air—not for vacation, but to attend a tech bootcamp or job interview. It means pushing against generational limits, waking up to alarm clocks set by your dreams, and going to bed with prayers whispered into your pillow.

It means knowing that even if you didn’t inherit wealth, you inherited willpower.

And perhaps most powerfully, it means you know what it means to survive, adapt, evolve—and still keep your sense of humour. Because if you can laugh through your landlord’s threat and still post content on Instagram, you, dear lapo baby, are the hero of this story.